IN THIS ISSUE Child Advocacy Program
International Human Rights Clinic
Community Enterprise Project
Project on Predatory Student Lending
Democracy and Rule of Law Clinic
State Attorneys General Clinic
Harvard Immigration & Refugee Clinical Program
Veterans Legal Clinic
Harvard Mediation Program
CLINICAL AND PRO BONO PROGRAMS
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PROJECT ON PREDATORY STUDENT LENDING OF THE LEGAL SERVICES CENTER
Borrowers Face Hazy Path as Program to Forgive Student Loans Stalls Under Betsy DeVos Via the New York Times, November 11, 2018
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos Source: Flickr Over the past few months, the Project on Predatory Student Lending has scored a number of major victories in the courts asserting student borrowers’ rights. On four separate occasions, judges have ruled in favor of students and struck down a number of the Department of Education’s illegal policies and practices. In the clinic’s latest achievement, a federal judge granted former ITT Technical Institute students relief after approving a settlement that would erase nearly $600 million that 750,000 students owed the institute. The suit alleged that ITT Tech violated consumer-protection laws and breach of contract, and asked for status to cover anyone who attended ITT Tech between 2006 and 2016. The New York Times recently published a piece, featured below, that highlights several cases in which the clinic was involved.
useless degree, and it could ruin me financially for the rest of my life.”
No Education Department employees are devoted full time to investigating borrowers’ complaints, according to three people familiar with the agency’s operations. Instead, the agency’s staff has fought in court to reduce the amount of relief granted to some students and to halt a rule change intended to speed other claims along.
“There’s nothing in the regulations to stop the secretary from slowwalking the processing of claims,” said Clare McCann, a senior policy adviser at the department during the Obama administration. “I’m positive there will be more litigation from borrowers who have been sitting in the backlog.”
That has left more than 100,000 claims for relief in limbo, according to the Education Department’s most recent data. “It’s just dreamcrushing,” said Meaghan Bauer, who owes $45,000 for her time at the New England Institute of Art. The for-profit school, in Brookline, Mass., closed last year and was sued on fraud charges by the state attorney general in July.
Under President Barack Obama, the Education Department approved claims involving three schools. In nearly two years, the Trump administration has not granted approvals to students from any additional schools, even failed institutions like the Minnesota School of Business, which shut down after a state court ruled that it had misled students and broken state fraud laws.
The relief program, called borrower defense, became a popular way for students to seek debt forgiveness after several major for-profit schools went bust in recent years. During the Obama administration, the Education Department approved about 30,000 claims, more than half of them in the final two weeks before the new administration took over. All of those borrowers had their loans fully forgiven.
But President Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, who before taking office invested in companies with ties to for-profit colleges and student-loan debt collectors, has derided the program as a “free money” giveaway and vowed to make changes. She has also appointed a The students attended institutions with pragmatic names like the Min- former dean of DeVry University — a for-profit school that is the subnesota School of Business and others whose branding evoked ivyject of some 10,000 fraud claims by former students — to oversee the draped buildings and leafy quads, like Corinthian Colleges. Tens of thou- unit that runs the program. sands of them say they are alike in one respect: They were victims of fraud, left with useless degrees and crushing debts. As of mid-2018, her department had approved only 16,000 claims, and Education Department officials confirmed that about 15,000 of those Now the government program meant to forgive the federal loans of were granted partial forgiveness. Tens of thousands more still await a cheated students has all but stopped functioning. decision.
“I can’t afford to go back to school,” Ms. Bauer, 27, said. “Will I ever be The department’s attempts to reduce the amount of forgiven debt and able to buy a house? Or get married? I spent so much time working on a block a new forgiveness rule have drawn rebukes from federal judges.
LEARNING THE LAW | SERVING THE WORLD A judge in California found that the department had illegally obtained data from the Social Security Administration on the earnings of former Corinthian Colleges students as it sought to offer some of them only partial loan relief. Last month, the judge granted class-action status to 110,000 former Corinthian students who have applied to have their loans forgiven and may have been granted partial relief. Also last month, a federal judge in Washington told the department to institute a rule written by the Obama administration requiring a “clear, fair and transparent” process for handling borrowers’ loan discharge requests. The rule also orders the department to automatically forgive the loans of certain students who were enrolled when their schools closed or who withdrew shortly before then, without requiring borrowers to apply for that relief. But even after that court victory, critics of the Education Department are skeptical that there will be much progress. “This rule is only as good as the administration’s intent to implement it,” said Toby Merrill, the director of Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, which has represented dozens of borrowers in lawsuits against schools and the Education Department.
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appraises a house before it issues a mortgage, the Education Department is supposed to ensure that the programs it effectively funds are legitimate. The provision was mostly overlooked for decades. Between 1995 and 2015, the department received only five such claims, according to a report from the agency’s inspector general. But after the Obama administration and a group of state attorneys general cracked down on vocational schools that lured students in with false promises, several large chains collapsed. Corinthian was the first. In May 2015, it went bankrupt and closed all of its campuses, leaving 350,000 recent students with job training they called subpar and credits that most other schools would not accept. An activist group, the Debt Collective, dusted off the borrower defense rule and mobilized thousands of former Corinthian students to file claims. Unable to deal individually with so many cases, the Education Department hired a special master and began to develop a system for investigating and adjudicating claims. It also announced that many Corinthian students would qualify to have their debts erased. “You’d have to be made of stone not to feel for these students,” Arne Duncan, then the education secretary, said in June 2015. “We will make this process as easy as possible for them.” The complex work of evaluating the Corinthian claims has taken time. By January 2017, the department had approved nearly 32,000.
But when Mr. Obama’s administration ended, about 41,000 complaints still awaited review. The Education Department had granted relief for borrowers Liz Hill, an agency spokeswom- who met specific criteria at two other schools, ITT Educational Services and an, said the Education Depart- American Career Institute, but it had not delved into thousands of claims Toby Merrill, Director of the Project on ment would comply with the involving other institutions. After Mr. Trump took office, the existing claims Predatory Student Lending court’s decision and carry out sat untouched for nearly a year as tens of thousands of new ones arrived, the new rule “soon.” But she said Ms. DeVos considered the rule “bad poliaccording to agency documents. cy” and intended to rewrite it. In December, Ms. DeVos’s department approved nearly 13,000 claims, Many applicants whose claims have lingered might not get much help from mostly from Corinthian students, under the criteria established by the the new rule, anyway. The crux of it — establishing a federal standard for Obama administration — but to many, she granted only partial relief. Since determining if a borrower was defrauded — applies only to loans made in then, the department has approved only 4,000 more applications. Those 2017 and beyond. Borrowers with earlier loans must prove that their school approvals have barely put a dent in claims against ITT, one of the nation’s broke a state law. largest for-profit educational companies before it closed down in September 2016, just before the start of a new school term. Evaluating those claims “is incredibly complex and takes time,” Ms. Hill said. Borrowers have sought loan forgiveness after attending institutions large In January 2017, just days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the departand small — from DeVry, which boasts on its site that it has awarded more ment’s borrower defense unit circulated a 14-page memo recommending than 300,000 degrees, to the Marinello Schools of Beauty, a defunct costhat the debts of some ITT students be fully forgiven. The value of the edumetology chain that the government said had committed student loan cation the school provided them was “likely either negligible or nonexistfraud. Julian Schmoke, the former DeVry dean who is the department’s enent,” the investigators concluded. On that recommendation, the departforcement chief, has recused himself from issues related to DeVry, a depart- ment forgave the debts of 33 ITT students. It has not yet taken action on ment spokesman said. claims from 13,000 others, according to data sent to members of Congress. So far, the program has forgiven nearly $535 million in debt, meaning the government absorbs the loss. That’s one reason Ms. DeVos has said the program should be overhauled. “Students who have been defrauded and suffered harm should absolutely be made whole,” Ms. Hill said. “The department also has a duty to safeguard taxpayer dollars. It would be irresponsible to give 100 percent relief to every claimant without first assessing their claim and understanding whether or not harm was suffered.” The Education Department is the biggest lender to Americans who borrow for college, with more than $1 trillion going to 33 million students. In the fine print of its promissory notes, the agency spells out its terms: Borrowers must repay what they owe even if they drop out, are unhappy with their education or can’t find a job in the field they trained for. But there’s one escape clause. If borrowers were significantly misled by their school, they can ask the government to forgive their loans. Just as a bank
Joseph White is among the ITT students who say they were cheated. He filed a claim with the Education Department three years ago and has heard little since. Mr. White, 41, of St. Louis, graduated in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in software engineering. But when he landed a position as a web developer, he quickly discovered that he lacked the skills to do his job. Instead of teaching students to program computers, Mr. White said, instructors had handed out sheets of code and simply had the students retype them. At one final exam, the instructor stood at the front of the classroom and read the answer key aloud, he said. “My degree,” he said, “was a sham.” To finance that degree, Mr. White took out loans totaling more than $80,000.
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CLINICAL AND PRO BONO PROGRAMS
Election Protection Efforts Continue Long After the Midterms STATE ATTORNEYS GENERAL CLINIC
Federal Judge Upholds Ranked Choice Voting in Maine A federal judge rejected a legal challenge from former incumbent Bruce Poliquin (R) arguing that Maine’s ranked choice voting system is unconstitutional and declined to grant Poliquin’s request for a new election. Former incumbent Bruce Poliquin (R) narrowly received enough votes to retain his seat in Maine's 2nd congressional district, but not enough to win a majority, which triggered the state's ranked choice voting law that passed in 2016. Democratic challenger Jared Golden was declared the winner of the race after officials counted the tallies of the second and third choices of voters. Shortly after the first run off election, lawyers for Poliquin and other citizens filed an emergency temporary restraining order to stop the ranked choice voting process. When Golden emerged as the apparent winner, Poliquin requested to have the results of the ranked-choice voting overturned. Peter Brann, who co-teaches the State Attorney General Clinic, is Golden’s attorney. Brann was quoted in the Sun Journal saying: “Golden won fair and square. Poliquin’s sour grapes preliminary injunction [to stop the ranked choice voting process] is too little, too late, and is outweighed by the injury to the thousands of Maine voters who selected Golden over Poliquin and who would be disenfranchised by Poliquin’s attempt to use the courts to overturn the results of the election. Further, the chaos, disruption and violation of fundamental rights that would result from Poliquin’s attempt to rewrite the rules after the election is anathema to the public interest.”
Peter Brann, Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School
Poliquin will appeal the decision.
DEMOCRACY AND RULE OF LAW CLINIC
Georgia Voters’ Lawsuit Forces Brian Kemp to Resign Secretary of State Role On Election Day, a group of five Georgia voters filed a lawsuit seeking to block gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp from having any involvement in the counting of votes, the certification of results, or any runoff or recount procedures. Two days later, Kemp resigned from his office as Secretary of State after declaring victory over Stacey Abrams. The resignation came just before a federal court hearing in the suit, according to Protect Democracy, the nonpartisan nonprofit that brought the suit on behalf of the five voters. Larry Schwartztol, Counsel for Protect Democracy and a Lecturer on Law for the Democracy and Rule of Law Clinic called Kemp’s move “. . . a huge victory for democracy and the rule of law.” He continued, “It is a basic constitutional principle that a person may not be a judge in their own case and that’s what Brian Kemp was attempting to be here."
Larry Schwartztol, Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School
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LEARNING THE LAW | SERVING THE WORLD HARVARD IMMIGRATION AND REFUGEE CLINIC
Trump is Rewriting Asylum Law By: Sabrineth Ardalan, Assistant Director and Clinical Professor of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program Via The Atlantic Two days after yet another mass shooting, President Donald Trump issued a proclamation addressing mass migration. “The continuing and threatening mass migration of aliens with no basis for admission into the United States through our southern border,” he wrote, “has precipitated a crisis and undermines the integrity of our borders. I therefore must take immediate action to protect the national interest.”
has recognized, “[O]ne of Congress’ primary purposes [with the 1980 Refugee Act] was to bring United States refugee law into conformance with the 1967 United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, to which the United States acceded in 1968.”
The mass shooting, like most mass shootings, was committed by an American citizen, a white male. There’s not much detailed information about who is part of the so-called caravan on the way to the southern border. But it seems the migrants hail mostly from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, where femicide rates are the highest in the world and government protection is nonexistent. Chances are, they resemble my clients at the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program. People like Maria, who was kidnapped by her abuser, an auxiliary for the Honduran authorities, at a young age and subjected to years of rape. And like Jennifer, who was forced to flee El Salvador after gang members threatened to kill her and her family because they had encouraged youths to join the Evangelical Church instead of the gangs. (I’ve used pseudonyms to protect my clients’ anonymity.) Our clients sit in our office for hours at a time and share horrific stories of the violence they suffered in their home countries, and of the children, parents, and siblings they were forced to leave behind. Despite everything they have lived through, they bring tremendous warmth and generosity. They also bring their tremendous faith in America, a country that they believe can and should offer them protection. Trump’s proclamation and new interim regulations fly in the face of that belief. The administration plans to restrict asylum only to those who present themselves at ports of entry; people entering the country via the southern border in any other way would be limited to much more circumscribed forms of relief that would not include reuniting with their family members, obtaining a green card, or a path to citizenship. The administration also plans to enter into an agreement with Mexico to force asylum seekers traveling through that country to claim protection there instead of in the United States. At first blush, these rules may not seem extreme. But the “ports of entry” restriction ignores the fact that Customs and Border Protection routinely turns away people even after they have asked to apply for asylum. As one woman told the Inter -American Commission on Human Rights, “I told [the CBP official] that I wasn’t from here, that I was from Honduras, and that I wanted asylum. He told me that there was no longer asylum for Hondurans … I started to explain why I couldn’t return and what I was fleeing from, but he interrupted me and said that everyone comes with the same story, that he couldn’t help me.” The administration’s Mexico agreement, moreover, is not a viable solution. The asylum system in Mexico is still nascent; the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance, for example, employs fewer than 60 adjudication officers, and they are severely overworked. Asylum grant rates are notoriously low, especially for children, and many applicants are summarily returned to their home countries without being properly screened for protection. Even as the Trump administration’s proposals tarnish America’s reputation as a country welcoming to “huddled masses,” they directly contravene the spirit and letter of the Refugee Act of 1980, in which Congress “declare[d] that it is the historic policy of the United States to respond to the urgent needs of persons subject to persecution in their homelands.” The statute specifically provides that people can apply for asylum if they are “physically present” in the U.S., “whether or not [they arrived] at a designated port of arrival … irrespective of [their] status.”
Source: Pixabay
What could justify the administration’s decision to, in effect, unilaterally rewrite asylum law? The president’s lawyers are mainly invoking Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives the executive broad authority to suspend or restrict “the entry of any aliens or any class of aliens” if their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” (They invoked the same section in defense of the travel ban.) But the administration has provided no basis for the assertion that keeping asylum seekers out is in the national interest. At least, no official basis. On social media and on television, President Trump and members of his administration have suggested that the Central American migrants headed to the border are violent criminals and that the “caravan” has been infiltrated by Middle Eastern terrorists. The Trump administration makes asylum seem like an immigration-law loophole. In truth, it’s not at all easy to obtain. Under the expedited removal process, in place since 1996, individuals arriving in the country without proper documentation or with fraudulent documents can be returned immediately to their countries of origin, without court hearings, unless they can establish a “credible” fear of persecution or torture. In general, asylum applicants must prove that they have suffered or have reason to fear serious harm on account of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group, and that their home country cannot or will not offer them protection. In 2016, the grant rate for asylum cases in immigration court was about 43 percent. Moreover, the asylum system already has built-in safeguards to—how shall I put this?—protect the national interest. People who have provided material support to terrorism, who have been convicted of serious crimes in the U.S., or who have committed serious nonpolitical crimes outside the U.S., as well as people who have persecuted others or have residency in a third country, are all barred from asylum. Recent decisions by the Board of Immigration Appeals have defined these categories broadly; for example, one applicant who was forced to cook and clean for a guerrilla group against her will in 1990 was barred from asylum this summer. Indeed, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom found in a recent report that the current system is already too rigid, too impersonal, and too quick to deny claims. If the administration wants to make the system stronger, it should focus on hiring more asylum officers and immigration judges to tackle the backlog.
And while the administration contends that people arriving from Central America “appear to have no lawful basis for admission into our country,” asylum law does not require any such thing. (Here the administration seems to be conflating asylum- The administration’s bluster about chaos and confusion at the border and the threats posed by asylum seekers is just that—bluster. An overly deferential judiciary seeking and unlawful entry.) might buy its arguments, but a fair one could not. The president is also flouting global norms. As the U.S. Supreme Court itself
CLINICAL AND PRO BONO PROGRAMS
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INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS CLINIC
Back to Myanmar With Fresh Insights By: Liz Mineo Via The Harvard Gazette When Myanmar’s military junta tightened its grip in the late ’80s to quash a nationwide democracy movement, Yee Htun fled the brutal crackdown on dissent along with her mother, a doctor turned human rights activist, and three siblings. After five years in a refugee camp in Thailand, they immigrated to Canada as government-sponsored refugees, unsure of when they might return home. It turned out to be decades. After the junta transferred power to a civilian government and opened Myanmar to the world, Htun went back. She had grown up in Vancouver and was an up-and-coming attorney, and was hoping to reconnect with her roots. She did more than that. Htun ended up staying in Myanmar for four years, working as a human rights advocate for local farmers, journalists, and activists, and training local lawyers on strategic litigation and international law. “It was the perfect opportunity,” said Htun, who worked as director of the Myanmar Program for Justice Trust until she came to Harvard Law School (HLS) in 2016. “I wanted to go back to Myanmar and use my legal education to do my part to help the country move forward.”
She expects to continue working to improve human rights in Myanmar, as the country struggles with the legacy of a long military dictatorship, a problematic legal system, and lack of accountability for crimes committed by the armed forces. Ha Ryong Jung, J.D. ’18, traveled to Myanmar with the clinic led by Htun. He said the experience was an eye-opener because it helped him learn how to analyze and spot gaps in laws. “One thing that really stuck out to me while doing the work was how the law can be abused to target specific populations,” said Jung. “It is unclear if the laws were drafted in that manner to specifically enable this form of violence, but nonetheless it forced me to think outside of the box when reading any law thereafter to spot those loopholes.” Given the magnitude of the Rohingya refugee crisis, Htun hopes that her students’ future work will include protecting the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, promoting tolerance, and peace-building.
Harvard Law students have also had the chance to do their part in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, an Women’s rights have also unlikely destination to pracbeen on the agenda betice law. Htun took her cause they’re close to students from Htun’s heart. In 2011, the International Human Htun worked as a coordiRights Clinic of the Human nator with the Nobel Rights Program at HLS to Women’s Initiative to Myanmar four times. The launch the first internastudents met with commutional campaign to end nity activists and lawmakers sexual violence in armed to work on women’s rights, conflicts. Part of her stuLGBTQI rights, advancdents’ work has focused ing legal reform on working with local Credit: Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer around land rights for partners to draft a law vulnerable communities, and changing criminal defamation provisions that to prevent violence against women, and also on building community supallow the government to target activists and journalists. port for what would be a historic milestone for the country. On another trip, students went to refugee camps in neighboring Thailand, where hundreds of thousands of refugees from the conflict in Myanmar have been living for more than 30 years, waiting for peace and a chance to return home. For Htun, teaching Myanmar human rights advocacy to Law School students is a full-circle experience. “Growing up in a refugee camp in Thailand, I was exposed to humanitarian work and service,” said Htun, now a clinical instructor and lecturer on law. “There is no doubt in my mind that my formative childhood shaped me and made me believe in the need to serve and use our freedom and privileges to make a contribution.” This fall, Htun is teaching a human rights advocacy course covering factfinding, media and political advocacy, and how students can become effective, ethical human rights advocates and practitioners.
“Even though women and girls have been adversely affected by the conflict in Myanmar, women’s rights are rarely deemed a priority,” said Htun. “The law will be the first of its kind and is a crucial step for advancing women’s rights in Myanmar and ensuring that survivors have protection and redress under the law.” By having students work on the ground with activists, government officials, and legislators, Htun hopes to make the work of a human rights advocate come to life for students. The work is challenging but also rewarding, she said. “We want to show that the law cannot only be a tool for oppression,” said Htun. “What drew me to law was the fact that it is a crucial tool for change and can play a key role in safeguarding democracy and enshrining rights. That’s the lesson I have learned in my personal journey and one that I hope to share with my students and the communities we serve.”
LEARNING THE LAW | SERVING THE WORLD
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COMMUNITY ENTERPRISE PROJECT OF THE TRANSACTIONAL LAW CLINICS
CEP Participates in Boston Ujima Project’s Citywide Assembly By: Samy Rais, MA in Economic Law from Sciences Po ’20 Over Indigenous Peoples’ Day weekend, more than a hundred community members, business owners and activists assembled to celebrate and participate in the Boston Ujima Project’s second official citywide assembly. The Ujima Project was founded in 2017 with the mission to create a new community-controlled economy in Greater Boston, initially focusing on: 1.
2.
3. 4.
5.
Good Business Certification and Alliance: establishing community standards (and supporting businesses) that consider business practices like living wages, Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI)friendly hiring, local purchasing, environmental impact and affordability. Community Capital Fund: pooling savings and investments to engage in participatory budgeting to meet the enterprise, housing and consumer needs of the community. The fund will be democratically governed by historically divested communities, giving every member an equal vote on the fund’s investment priorities, loans and equity transactions. Worker Services Network: growing employee satisfaction and security by organizing human resource programs. Alternative Local Currencies: establishing alternative local currencies (like time banking) that would allow members to trade their skills and labor and incentivize circulation of resources within the community. Anchor Institution Advocacy: building community power and advancing campaigns for the City, State and large nonprofits to direct investment, subsidy and procurement dollars to Ujima’s network of certified good businesses and developers.
Because of its community-driven approach, as its legal counsel, we need to ensure that the Ujima Project’s legal documents are able to adapt to its members’ ideas, struggles and demands, no matter how unconventional. In that sense, the Ujima Project is both a unique project and a large-scale illustration of recurrent challenges in our work at CEP. This semester, student advocates in CEP have been advising several groups looking to form worker cooperatives in Greater Boston, which, like the Ujima Project, require democratic voting. By giving workers collective ownership in their business, worker cooperatives enable collaborative entrepreneurship and help tackle many of the issues poverty lawyers interact with on a day-to-day basis – wage-and-hour violations, health and environmental issues, immigration, criminal justice, and many others. As with the case in the Ujima Project, we need to ensure that the voices of all the members in the cooperative (undocumented/documented, lowwage workers/management, reentering citizens, etc.) are heard and reflected. At the same time, it is challenging to balance the need for urgency in the day-to-day operations and democratic management.
Since early 2016, the Community Enterprise Project (CEP) of Harvard’s Transactional Law Clinics has been supporting the Ujima Project’s inception and community-driven mission. CEP students have provided the Ujima Project with legal analysis on various transactional matters, namely corporate and nonprofit law, corporate governance structures, 1940 Investment Company Act and securities laws implications, consumer protection laws, and secured transactions. These areas of law are customarily associated with the law firm-world, but are a critical need in the public interest space. Currently, CEP students are building on work completed last semester by helping to finalize the initial documents for the Ujima Project’s Community Capital Fund to begin making investments in community-supported businesses. As part of CEP’s support of the Ujima Project, I attended the citywide assembly with CEP director and clinical instructor, Carlos Teuscher. CEP’s attendance at the citywide assembly had two purposes: first, in following the community and movement lawyering approach, CEP believes in supporting organizations that are working to dismantle and radically restructure current systems of law and power, and it is essential to be present in order to be in solidarity with such movements; and second, it was critical to hear the voices of the community that the Ujima Project was supporting and are the most impacted, in order to effectively prepare the Ujima Project’s Community Capital Fund loan documents. As mentioned above, the Ujima Project is creating the first-of-its-kind investment fund that is controlled by the community. While my involvement in transactional cases generally consists of undertaking legal research, drafting contracts, or forming a legal entity, it was obvious from the start that working with the Ujima Project was going to be different.
Boston Ujima Project citywide assembly, October 6-7th, 2018
I am excited to have been able to interact with communities experimenting with and implementing alternative economic models. As an aspiring lawyer, I have appreciated the need to better understand the community you work for and their needs. Further, as a foreign student at Harvard Law School for the semester, I discovered communities in the United States, who, although being disadvantaged, gather and spare no effort or ingenuity to fight and overcome the systemic struggles they face.
CLINICAL AND PRO BONO PROGRAMS
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CHILD ADVOCACY PROGRAM
Local Education on Campus: Education Law Week 2018 By: Advocates for Education Student Board Boston and Cambridge are home to some of the top colleges and unicussed how local advocates are working to gain additional information versities in the country. For about BPS policies and those of us lucky enough to procedures for School Poattend Harvard Law School lice Officers’ use of BRIC. (HLS), we see every day the power of a top-notch educaDay Three: National Womtion. But within miles of our en’s Law Center’s Manager campus, students in the Bosof Campaign and Strateton Public School (BPS) sysgies Nia Evans on the Imtem face immense challengpact of School Dress Codes es that too often preclude on Girls of Color them from having the option of attending a school like This spring, the National HLS. For the 2018 Education Women’s Law Center reLaw Week, we aimed to leased “DRESS CODED: deepen our law school’s Black Girls, Bodies, and Bias understanding of a few of in D.C. Schools,” a groundthe most pressing issues breaking report on the Boston City Council President Andrea Campbell, speaking to the HLS community during Education impact that student within the Boston Public Law Week Schools. Through this, our dress codes have on hope was to strengthen Black girls and their law students’ connection to, and investment in, the greater community educational experiences. This report, co-authored with 21 Black girls that we are lucky enough to be a part of for at least three years. who attend D.C. schools, sheds light on the ways in which dress codes contribute to the disparities in discipline rates between white students Day One: Civil Rights Attorney Matt Cregor on Racial Disparities in and students of color, and sparked a critical national dialogue about the BPS’s Exam Schools reforms that are needed in school and district policies. Nia Evans, who led the project for NWLC, presented the findings of the research, and In recent years, Boston’s exam schools (Boston Latin Academy, Boston discussed the process and effects that the report’s creation had on the Latin School, and O’Bryant School of Math and Science) have drawn students themselves. The conversation raised a number of questions increased scrutiny for the racial disparities in their admissions numbers. about the use of dress codes in Boston Public Schools, and laid the Most alarmingly, while Black and Latino students make up 75% of BPS groundwork for future research and advocacy efforts. students, only 20% of students at Boston Latin School identify as Black or Latino. In response to these alarming numbers, the Lawyers’ ComDay Four: Boston City Council President Andrea Campbell on the Role mittee for Civil Rights Under Law produced a report titled “A Broken of Cities in Education Mirror,” which lays out the immense disparities in BPS exam school admissions, and calls for BPS to “immediately intensify its review of exam To conclude Education Law Week, Boston City Council President Andrea school admissions.” Matt Cregor, who led the production of the report Campbell joined students for a conversation on the City’s role in the and is currently an attorney with the Mental Health Legal Advisors Com- education of its students. She began by sharing her personal motivation mittee, led a conversation about the findings of the report and the solu- for doing this work, providing us an urgent reminder that laws and politions that have been proposed through community dialogues. cies are more than abstract concepts or interesting topics of conversation: they have real consequences for real people. A graduate of Boston Day Two: Immigration Attorney Elizabeth Badger on the BPS to ICE Latin School, Councilor Campbell helped bring Education Law Week full Pipeline circle by engaging in dialogue about inequities in educational opportunity. While the City Council is able to exert direct influence over education Students who are immigrants face unique challenges, which BPS may in some ways, Councilor Campbell also discussed the comprehensive exacerbate through its school incident reporting practices. Boston progress that is needed in order for the City to truly serve all students School Police officers sometimes report school incidents to the Boston within BPS. From housing to safety to access to health services, so much Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), a network of local, state, and feder- of what students bring into the classroom is dictated by the community al law enforcement agencies that includes U.S. Immigration and Custhat surrounds them. Councilor Campbell discussed the efforts Boston is toms Enforcement (ICE). While BRIC is designed to be a tool to identify currently undertaking to strengthen both support and outcomes for “major players” in crime and pinpoint areas of crime, Boston School students across the City. Police have input seemingly minor school offenses into the database. As illustration, Badger explained that a lunchroom disagreement among Thank you to all who attended the events and supported Education Law two students, resolved without resort to fighting, could make its way Week; a special thank you to all of our speakers! The events for Educainto BRIC. In one case, advocates say that an unsupported gang allegation Law Week were co-sponsored by the Advocates for Education, tion against a BPS student was input into BRIC and was later used to Child and Youth Advocates, and Urbanists, and funded by the Dean of support ICE deportation proceedings against the student. Badger disStudents’ Grant Fund.
LEARNING THE LAW | SERVING THE WORLD
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VETERANS LEGAL CLINIC
“The Newest Federal Court Experiment” Via The Legal Services Center On Thursday, November 8th, Chief Judge Robert N. Davis of the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims gave the 2018 Disabled American Veterans (DAV) Distinguished Lecture at Harvard Law School to an audience of students, faculty, staff, and members of the veterans community. The Chief Judge’s Lecture was entitled “The United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims: The newest Federal Court experiment, past, present and future.” Opening remarks were provided by the National Adjutant of DAV, Marc Burgess. Chief Judge Davis—a Navy veteran who joined the Court in 2004—spoke about the history of veterans law, the origins of the Veterans Court, and present challenges facing the Veterans Court in its role reviewing benefit decisions of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Looking ahead to the future of veterans’ law, Chief Judge Davis stressed the importance of pushing for overhaul of the veterans claims system. He stated that while many veterans are able to navigate the veterans claims system in a reasonable way, “any time it takes a veteran years to get a final decision on a claim, the system is broken.” He ended his lecture by urging the veterans community to continue working towards positive change in the veterans claims system, pointing to the progressive evolution of veterans law over time. “Veterans law is maturing. The Court has carried out their vision of a place where veterans can go to get fair, efficient justice.” Finally, Chief Judge Davis left the audience with a call to action, declaring, “We have a voice. We need to start using it.”
After his lecture, Chief Chief Judge Davis Judge Davis answered a chronicled the evolurange of questions from tion of veterans law the audience, including from World War I to the the role of pro bo(l-r) Chief Judge Davis and DAV National Adjutant Marc Burgess pose with staff of the Veterans Legal present day, including no attorneys at the Court, Clinic discussion of the Veterthe impact of presumpans Judicial Review Act tive diagnoses for disabiliof 1988 that introduced court review for veterans claims and es- ties, and the appellate reforms to be implemented under the Aptablished the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. Chief peals Modernization Act. Judge Davis highlighted the need for continued innovation, noting how much “[o]ur veterans legal landscape has evolved from its The event was hosted by the Veterans Legal Clinic of the Legal early days,” and challenging audience members to use their own Services Center of Harvard Law School, in partnership with the voices—as veterans, students, advocates, pro bono attorneys—to HLS Armed Forces Association. The lecture was the 5th annual prompt the significant change required to provide the services event in the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) Distinguished that veterans will need in the future. Speaker Series, sponsored the DAV Charitable Service Trust. The Speaker Series provides a forum for national leaders to address Chief Judge Davis also discussed the Court’s structure, accomthe critical issues facing our nation’s disabled veterans and to enplishments, and challenges. The Veterans Court is unique in terms gage in conversation with the local community. Prior speakers of its exclusive jurisdiction over appeals from the Board of Veter- include then-Secretary of the U.S. Navy Ray Mabus, the founder ans Appeals, as well as the way which the vast majority of appeals of the first veterans treatment court Judge Robert Russell, and are decided by single-judge non-precedential decisions. The Vet- former VA Secretaries David Shulkin and Robert McDonald. erans Court has a tremendous caseload, handling over 7,000 cases in 2018. Among its challenges, the Chief Judge stated that the Veterans Court is “grappling with how to efficiently decide more panels, decide class actions, and deal with an increasing case load.”
CLINICAL AND PRO BONO PROGRAMS
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SPO SPOTLIGHT: HARVARD MEDIATION PROGRAM
The Art of Listening: A Mediator’s Listening Experience By: Laura Bloomer, MPP/ J.D. ’19 Two years ago, I would not have listed “great listening skills” as one of my top attributes. Yet at its core, being a good mediator requires you to be an active, engaged listener. We listen to what the parties are telling us and use that information to move the conversation forward. We help the two people sitting across from us create their own resolution to whatever issue brought them into court that day. The model we use at Harvard Mediation Program (HMP) discourages offering solutions and taking sides. Instead, we empower parties to develop and agree upon solutions themselves.
As mediators, we have to be comfortable with whatever level of emotions parties bring to the table. We strive to acknowledge their feelings and allow the parties to be heard. One of the greatest privileges of HMP is the chance to serve as a trusted neutral through which parties will share their experiences and put genuine effort into trying to reach a resolution that feels fair to both sides.
For many people, this day in their local court will be the only time they directly interact with the legal system. Mediation can redefine this day for them. It brings parties away from the hierarchy of We’re not always successful, in which case the parties can return the court room, where the judge sits behind a bench higher than to the court and have their case heard by the clerk magistrate. the parties, Latin and antiquated words are intermixed with EngBut when we are successful, parties sign an agreement of their lish, and only the lawyers may freely step in front of the bar. Meown making and can walk out of court a few minutes later after diation brings folks to a table to sit together and engage in a progetting approval from the clerk. As opposed to a blunt solution ductive discussion. Being a small part of making the legal system imposed by the court, the mediated agreement can be flexible more accessible by all members of society has been one of the and tailored to the parties themselves. We add efficiency to the most rewarding aspects of my time at HLS. I hope to continue this court system, sure, but we also strive to add a space for people to type of work in the future and to keep practicing my listening talk and to better understand each other. We believe that when skills, whether through mediation directly or other activities. parties create their own solution to a problem, they are more likely to feel that the result is equitable and will be more likely to abide by the requirements in the future. I joined HMP for two reasons. On a personal level, I wanted to improve my listening and facilitation skills. On a professional level, I believe in alternative dispute resolution and wanted to get hands-on experience in the field. Over the past couple years, I keep returning to HMP for those same reasons, as well as a third: some of the most caring, thoughtful, and fun students at the law school are also members of HMP. After all, many of the best listeners find their way to mediation, meaning HMP has an incredible support system. It’s also a place of engaging conversation, where discussions range from how to build stronger relationships to improvements to the legal system that would lead to a more inclusive, fairer process. Since I began training with HMP, I’m confident that not only have my listening skills improved, but also, I now have a greater understanding of the legal system and its effect on people’s lives. I’ve mediated a variety of different disputes: landlord-tenant, small claims, and harassment prevention orders. Some cases are as simple as the parties seeking a payment plan to ensure the money owed gets paid in a reasonable time period. Some are incredibly difficult and involve decades of fraught relationships coming to a head. Many are in between the two extremes.
HMP students Quent Fox, Laura Bloomer, Pratik Mehta, and Margaret Huang with Clinical Instructor Cathy Modell at Harvard Law School’s Bicentennial Celebration event showcasing clinical programs and student practice organizations. Credit: Martha Stewart
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LEARNING THE LAW | SERVING THE WORLD
A New Harvard Law Building Opens on Mass Ave By: Clea Simon Via Harvard Law Today the new Health Law and Policy Clinic space, which features open areas, where students can work collaboratively, as well as more private offices and conference rooms. “A lot of the work happens via Skype and other electronic communication,” he said. “So all of our offices are designed for that.” “The new building will provide invaluable space for the clinical programs and modern facilities to engage in the lawyering advocacy and teaching that are at the heart of the clinical programs,” said Clinical Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Experiential and Clinical Education Daniel L. Nagin. “This space will promote collaboration and enhance the ability of staff and students and faculty to interact and think across boundaries,” he added. Credit: NBBJ Boston
Citing its future role in “innovation, deep learning, collegiality, and service,” Dean John F. Manning saluted the opening of the Harvard Law School’s newest building, at 1607 Massachusetts Avenue, on Monday evening. At a joyful reception in the open first floor, guests, faculty and community members nibbled pizza and sweets while taking in enlarged photos of the location’s previous incarnations, watching a time-lapse film of the structure’s 12 months of construction and queuing up for tours of the interior. Raising a glass of champagne, Manning thanked the many individuals from Harvard Law School and the City of Cambridge who had made the building possible, and he hailed the LEED Gold certified building as “designed to inspire and provoke collaboration.” Indeed, the sleek wood and brick structure, which sits across Everett Street from HLS’s Wasserstein Hall, Caspersen Students Center, and Clinical Wing building, was created to foster and expand the law school’s experiential and clinical learning and to support research programs. Along with space for faculty offices and other future uses, 1607 Massachusetts Avenue, the first Harvard Law School project designed by Alex Krieger, a principal of NBBJ and professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, will provide elbow room for Harvard Law’s clinical education and research. It will serve as the new home for the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, which includes the Health Law and Policy Clinic and also the Food Law and Policy Clinic. The building will also house the Criminal Justice Institute and the Harvard Defenders, a clinical program and student practice organization, respectively, in which students represent clients in criminal hearings; the Islamic Legal Studies Program: Law and Social Change; the Animal Law & Policy Program; and the Access to Justice Lab. “This new building reflects a commitment from both former Dean Martha Minow and our current dean to having a law school curriculum that reflects the needs of our law students and the community writ large,” said Clinical Professor Robert Greenwald, director of the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation. Clinical or experiential learning, Greenwald said, “needs a very different kind of space” than traditional lecture halls or classrooms. As an example, he described
Credit: Lorin Ganger
Chris Green, executive director of the Animal Law & Policy Program, is counting on it. “One of the main issues we focus on is factory farming, and there’s so much intersection there among issues of welfare, environmental harm, and food health and safety,” he said. “We’ve already collaborated with the Food Law and Policy clinic on several projects and now we’ll be one floor. We’re looking forward to this facilitating future collaborations.” As well as encouraging interaction among its residents, explained Kreiger, the building is designed to be welcoming to the community. “There was a desire to make it part of the neighborhood,” said the architect. “As you walk by, it’s part of the fabric of Massachusetts Avenue.” That is one reason, he noted, that the first floor of the new structure is open, glass-fronted retail space, presenting a welcoming face to the street. Like the site’s earlier incarnation, this space, which will be open to the general public, will continue a tradition of housing a particular food venue. At the opening ceremony in November, Dean Manning fondly recalled the conversations and camaraderie he and his law school classmates enjoyed on the premises of the previous long-term tenant, Three Aces Pizza, which he said served “the best terrible food in the world.” He then announced that this old favorite will be succeeded—and perhaps even improved upon—by a branch of Kenmore Square’s Area Four, whose pizzas were served at the opening celebration.
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