Volume 9, Issue 1, Fall/Winter 2010

Authors

Laura K. Abel

Laura K. Abel is Deputy Director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, where she has worked since 1999. Her work is aimed at enhancing the ability of low-income families and individuals to obtain legal counsel and access to the courts. Her recent scholarship includes articles on empirical approaches to evaluating various forms of legal assistance, motivations behind recent civil right to counsel statutes, and the scope of the statutory right to counsel in civil cases. She is also the author of the Brennan Center's Language Access in State Courts report and sits on language access advisory committees established by the American Bar Association and the New York Office of Court Administration.

Matt Adams

Matt Adams is the legal director for Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, where he has worked since 1998. He has an extensive practice in federal courts with ten published victories before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He was awarded the 2008 Jack Wasserman Memorial Award for Excellence in Litigation from the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). He was also honored with the 2008 Access to Justice Leadership Award, from the Washington State Bar Access to Justice Board. In 2005 he was awarded the Washington State Chapter AILA Award for Most Significant Impact Litigation. Mr. Adams graduated from the University of California at Berkeley's school of law, and received his undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University.

Mr. Adams is currently co-counsel, along with the ACLU, Public Counsel and Sullivan & Cromwell in the case of Franco-Gonzalez, et al. v. Holder, et al., CV 10-02211, in the U.S. District Court in the Central District of Columbia, seeking class certification on behalf of all individuals who are or will be in DHS custody for removal proceedings in California, Arizona, and Washington who have been identified as having a serious mental disorder or defect that may render them incompetent to represent themselves in detention or removal proceedings, and who presently lack counsel in their detention or removal proceedings. On December 22, 2010, U.S. District Judge Gee granted preliminary injunctive relief ordering defendants to find qualified representatives to represent the two named plaintiffs in all phases of their immigration proceedings, including appeals and/or custody hearings. The order did not reach the due process arguments, but instead relied on section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act to conclude that a qualified representative in removal proceedings is required as a reasonable accommodation.

Janet Ainsworth

Janet Ainsworth received her law degree from Harvard Law School and a master's degree from Yale University. Before joining the Seattle University law faculty in 1988, she practiced law at the Seattle Public Defender Association. She has taught a wide variety of courses, including torts, criminal procedure, children and the law, and a seminar in law society, and social change. Her research includes scholarship on topics in criminal law and procedure, juvenile justice, comparative legal theory, imperial Chinese law, feminist legal theory, law and semiotics, and language and law. Her scholarly works have appeared in both leading law reviews and in peer-reviewed social science journals. Currently she serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Law and Semiotics and Oxford University Press' series Law and Language.

Lisa E. Brodoff

Lisa Brodoff is an associate professor of law and Director of the Clinical Program at Seattle University School of Law, where she teaches courses and clinics in Elder Law, Administrative Law, and Trusts and Estates. Prior to her teaching position, she was the Chief Administrative Law Judge for the Washington State Office of Administrative Hearings, Chief Review Judge for the Department of Social and Health Services, and a Staff Attorney at Puget Sound Legal Assistance Foundation (now Columbia Legal Services) for 13 years, practicing in the areas of Elder Law and Public Benefits. Professor Brodoff is also a Tribal Court Judge for the Northwest Intertribal Court System. During her off hours, she sings, plays bass, and writes music for the alternative feminist band, The Righteous Mothers, and sings back up for the lawyer soul/funk band, Funk Pro Tunc.

Mark A. Chinen

Mark Chinen is Associate Professor of Law at the Seattle University School of Law. He was educated at Pomona College and Yale Divinity School before receiving his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1988. Before beginning law teaching in 1996, Professor Chinen practiced corporate and securities law for seven years in Washington D.C. with the law firm, Covington & Burling. Professor Chinen teaches contracts and courses in international law and he writes on various aspects of international law, particularly theology and international law, international governance, and the relationship between domestic and international law.

Margaret Chon

Since joining the Seattle University faculty, Margaret Chon has been a dedicated teacher as well as a prolific scholar in both the governance of knowledge and of race. Her current scholarship is a genre she characterizes as global intellectual property equality, focusing on how the distribution and production of knowledge should relate to other global public goods necessary for human development and flourishing. She is also currently the Associate Dean for Research, responsible for nurturing the law school faculty's academic excellence and showcasing its rapidly growing scholarly reputation.

Annette Clark

Annette Clark is an associate professor at Seattle University School of Law, where she has taught courses in civil procedure, bioethics and medical liability since joining the faculty in 1989. Professor Clark holds both a JD and an MD degree, and her scholarship operates at the interface of law, health care, and health policy, with a particular emphasis on end-of-life issues. Her past work has been published in such journals as the New York University Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Tulane Law Review. She has also been an administrator at Seattle University School of Law for 10 of the past 13 years, serving first as associate dean for academic affairs and then vice dean. Most recently, Professor Clark served as Interim Dean for the 2009-10 academic year. She is currently on sabbatical and was a Visiting Scholar at the George Washington Law School in Washington, D.C. for the fall semester, where she worked on scholarship related to legal education. Professor Clark is a past recipient of the James B. McGoldrick, S.J., Fellowship, which is awarded annually by the president of Seattle University to the faculty member or administrator who best exemplifies commitment to students and to the values of a Jesuit education.

Martha F. Davis

Martha F. Davis is Associate Dean for Clinical and Experiential Education and Professor of Law at Northeastern University, where she also co-directs the law school's Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy. Professor Davis is the author of numerous articles on human rights, women's rights, and welfare law and policy. She is co-editor of the book Bringing Human Rights Home and author of the prizewinning book, Brutal Need: Lawyers and the Welfare Rights Movement. Prior to joining the faculty at Northeastern, Professor Davis was the Vice President and Legal Director of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York. She has litigated cases at all levels of state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court and has testified before Congressional committees on numerous occasions. Professor Davis holds a BA from Harvard University, an MA (Oxon.) from Oxford University, and a JD from the University of Chicago.

Eric Dunn

Eric Dunn is a staff attorney in the Seattle office of the Northwest Justice Project (NJP), a non-profit legal services program that provides free legal representation to low-income people throughout Washington. Since joining NJP in February 2005, Dunn has exclusively practiced housing law, primarily in the areas of civil rights, consumer protection, and access to affordable housing. Prior to joining NJP, Dunn focused on civil rights and predatory lending cases as an attorney with the Legal Aid & Defender Association of Detroit, Michigan. Dunn obtained his law degree from the University of Louisville in 2000 and holds a BA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Russell Engler

Russell Engler is a Professor of Law and the Director of Clinical Programs at New England Law | Boston. He directs New England's clinical programs, teaches the Lawyering Process and Public Interest Law Seminar and Clinic, co-teaches clinical component courses, and directs the Public Service Project of the school's Center for Law and Social Responsibility. During the 1999-2000 academic year, he was also a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School, where he taught the Lawyering Process. Before joining the New England faculty in 1993, he was the director of the Housing Law Unit at Brooklyn (NY) Legal Services, Corporation B. He clerked for the late Hon. Francis D. Murnaghan, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He received his JD from Harvard Law School and his BA from Yale University. He has published articles on a range of topics, including Civil Gideon, Unrepresented Litigants, Access to Justice, Judicial Ethics and Legal Education.

In addition to his article in this issue of SJSJ, his publications include: The Toughest Nut: Handling Cases Pitting Unrepresented Litigants Against Represented Ones, in NAT'L COUNS. JUV. & FAM. CT. JUDGES J. (forthcoming 2011); Pursuing Access to Justice and Civil Right to Counsel in a Time of Economic Crisis, 15 ROGER WILLIAMS U. L. REV. 472 (2010); Connecting Self-Representation to Civil Gideon: What Existing Data Reveal About When Counsel is Most Needed, 37 FORDHAM URB. L.J. 37 (2010); Approaching Ethical Issues Involving Unrepresented Litigants, 43 CLEARINGHOUSE REV. 377 (2009); Ethics in Transition: Unrepresented Litigants and the Changing Judicial Role, 22 NOTRE DAME J.L. ETHICS & PUB. POL'Y 367 (2008); Shaping A Context-Based Civil Gideon from the Dynamics of Social Change, 15 TEMP. POL. & CIV. RTS. L. REV. 697 (2006); Toward a Context-Based Civil Right to Counsel Through "Access to Justice" Initiatives, 40 CLEARINGHOUSE REV. 196 (2006); Normalcy After 9/11: Public Service as the Crisis Fades, 31 FORDHAM URB. L.J. 983 (2004); The MacCrate Report Turns 10: Assessing Its Impact and Identifying Gaps We Should Seek to Narrow, 8 CLINICAL L. REV. 109 (2001); And Justice for All-Including the Unrepresented Poor: Revisiting the Roles of the Judges, Mediators and Clerks, 67 FORDHAM L. REV. 1987 (1999); and Out of Sight and Out of Line: The Need for Regulation of Lawyers' Negotiations with Unrepresented Poor Persons, 85 CALIF. L. REV. 79 (1997).

Marina Grabchuk

Marina Grabchuk is a 2011 JD candidate at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, where she serves as a Notes Editor for Hastings Women's Law Journal. She received her BA in International Studies and Political Science from University of Washington. During law school Marina interned at Northwest Justice Project in the housing unit, and worked at an immigration law firm Gibbs, Houston & Pauw. She volunteered at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and the Immigrant Detainee Justice Project through the Access to Justice Institute at Seattle University Law School, where she spent two semesters as a visiting student. Marina plans to focus her career on public interest and immigration law.

Omeara Harrington

Omeara Harrington is a 2011 JD candidate at Seattle University School of Law. A Missoula, Montana native, Ms. Harrington earned her BA in sociology in 2006 from the University of Montana, with a minor in anthropology. While at Seattle University, Ms. Harrington has pursued her interests in writing and public interest law through serving on the editorial staff of the Seattle Journal for Social Justice. She has also completed internships with Street Youth Legal Advocates of Washington as well as Associated Counsel for the Accused, and worked as a judicial extern for the Honorable Judge Catherine Shaffer at the King County Superior Court.

Ryan Jarvis

Ryan Jarvis is a 2011 JD candidate at Seattle University School of Law where he serves as an Executive Editor of the Seattle Journal for Social Justice. He received a BA in Politics & Government and Spanish from Ohio Wesleyan University in 2007. Coming to school with a passion for environmental conservation, Ryan served as the president of the Environmental Law Society. Ryan has also worked as a law clerk at the environmental non-profits Heart of America Northwest and Futurewise, and he recently finished a semester-long externship at the Environmental Protection Agency, Region 10 Office of Regional Counsel. After law school, Ryan will be moving to Aspen, Colorado, where he plans to pursue a career in real estate, land use, and environmental law.

Raven Lidman

Raven Lidman has been a Clinical Professor of Law at Seattle University School of law since 1987. She has taught clinics in family law, domestic violence, special education, immigration, international human rights and criminal defense. She has also collaborated with law school clinics in Peru, Nicaragua and elsewhere in Latin America.

She has been active in the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel and a founding member of CIRCLE (Committee for Indigent Representation and Civil Legal Equality), advocating for a "civil Gideon." It was through the work in the International Human Rights Clinic that she and law students, primarily Manal Boulos and Denise Fowley, decided to bring to bear on US law the transnational law on the right of low-income people to publicly paid civil lawyers. She wishes also to thank Laura Abel of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, Roberta Ritvo of DLA Piper, and Chris Nugent of Holland and Knight for collaboration on the survey to gather information on the systems for providing civil representation throughout the world. And a special thanks to the seventy partners, associates, paralegals, and interns at eleven major U.S. law firms who provided pro bono assistance by collecting information on eighty countries for the survey, a summary of which is in the appendix to the amicus brief.

Mark C. Niles

Mark C. Niles is dean of Seattle University School of Law. He has taught and specializes in civil procedure, administrative law, constitutional law, governmental liability, and law and literature. He has published numerous articles and essays on subjects including the Ninth Amendment, federal tort liability, airline security regulation and the depiction of law and justice in American popular culture.

Dean Niles is a graduate of Stanford Law School. He previously served as associate dean for academic affairs at American University, Washington College of Law. Earlier in his career, he served as a clerk for the Honorable Francis Murnaghan, Jr., of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. He was an associate at the D.C. firm of Hogan and Hartson and an attorney in the civil appellate division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Deborah Perluss

Deborah Perluss is the Director of Advocacy/General Counsel of the Northwest Justice Project. Ms. Perluss received her JD in 1978 from the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, and was awarded an LLM degree in 1983, with distinction from the University of London, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Ms. Perluss serves as a WSBA delegate to the American Bar Association House of Delegates, in addition to serving on a number of Committees of the Washington State Bar Association and the Access to Justice Board. Ms. Perluss was a consultant to the ABA Presidential Task Force on Access to Justice, which formulated and sponsored the ABA Resolution 112A on a defined right to counsel adopted by the ABA House of Delegates in August 2006 and is a leader in the National Coalition on the Civil Right to Counsel. Ms. Perluss has devoted her career to providing legal aid for the poor.

Reyna Ramolete Hayashi

Reyna Ramolete Hayashi is a 2011 JD candidate at Seattle University School of Law, where she is a Scholar for Justice. Born and raised in Hawaii, she received her BA in Political Science at the University of British Columbia. Prior to law school, she worked in social work at transitional home, rural maternity care research, and international development. While in law school, Ms. Ramolete represented low-wage workers at the Unemployment Law Project, worked on wage theft advocacy at the National Employment Law Project and Casa Latina, and represented domestic violence survivors in protection order and U-Visa cases at the Ronald A. Peterson Law Clinic. She serves as the President of the Public Interest Law Foundation, on the Steering Committee of the Social Justice Coalition, and as the Student Content Development Editor for the Seattle Journal for Social Justice. After law school, she hopes to continue working in law and organizing, immigrant worker rights, and economic justice.

Rebecca L. Sandefur

Rebecca L. Sandefur is Senior Research Social Scientist at the American Bar Foundation, where she leads the Foundation's new access to justice research initiative. Her work has two strands: one focuses on inequality and civil justice and the other focuses on lawyers' work and legal professions. Her scholarship has appeared in numerous edited volumes and law reviews as well as outlets such as American Sociological Review, Annual Review of Sociology, and Law and Society Review. She is the editor of the multidisciplinary volume Access to Justice (Emerald/JAI Press, 2009) and an author of Urban Lawyers: The New Social Structure of the Bar (with John P. Heinz, Robert L. Nelson and Edward O. Laumann, University of Chicago Press, 2005). She has served in elected governance positions with the American Sociological Association, the Law and Society Association, and the Pacific Sociological Association, as well as both a consulting editor and an associate editor for the American Journal of Sociology, and on the editorial boards of Law and Social Inquiry and Law and Society Review. Her public service includes work on the Right to Counsel Committee of the California Access to Justice Commission and on the Research Advisory Board of the Civil Right to Counsel Leadership and Support Initiative. Before joining the American Bar Foundation, Sandefur served on the faculty of Stanford University for nine years after receiving her PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago.

Susan Vignola

Susan Vignola is a recent graduate of New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern Public Interest Scholar, a Notes Editor for the Journal of Legislation and Public Policy, and a Research Fellow for the National Center on Philanthropy and the Law. Prior to law school, Susan earned her Master's degree in International Development Studies from the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University and spent several years working internationally and domestically for non-profit organizations that strive to meet the needs and promote the rights of disadvantaged populations all over the world. She is also co-author of a forthcoming article that considers whether the growth of university mega-endowments merits a reconsideration of the requirements for tax exemption for educational institutions.