LEX Magazine, Issue 1

LEX RENEGOTIATING ARRANGEMENTS

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CONTENTS DEAN’S WELCOME Why we are publishing LEX

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CULTURE CLASH: WHEN AN ACTIVIST BECOMES DISTRICT ATTORNEY

by Caren Chesler

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HORACE TRUMBAUER MAKES A COMEBACK

by Sarah Greenblatt and Dennis Carlisle

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BECOMING THE STORY

by Dahlia Lithwick

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REFRAMING A HISTORIC NARRATIVE

by Alfred L. Brophy

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AS INDUSTRY TRANSFORMS HEALTH CARE, BRING ON THE REGULATORS

by Robert I. Field

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TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE AND PEACE: HOW, EXACTLY, THE TWAIN SHALL MEET

by Sarah Greenblatt

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BOOK REVIEW: “REBOOTING JUSTICE: MORE TECHNOLOGY, FEWER LAWYERS, AND THE FUTURE OF LAW”

by Blair Thompson, ’11

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U CITY DIGEST

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SYMPOSIUM SPOTLIGHTS RACE AND POLICING

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CLINIC SCORES VICTORY IN THIRD CIRCUIT CASE

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CLASS COMBINES LAW STUDENTS AND INCARCERATED WOMEN VIA INSIDE-OUT PROGRAM

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COLLOQUIUM SERIES: BENDING THE ARC OF LEGAL THOUGHT

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ALUMNI INNOVATORS

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MASTHEAD

LEX

Photos and Illustrations

The Drexel University

Editorial offices are

Fall 2018

Michael McQuade (front cover),

Kline School of Law

located at

Volume I

Zave Smith (p. 3),

publishes LEX once per

3320 Market Street,

Denis Kuchta and

year. It is printed with

Philadelphia, PA 19104

Dean

Denise Sommer (p. 4),

soy-based ink on FSC

(215) 571-4804

Daniel M. Filler

Jeff Fusco (p. 6),

certified paper that

sgreenblatt@drexel.edu

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Editor

Bastiaan Slabbers (p. 11),

with 100 percent

Sarah Greenblatt

The Athenaeum of Philadelphia

renewable energy.

Collections (pp. 14, 16), Creative Director

Free Library of Philadelphia/

Brian Crooks

Bridgeman Images (p. 14 bottom) Lebrecht Music & Arts/

Design

Alamy Stock (p. 17 photo #1),

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Free Library of Philadelphia/ Bridgeman Images (p. 15),

Contributing Writers

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Al Brophy

com (p. 17 photo #2),

Dennis Carlisle

The Athenaeum of Philadelphia

Caren Chesler

Collections (p. 17 photo #3),

Robert Field

Free Library of Philadelphia/

Dan Filler

Bridgeman Images

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(p. 17, top and #4),

Dahlia Lithwick

Boston Public Library Tichnor

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Brothers Collection (p. 17 #5), Halkin Mason Photography

Proofreader

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I am delighted to present the inaugural edition of Lex.

LEX RENEGOTIATING ARRANGEMENTS

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We’re a young school, with few traditions to uphold. As I hope you’ll see, we’re trying to do something a little different with the magazine of the Drexel University Kline School of Law. Rather than creating a new scholarly journal or a straight-ahead alumni magazine, we’ve created a publication that aims to engage overlapping communities that are passionate about the law.

Launching a new publication at a moment like this is an exercise in stubborn optimism. All around us, we see tectonic changes occurring at an unprecedented pace. In the political sphere, these shifts are testing the infrastructure of our democracy, the possibility of equal justice and the rule of law itself. On the technological front, we confront unimaginable opportunities tangled with unparalleled challenges. And many of us are simply trying to make sense of this thing that is 21st century American culture.

In this instability and change lies immense possibility.

The truth is, the forces under way create an opportunity to reconsider and renegotiate arrangements that underlie our society, our history and our legal system.

With this issue of Lex, we focus on this process. The election of an activist civil rights lawyer as the Philadelphia District Attorney is part of a national wave that promises to transform law enforcement in cities across the country. Dahlia Lithwick mulls the forces that prevented her from keeping a journalistic distance from the white nationalist march in Charlottesville and the scandal that forced the early retirement of Judge Kozinski. Legal historian Al Brophy offers his perspective on the rethinking of history that is fueling the removal of Confederate monuments.

And particularly interesting for me, we explore the restoration of Horace Trumbauer’s landmark Beneficial Bank building as it is repurposed for a new century—now as a training center for aspiring advocates.

This is a moment of tremendous change. Every day, it seems we are revisiting our core assumptions and renegotiating arrangements of every sort. As a law school, we want to stir up the pot and deliver some fresh ideas. And always, we hope to connect people who care about law to each other—and to our own law school community.

I’d love to hear what you think.

— Dean Daniel M. Filler

LEX RENEGOTIATING ARRANGEMENTS

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CULTURE CLASH WHEN AN ACTIVIST BECOMES DISTRICT ATTORNEY

by Caren Chesler

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The Lenape representative responded, “We will live in

CULTURE CLASH: WHEN AN ACTIVIST BECOMES DISTRICT ATTORNEY

love with William Penn and his children as long as the creeks and rivers run, and while the sun, moon and stars endure.”

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office is located across the street from the iconic City Hall, which is capped with a statue of William Penn, the city’s founder. Penn signed a treaty with the Lenape Indians in 1682 promising perpetual friendship.

Unarmed and wearing somber Quaker clothing, Penn told the Indians, “We meet on the broad pathway of good faith and good-will; no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness and love. We are the same as if one man’s body was to be divided into two parts; we are of one flesh and one blood.”

It seems a fitting location for the city’s new District Attorney, Larry Krasner, who rode into office on calls for criminal justice reform and who like Penn, is likely to view those who become entangled in the system more like equals than adversaries. He’s vowed to end mass incarceration, focus on serious crime, stand up to police misconduct, free the wrongfully convicted, reform the bail system, protect immigrants, treat addiction as a medical problem, not a crime, and stop pursuing death sentences—a stark departure from his predecessor, Lynne Abraham, who pursued the death penalty so often, she was slapped with the monikers, “Deadliest DA” and “Queen of Death.”

Krasner was even an outsider among his reformer opponents. He had no experience as a prosecutor and in fact became a public defender after graduating Stanford University Law School in 1987. In 1993, Krasner started his own law practice in Center City specializing in criminal defense and civil rights, filing more than 75 lawsuits against the Philadelphia Police Department over the years, for corruption and abuse, and at times representing members of the Black Lives Matter and Occupy movements at no charge.

But after 30 years as an attorney, he decided it might be easier to change the system from the inside than the outside.

“I saw no momentum among the other candidates to change things that I knew needed to change,” he said. So, he stepped up to the plate.

That narrative, as the guy who will step out from the pack and take the reins to get the job done, is what helped Krasner win the 2017 election. Mike Lee, Krasner’s campaign chair and an ’09 alumnus of Drexel’s Kline School of Law, likened Krasner to the first penguin that jumps off the cliff in search of food. Lee knows this narrative of Krasner well. He helped write it.

“If you’ve ever seen Animal Planet, where they have all the penguins about to go in to the sea to get the food, they tap dance at the edge and no one wants to jump in first. But once the first penguin jumps in, there’s a tidal wave of penguins jumping in to get the food,” Lee said. “It only takes one to get to that tipping point where everyone feels it’s safe enough to take the plunge. I analogized that to Larry’s campaign.”

Lee said in debate after debate or in watching other DA races, Krasner would be the first to say he would not pursue the death penalty or to say the criminal justice system can be both fair and still safe, to say someone can be a victim and a defendant, or to say the system has racist qualities that should be acknowledged. And only after

Mike Lee, ’09, director of legislation at the

Krasner said it would others follow, Lee said.

Lee met Krasner in 2010, just a year out of law school,

Philadelphia District

as the two worked on some First Amendment cases

Attorney’s Office,

together. When Krasner decided to run, he brought Lee

chaired Larry Krasner’s

on board. Lee was a young, smart, civil rights lawyer

campaign.

who knew a lot of people in the communities Krasner

wanted to reach, through a legal aid organization he

LEX RENEGOTIATING ARRANGEMENTS

co-founded called Philadelphia Lawyers of Social Equity, which helps low-income individuals who have had contact with the Pennsylvania criminal justice system expunge their criminal records. In seven years, Lee filed petitions on behalf of 10,000 people, 90 percent of which were successful, he said.

“I have some very strong connections throughout Philadelphia based on the work I did prior to joining the DA’s office,” said Lee, who Krasner hired as his interim director of legislation and government affairs after the election. “He knew me as someone who was knowledgeable about the law, had contacts throughout the city and as someone he could trust.”

It didn’t hurt that Lee was black and in a leadership role in Krasner’s campaign, which gave Krasner some of the street cred he lacked as just another white guy in a suit making promises.

“Just having that dichotomy of a young African

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American man with a progressive, white, older man

not to tough-on-crime candidates but to those calling for

helped balance the perception of who Larry actually is,

a more progressive and what some might called kinder,

and what he’s trying to do as district attorney,” Lee said.

gentler approach. There was Kim Foxx in Chicago, the

That dichotomy played to something that was

new state’s attorney in Cook County, Illinois, who has

happening locally as well as nationally, which was a

said she will not oppose the release of detainees from

marriage of African American voters and millennials,

jails who can’t afford cash bonds of as much as $1,000.

some of whom were also African American. Black vot-

There was Eric Gonzalez in Brooklyn, who has

ers were tired of seeing the same kind of people getting

started up a wrongful convictions unit and has

elected while watching so many black men being incar-

launched a reform initiative called Justice 2020, which

cerated—and the effect that had on black communities.

aims to “ensure fairness and equal justice for all.” He’s

And millenials are tired of having overwhelming financial

formed an advisory committee of criminal justice

burdens from student loans, viewing the purchase of a

reform experts, defense groups, service providers, law

home as very difficult, and thinking they have to pay for

enforcement, formerly incarcerated individuals, clergy

private schools because they can’t find good public ones,

and community leaders.

Krasner said.

“I mean, they’re also tired of some dumb stuff. Black

“DA Gonzalez is looking for ways to reduce reliance on incarceration while maintaining public safety, find-

people are tired of being the only ones who get busted

ing innovative ways to divert eligible defendants (we are

for possessing weed. Millennials are okay with weed.

about to launch a pre-arraignment program for defen-

Millennials and many black people think gay marriage is

dants who are dependent on drugs, who will be offered

okay. And then there are the other folks, the ones with

treatment and other services before appearing in court)

the Trump lawn signs who think that marijuana makes

and enhancing equity in the justice system,” said Oren

you gay, makes you get married, who think public

Yaniv, Gonzalez’s senior communications officer.

schools and public roads are a bad idea,” Krasner said.

He’s also been active in protecting immigrants and has

“Maybe Trump was the galvanizing force that got African

put in place a policy to minimize collateral consequences

American voters and millennials on the same page about

of convictions against non-citizen defendants, Yaniv said.

the issues in which they have a lot in common.”

There was Aramis Ayala, a former public defender and now the new district attorney in Florida’s Orange

A Wave of Reform

and Osceola counties, who won against incumbent Jeff Ashton and received national attention in 2017 for her refusal to seek the death penalty in any case. She’s unusual not just for being a female district attorney but

Krasner isn’t alone. His win is part of a growing trend

for being a black female DA. After voicing her oppo-

of progressive prosecutors and state’s attorneys win-

sition to capital punishment, Florida Gov. Rick Scott

ning election to offices throughout the country, many

reassigned about 30 cases to another prosecutor.

of whom have promised to abolish the death penalty,

“He was disrespecting the voters’ choice. They

reform the bail system, and get tough on police corrup-

clearly chose someone who ran on that platform,” said

tion. They welcome prison diversion programs like drug

Annie Weinberg, Electoral Director at Democracy for

court and job training, and they don’t want to lock peo-

America, a political action committee founded by for-

ple up for petty crime.

mer presidential candidate and Democratic National

Criminal justice observers say it’s unusual to see so many races where DA’s have been challenged and lost,

7

Committee Chair Howard Dean, to empower progressive grassroots movements.

African Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at more than five times the rate of whites, according to a 2016 Sentencing Project report

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CULTURE CLASH: WHEN AN ACTIVIST BECOMES DISTRICT ATTORNEY

Progressive DA’s Take the Reins Nationwide, voters have begun electing district attorneys who are focused on addressing inequities in the criminal justice system.

FO R NI

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James Stewart, the district attorney in Caddo Parish,

RA

LO UISIANA

T E XAS

Louisiana, took over an office that was known nationally

T ES S E WA

“Winning a conviction in a race like that is really unheard of, and she was able to do it,” Weinberg said.

for its aggressive pursuit of the death penalty. Between

There’s George Gascón in San Francisco, Kim Ogg

2010 and 2014, it sentenced more people to death than

in Houston and Mark Gonzalez, elected prosecutor in

anywhere else in the U.S. Since taking office, Stewart

Nueces County, Texas in November 2016. Gonzalez has

has reviewed every pending capital case and decided

a large tattoo across his chest that reads, “Not Guilty,”

to seek the death penalty in only one. Beth McCann,

a reminder, he has told reporters, of the importance of

the district attorney in Denver, has taken a similarly

the presumption of innocence. Like Krasner, his last

restrained stance with regard to capital punishment.

job before becoming a prosecutor was as a criminal

Stephanie Morales won re-election in Virginia last year after being one of the only prosecutors in the coun-

defense attorney.

The wave of reformer prosecutors is part of a grow-

try to successfully get a conviction in a case where a

ing public sentiment that there’s something rotten in our

police officer shot an unarmed black person.

criminal justice system, fueled in part by the national

MIS AYAL

FLORIDA

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V IRG NI A I

coverage of controversial police shootings. Groups intent

LEX RENEGOTIATING ARRANGEMENTS

on reforming the criminal justice system have spent years advocating for policies and legislation aimed at reducing incarceration rates.

9

Weinberg’s Democracy for America, for instance, is dedicated to electing progressives up and down the ballot in all 50 states who will fight for racial and economic jus-

unopposed–85%, to be exact, according to a Wake Forest

tice. There are about 1,000 candidates running in 2018 on

University study.

racial and economic justice and taking on establishment

“I think we’re seeing the beginning of a wave that has

candidates–and winning, she says, and they’re doing it

yet to crest,” Krinsky said. “There is a growing sentiment

with big, grassroots campaigns.

in communities that past tough-on-crime approaches haven’t worked and that there needs to be new thinking

“In general, voters, when given the choice, are ready to support leaders who are going to fight for these pro-

around how we address issues like individuals struggling

gressive values and stand up against structural racism in

with mental illness, drug addiction and poverty, in ways

the criminal justice system,” Weinberg said.

that don’t incarcerate and criminalize their behavior.”

The trend comes at a time when prisons are crowded and questions are being raised about the consequences

A Powerful Perch

and racial inequities of incarceration. But they’re also coming at a time when law-and-order conservatives reign at the federal level, with Attorney General Jeff

Prosecutors are in the catbird seat to make such changes

Sessions and President Trump calling for stiffer drug sentences. Sessions has already restored mandatory

because they control the two most important decisions

minimum sentences for drug offenses–undoing some

in the criminal justice process: levying charges and

of the efforts taken by former Attorney General Eric

negotiating plea bargains, which is how some 95 per-

Holder to go easier on non-violent drug offenders.

cent of all court cases are resolved. They decide which

Sessions has also indicated a desire to prosecute medi-

cases will receive priority–whether it’s drug cases, economic crimes, sex abuse or human trafficking cases,

cal marijuana providers.

“We were getting dogged out by Sessions the other

or as with the current administration in Washington,

day, with some sort of typically absurd comments from

DC, immigration–and they have discretion in what

him about how we’re in favor of illegal aliens and drug

sentence to pursue, including the death penalty. As

dealers, and then he had some other crazy kind of mate-

the number of reform-oriented prosecutors increase,

rial on supervised injection sites,” Krasner said. “I’m a

it could change the face of how justice is meted out in

little flattered, honestly, that he’s paying attention.”

America, DA’s office by DA’s office.

Many of the candidates have received support from

“Prosecutors have an inordinate influence on the

groups like the John Jay College-based Institute for

criminal justice system. They decide who to charge,

Innovation in Prosecution to Fair and Just Prosecution, a nonprofit led by former prosecutor Miriam Krinsky.

But the big money has come from billionaire financier George Soros, who has poured about $10 million into progressive campaigns since 2015 in cities from Chicago to Shreveport, Louisiana. He funds candidates through state and national super PACs, all of which have some form of “Safety and Justice” in the title.

Critics of the financier say his money has unfairly

Seven of 13 incumbent DA’s in Texas lost primary races in 2018, according to The Texas Tribune

what sentences will be imposed in plea bargains, which cases are initiated, the types of cases that are pursued.

They begin and end the process,” said Bennett Barlyn, formerly an assistant prosecutor in Hunterdon County, New Jersey and assistant state attorney general in Trenton. “Criminal defense attorneys play a more reactive role. They only play a role when a client of theirs is charged and formally prosecuted by law enforcement.

Their sole job is to represent their individual clients as

turned elections and made those communities less

effectively as possible. It’s not to change the criminal

safe. A Soros representative did not respond to a

justice system.”

request for comment.

These efforts at the local level could change the shape

What makes Krasner stand out, Barlyn said, is that he was less a traditional criminal defense attorney than a

of criminal justice, nationally, despite what’s going on in

social advocate and activist. He brought his progressive

Washington, given the amount of discretion individual

vision to a prosecutor’s office to change the game.

prosecutors hold, said Miriam Krinsky, who spent 15 years

“Krasner is really unique in that he embraced this

as a federal prosecutor before becoming executive director

role as a progressive force in law enforcement and won.

of a national professional network for prosecutors. City by

That’s pretty atypical,” Barlyn said. “He prevailed using

city, state by state, they can help move the criminal justice

that message. It was a successful message that resonated

system nationally, one prosecution at a time, she said.

with voters.”

Reflective Democracy Campaign, an arm of the pro-

Krasner may be more successful in his progressive

gressive Women Donors Network, commissioned a study

pursuits on the prosecutorial side of the courtroom,

in 2015 that found that 95 percent of elected local prose-

Barlyn said.

cutors in the U.S. were white and 75%, overall, were white men. And many have run for re-election year after year,

“People don’t appreciate what an outsized role prosecutors have in the criminal justice system.”

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CULTURE CLASH: WHEN AN ACTIVIST BECOMES DISTRICT ATTORNEY

who had tremendous discretion and thought their path to political advancement was to beat their chests and stamp their feet to seem tough on crime.

“They played the politics of fear, so they could get votes to get to higher office,” he said. “So basically,

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The Philadelphia County prison system costs the the taxpayer more than $42,000 per year for each person incarcerated

they hijacked tax dollars through fear to further their own political advancement, and that meant locking up a whole lot of people, especially if they didn’t look like you.”

It hasn’t helped that Pennsylvania’s sentencing guidelines are the work of upstate legislators whose smaller counties profit from putting Philadelphians in their jails, he said.

To stem the tide of incarceration, he announced a policy soon after taking office whereby people who committed non-violent crimes, such as economic crimes where less than $50,000 is stolen, will be offered guilty pleas that carry sentences below state sentencing guidelines. Violent offenses, sexual assaults and homicides will not fall under the new policy.

“The problem with the Pennsylvania sentencing guidelines is they have been the work of upstate legislators who profit from putting Philadelphians in their jails. I’m not actually in favor of having Philadelphia residents be our greatest export to other counties,” he said. “That is not to say all of them don’t need to be there. Many of them do, but these levels of incarceration are absurd, and they do not correspond to safety, and they do correspond to the decline of a lot of things that make us safe, like schools and drug treatments.”

Additional policies were codified in a memo to staff that bars charging for marijuana possession– regardless of the weight—and prostitution, unless those arrested have more than two priors. The new policy treats retail theft under $500 as a summary offense, not a misdemeanor, while those who violate probation will be punished at the lower end of the sentencing guidelines.

The new policies also urge prosecutors to seek shorter probation tails and, most notably, direct those who are recommending a sentence to justify the financial burden on taxpayers, tallying costs related to each incarceration in the Philadelphia County prison system at $42,000 to $60,000 per year.

Krasner’s office is reconsidering some cases in

Targets for Change

which the prior administration planned to pursue the death penalty and is contacting the families of the victims of those homicides and getting their input. He says he is personally opposed to the death

One of the first items on Krasner’s agenda is to

penalty but that does not dictate his duty as a law

address mass incarceration. He notes that the U.S. has

enforcement officer. He has also established a con-

five times as many people in jail nationally as it did in

viction review unit because Philadelphia, like other

the late 70s and early 80s, and there are seven times

cities, has found people who were wrongfully con-

as many people in Pennsylvania jails.

victed. He hired an attorney who ran a similar unit in

“Philly has outdone the other major cities for its

Texas and previously worked with Barry Scheck and

level of incarcerations,” Krasner said. “It’s a country

the Innocence Project in New York, and he has gone

that had a higher incarceration rate of people of color

to the city council to ask for more funding to make

than in South Africa during apartheid”

additional hires.

Krasner blames it in part on sentencing guidelines, but maybe more so, with ambitious prosecutors

He is beefing up the office’s conviction review unit, which he said previously operated in name only.

And Krasner, like other reformer prosecutors, is

LEX RENEGOTIATING ARRANGEMENTS

also reviewing cases to see if people were wrongfully let go–namely, police officers involved in shootings.

It’s a line of questioning that not surprisingly doesn’t

11

always resonate with the police departments with which they must work.

These reviews come in the wake of the rash of police

They also represent the racial divide on the

involved shootings and announcements that many of

police force.

the officers would not face charges, as happened when

“They are, and always have been, white domi-

Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan failed to

nated, and they stand in contrast to the Guardian Civic

indict the police officers involved in the death of Eric

League, which is an African American police organi-

Garner or a grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri failed to

zation,” he said.

indict the officers involved in the death of Michael

Despite the strong rhetoric during the campaign,

Brown. In Baltimore, three of the six officers charged

Krasner said he was meeting with the FOP to discuss

in the April 2015 death of Freddie Gray were found

various issues, and the FOP, for its part, appears to be

not guilty of all charges by a judge, and prosecutors

taking an open-minded stance.

dropped charges against the remaining three.

“District Attorney Larry Krasner deserves every

“Prosecutors can be at loggerheads with local police,

opportunity to lay out his crime-fighting initiatives

but this arises when the police engage in criminal mis-

and agenda on his terms. We look forward to work-

conduct, and there needs to be a way of holding them

ing with the district attorney on new initiatives that

accountable, and that requires an aggressive stance by

will lower our murder rate, reduce gun violence and

the local DA’s office, which relies on the police, obvi-

cut down the number of major crimes,” said John

ously, for enforcing the laws,” said former prosecutor

McNesby, President, FOP Lodge #5. “New measures

Barlyn. “There’s an inherent conflict. And you see the

that will make our great city safer, more attractive to

conflicts arise most acutely where DA’s charge police

open a business and raise a family are ones in which

or don’t charge police officers for crimes involving

we are confident in supporting.”

their treatment of African Americans.”

Krasner said officer-involved shootings are on

District Attorney Kim Foxx of Cook County Illinois

his radar, largely because it’s an area his office

would know. She charged two police officers with

never prosecuted.

first-degree murder since taking office. On January

“We hold police to the same standards as anybody

2017, a veteran Chicago police officer Lowell Houser

else, that we go where the evidence leads instead of

was charged with first-degree murder in the off-duty

where politics lead and that we do what is required,”

shooting of a 38-year-old Jose Nieves. Authorities said

he said. “When the evidence does not lead towards

Nieves was not armed and that he and the officer had argued in the past.

charges, we don’t charge.”

Shootings of unarmed

And in Feb. 2017, an Amtrak police officer just

civilians by police have

18 months on the job was charged with first-de-

stirred activism around

gree murder for fatally shooting an unarmed man

the country.

fleeing after being stopped over his suspected possession of marijuana.

“My job is to hold people accountable when they break the law, whether you are a police officer or a plumber. And I think part of the discontent people have felt not just in Baltimore or Chicago, was that lack of accountability when such abuses happened,” Foxx said. “If you hold people accountable no matter what station you have, people will see that.”

For now, Krasner’s relationship with Philadelphia’s Police Commissioner Richard Ross is warm. Calling Ross “reform-minded” and “integrous,” Krasner said he is a very capable commissioner. He is less generous about the Fraternal Order of Police, with whom he had hostile words during his campaign.

Krasner said the FOP’s culture has been to claim all police conduct is OK and none of it is worthy of criminal charges or firings. They routinely succeed in putting back on the force people the commissioner fires, he said, and they succeed in gaining promotions for police officers who are prosecuted federally but acquitted by all white juries.

His office has begun to review cases, including some that have video taken at the scene.

How police involved shootings are handled is a hot issue because right now, the Philadelphia Police

12

Department does not farm its investigations out to a

The Pennsylvania District Attorney’s Association came third party—though the DA’s office reviews the report.

police officer is involved in a shooting, an independent out with a best practices policy in 2017 that said if a agency and not the police department should investi-

gate what happened.

a shooting,” said Tom Hogan, the district attorney “A police department cannot investigate itself in

National District Attorneys Association. in Chester County, Pennsylvania who heads up the

case is a good example of what can go awry, Hogan What happened in Baltimore with the Freddie Gray

duct the investigation, one was done by the Baltimore said. Instead of having an independent agency con-

police department and another was conducted by the

state’s attorney’s office.

yourself up for conflict,” Hogan said.

“When you do two investigations, you’re setting

for a number of reasons, not least of which was the But Hogan said the Freddie Gray case was flawed

inexperience of the prosecutor, which meant she did

not have a good relationship with law enforcement.

having to do law enforcement shooting cases, because “There’s no bigger nightmare for prosecutors than

no matter what you do,” Hogan said. the media and the public are going to second guess you

tors’ skepticism of how police shootings have been But while Hogan shares the progressive prosecu-

handled, he does not share their approach to drug

crime, an approach he says may lead to more violent

crime and less intelligence into drug networks.

homicide rate down, you need to aggressively take “To aggressively prosecute murders and bring the

most murders in the Chester County city, Coatesville, care of the drug problem,” Hogan said, noting that

are drug-related.

district attorneys are leery of doing that, he said. They Drug dealers need to go to jail, and progressive

cerated; they should be helped, he said, but our drug

cops would say that non-violent drug-related crime

Lee contends that pattern reflects a misalignment

of resources and priorities.

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CULTURE CLASH: WHEN AN ACTIVIST BECOMES DISTRICT ATTORNEY

95 percent of prosecutors were white, the Equal Justice Initiative reported in 2015

The U.S. prison population, exceeding 2.2 million in 2015, is the highest in the world

say non-violent drug offenders should not be incar-

Weighing the Impact

That’s how they protect their turf, he said. is an oxymoron. Drug dealers are inherently violent.

“If you can take someone off the street on a drug

Like Philadelphia, Baltimore and Wilmington have

charge and lock them up for 10 to 12 years, you spare

progressive prosecutors, Hogan observes. How are

yourself some murders along the way,” Hogan said.

things going in Baltimore and Wilmington, he asks,

“That’s effective prosecution.”

and then answers his own question.

rate in the country. It’s murder town U.S.A.,” he said.

“Wilmington has the highest per capita murder

“If we want fewer murders and less violent crimes,

“With Larry Krasner, you will have a vast experiment

we should take some of the money used to incarcerate

with all these policies. We’ll get to see whether they

people and put it into treating people who are a danger

will work or not. So far in Wilmington and Baltimore,

to themselves or others,” Lee said.

they have not.”

Adnan Zulfiqar, an assistant professor of law

LEX RENEGOTIATING ARRANGEMENTS

at Rutgers Law School in Camden, said he doesn’t think the progressive movement in law enforcement has had nearly enough time to determine whether or

13

not it’s working.

“I don’t think Baltimore, by any stretch of the imagination, has had a progressive DA for long enough

“We’re trying to make sure that Krasner and his

to make that type of determination about whether it’s

team remember the values on which they ran,” said

working or not. And it’s not as if Baltimore was this

Hannah Jane Sassaman, Policy Director for Media

oasis of no crime and no murders before the latest DA

Mobilizing Project, a member of the Philadelphia

got into office,” he said.

Coalition for a Just DA. The

He adds that the so-called “Broken Windows Theory,” in which even low-level offenses are prosecuted in order to cultivate intelligence, develop witnesses and possibly scare off would-be offenders, doesn’t work.

It’s a myth that those caught possessing drugs will help police nab the drug kingpins, he said.

Those who believe it works say New York City is a safer place today than it was in the 1980s because the New York City Police Department applied the “broken windows” approach to fighting crime, but that doesn’t take into account what was happening in the city economically, both then and now, he said.

“And DA’s don’t take into account the fact that when they pick up these low-level offenders to get intel and put them in situations where they wind up having criminal records—and some end up being put in jail for long periods of time and being socialized in jail with more hardened criminals—that affects their ability to be productive members

‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you.’

We’ve gotten past those two,” Krasner said. “‘Then they fight back, and then you win.’ That’s kind of how it goes.”

of society,” Zulfiqar said. “Society has begun

coalition

spent

months

put-

ting together a set of well-researched action papers that laid out policy goals for Krasner’s first 100 days, though they acknowledge it may take more time than that to achieve them.

“We have been meeting on a regular basis with Krasner and a policy implementation team, and we’ve seen both curiosity and commitment to execute on those plans,” she said. “It’s a back and forth. We have to fight to make sure he understands that this is a winnable, executable set of platforms, but we also have to understand he is turning a big battleship. It’s not something that can change in an instant.”

They’ve seen some positive signs.

For instance, they were pleased to see Krasner hire immigration attorney Caleb Arnold to head up a unit that would protect the rights of immigrants charged with non-violent crimes. The unit would

to realize that in trying to address crime, particularly

evaluate cases to make sure the charges or sentences

violent crime, we decided to scoop a whole bunch of

don’t unnecessarily result in punitive immigra-

non-violent offenders along the way, and that has cre-

tion-related consequences.

ated a plethora of other social problems.”

Lee also testified before the City Council on a res-

While the recent spate of police shootings played

olution that would end the use of cash bail, something

into the progressive movement to some degree, Zulfiqar

Sassaman said would have been unheard of under

says they’ve been happening for some time. The differ-

prior district attorney’s.

ence now is that they’re being caught on tape and then

“So how’s it going? We’re seeing great steps. But

disseminated on social media, so college students aren’t

it will take partnerships and continued great work

just discussing these issues among five friends but

towards mutual understanding to capitalize on the

among their 5,000 Twitter followers, he said.

promises of his election,” she said.

“We have the highest incarceration rate in the

Even Krasner acknowledges change will take time.

world, and we’re not locking up a police officer for

And he knows his strongest supporters will not think

shooting someone?” Zulfiqar said. “That triggers in

the changes are coming fast enough. A month into the

someone’s head an unfairness that’s caused a re-ex-

job, Krasner laid off 33 staffers and was roundly criti-

amination of the criminal justice system as a whole.”

cized in the media. He blames the criticism on those

The question is whether reformers like Krasner

vested in maintaining the status quo.

are really going to be able to do anything about it. As

“It’s not a surprise. It is to be expected. You know

I drove into Philadelphia to interview Krasner, I lis-

the saying, ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at

tened to a news report on the radio about the city’s

you.’ We’ve gotten past those two,” he said. “‘Then

opioid crisis. There was already grousing about how

they fight back, and then you win.’ That’s kind of

Krasner wasn’t doing enough to address the epidemic.

how it goes.”

While he’s said he won’t prosecute drug addicts, there were complaints that he hadn’t done enough to sup-

His supporters just hope his message remains intact at the end of that fight.

port supervised injection sites—something addiction experts say could stem the rising tide of opioid deaths.

Caren Chesler is a freelance journalist.

HORACE TRUMBAUER MAKES A COMEBACK

LEX RENEGOTIATING ARRANGEMENTS

15

by Sarah Greenblatt and Dennis Carlisle

T

he Beneficial Saving Fund Society building opened in Philadelphia in 1918, designed by a local architect who first became known for the lavish Gilded Age manors he sketched for wealthy patrons from his hometown all the way to Newport, Rhode Island. Since the time it was built, the bank—like the neighborhood it occupies—has experienced dramatic change and yet has come back, full circle. After 100 years that included more than a decade of vacancy, the building has undergone a renaissance that honors and echoes its historic origins. In the process, 1200 Chestnut Street has proven how the past can, indeed, serve as prologue.

16

HORACE TRUMBAUER MAKES A COMEBACK

Aspirational Beginnings Horace Trumbauer was an enterprising Philadelphian, born in 1868, who quit school as a teen and, after an apprenticeship, went on to design the homes of robber barons, hotels, museums, hospitals and architectural gems that grace Ivy League campuses.

Trumbauer’s modest beginnings made him an apt candidate to design the Beneficial Saving Fund Society. The bank was established in 1853 to safeguard the meager earnings of Irish immigrants who flooded into Philadelphia during the Great Famine and faced abuse from native Philadelphians of the era. Now known as Beneficial Bank, it is the oldest and largest bank headquartered in Philadelphia.

The first headquarters of the Beneficial Saving Fund Society, opening with a charter to make “deposits of tradesmen, mechan-

Restoration of the Beneficial Saving Fund Society building was honored with a 2018

ics laborers and servants perfectly secure,”

Preservation Award from the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia.

proved too small to serve community needs.

Its successor, a much larger, Victorian Gothic office building, sustained fire damage in

Changing Landscape

1909. Trumbauer, at the height of his powers as an architect, was hired to design the

The bank’s presence on the 1200 block

bank’s new home at 1200 Chestnut Street.

comple mented institutional uses that had

Chestnut Street into a pedestrian-friendly shopping district that prohibited private

Using a Classic Revival style reflecting a

transformed what was once a strictly residential

cars. Two decades later, public and private

Roman temple, Trumbauer created a design

neighborhood into a more complex district

revitalization efforts were tethered to the

that promised a sturdy sanctuary for the

including the Philadelphia Mint, American

construction of a nearby convention center.

life savings of the tailors, maids, shoemak-

Sunday School Union and the Pennsylvania

ers and storekeepers who were the bank’s

Medical Society of Philadelphia. Major busi-

ment weren’t enough to overcome ongoing neighborhood decay and a need for more office

For the bank, the promises of improve-

early depositors. He incorporated a second

nesses and retail stores moved to the block

floor above the prominent entablature, a

during the construction of Philadelphia’s City

space. Beneficial moved its headquarters, and

design element he had utilized in designing

Hall nearby at the turn of the 20th century.

the glorious building Trumbauer had designed

the Widener Memorial Library at Harvard University in 1913.

Through the 1930s, neighborhood trans-

ceased to operate as a bank in 2000.

formation continued. Nearby blocks became

Revitalization efforts finally began to bear

Piano Row, a series of piano stores with

fruit when a developer who had success-

a dose of opulence worthy of Trumbauer’s

soda fountains and department stores inter-

fully redeveloped vibrant mixed-use urban

more affluent patrons. The exterior featured

spersed between.

Somewhat ironically, the bank featured

granite from a quarry in Vermont and bronze

In later decades, suburban retail under-

spaces in Miami Beach and New York’s SoHo found creative funding streams and inspired

doors and grillwork. Upon arriving, bank

mined Chestnut Street’s value as a commercial

other developers to focus on the neighbor-

customers stepped onto a floor of pink mar-

corridor. The storefronts gave themselves over

hood, which was renamed Midtown Village by a local merchants’ association.

ble from Tennessee, surrounded by pilasters

to downgraded uses, and vice established

that complemented the exterior columns.

a firm hold in the blocks to the south. The

Elegant chandeliers hung from the heavily

upper floors of the grand Gilded Age com-

of a developer who purchased the property

The vacant bank attracted the attention

embellished ceiling. The space where the

mercial buildings on the 1200 block became

in 2006 and in 2009 announced plans to lease

tellers worked was enclosed in a U-shaped

vacant and were sealed off or chopped down

it as an upscale billiards club with an out-

stone half-wall with wire screens between

to make way for squat retail buildings.

door lounge on the roof that would feature

squared columns. The boardroom featured a

Planners devised a series of strategies to

massive mahogany table that could accom-

halt the decline. In the 1970s, an ambitious

modate dozens of overseers.

but ultimately unsuccessful plan converted

a retractable covering. But that plan, facing obstacles from zoning officials, fizzled.

1

LEX RENEGOTIATING ARRANGEMENTS

17 2

Horace Trumbauer Horace Trumbauer (1868-1938) was a Gilded Age architect whose commissions included mansions for robber barons, buildings on Ivy League campuses and iconic features of the Philadelphia landscape.

Trumbauer became one of the most

3

accomplished American architects of his generation, establishing a practice that designed more than 1,000 buildings. Trumbauer began by drawing up homes in Philadelphia

4

and its suburbs before designing mansions in Newport, Rhode Island, New York City and beyond.

Building upon relationships he forged with wealthy patrons, Trumbauer garnered more ambitious philanthropic and commercial commissions: hospitals, museums, hotels, chapels, libraries and industrial buildings.

With a reliance on revival styles, Trumbauer earned scant recognition from his modernistic peers.

But Trumbauer and his associates have garnered newfound respect from a new generation of architectural historians.

1 — Benjamin Franklin Hotel 2 — Duke Chapel, Duke University 3 — Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, Harvard University 4 — Philadelphia Museum of Art 5 — Irvine Auditorium, University of Pennsylvania 5

18

HORACE TRUMBAUER MAKES A COMEBACK

Design And Purpose: Restored

7

The historic building remained idle and vacant until 2012, when prominent Philadelphia trial lawyer Tom Kline acquired it. In 2014, Kline donated the building to Drexel University as part of a $50 million gift to its law school.

Kline was committed to making the building serve a good public use.

Over the course of several years, Drexel,

In 2014, attorney Tom Kline donated the building to Drexel University as part of a $50 million gift to its law school.

Kline was committed to making the building serve a good public use.

Kline and architects from Tackett & Company worked painstakingly to restore the former bank building to its original grandeur to accommodate the Thomas R. Kline Institute of Trial Advocacy. The project represented the first restoration of an academic building in Philadelphia to a level of detail that would gain approval from the National Park Service, reflecting the building’s designation as a historic monument.

An en banque courtroom featuring LED lighting now occupies the space where tellers once toiled, the original chandeliers were restored and fitted with contemporary features, the ornate ceiling and marble floors were repaired and custom-woven carpet was installed that bears a passage from the Pennsylvania Constitution: that the right to a trial by jury shall remain inviolate.

The institute opened in 2018, featuring numerous courtrooms where students participate in mock trials and practice their skills in trial advocacy and meeting rooms where faculty and practitioners hold conferences and

8

symposia. The facility provides an inspiring

Sarah Greenblatt is director of commu-

venue for students to hone skills that will

nications at the Kline School of Law.

enable them to advance justice on behalf

Dennis Carlisle is a freelance journalist

of a diverse clientele, just footsteps from

in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia’s busy courtrooms.

Opening 100 years after the bank it replaced, the institute restored, embellished and modernized the sumptuous luster of

6

Trumbauer’s handiwork, enhanced neighbor-

6 — Detail of the boardroom

hood revitalization with the introduction of an

7 — Restoration of the coffered ceiling

academic facility and reinstated the building’s

8 — A ceremonial courtroom on the mezzanine

original purpose of serving as a repository of

9 — Original exterior rendering

trust for the betterment of society.

10 — Meeting space in the main hall

LEX RENEGOTIATING ARRANGEMENTS

9

10

19

BE COMING

LEX RENEGOTIATING ARRANGEMENTS

21

I’ve covered the courts and the law for 18 years, and while I was quick to label myself an opinion writer, I had no interest in the lengthy personal essay as a journalistic form. I wrote on rare occasions about personal matters, but it unerringly made me feel uneasy and exposed.

I preferred straight reportage with a bracing side of legal doctrine, and tended to believe that meditations on my thoughts and feelings were just two Metro stops away from the cult of personality and branding forms of writing that were corroding journalism in general.

But 2017 was a tough year for detached objectivity. Like many in the media, I felt immediately the call to locate myself firmly on one side of the business-as-usual media narrative. In the first days after the election, I found myself trying to divine whether I would cover

THE STORY

the Trump Administration the way I had covered the George W. Bush

Administration or would have covered a Mitt Romney Administration.

Within a few weeks, I surprised the listeners to my podcast, Amicus, and also myself, with the only brief editorial statement I would ever

give on the show: I pledged that despite my commitment to the proposition of good faith and balance, I would not accede to using the show to give cover to legal arguments that were thinly veiled defenses

of policies that were cruel or manifestly illegal. Based on my reader

mail, that was either the bravest or most cowardly editorial act of my entire career.

Very few of us go to law school with the intention of writing the word “I” with much frequency. Same goes for journalists, who learn very quickly that, opinion columnists notwithstanding, any reporter who puts herself in her own story will engender nothing but fury and red ink from the editorial staff. Lawyers and journalists, at their best, trade in facts over feelings, and in description over aspiration. When in doubt, lurch for the moderation; that’s how we roll.

by Dahlia Lithwick

22

BECOMING THE STORY

But in the weeks that followed, I found myself being dragged, time and time again, into the emotional heart of stories I’d intended to cover dispassionately.

First, it was a meditation on whether my own free speech values could survive Nazis and the KKK who were already, by the spring of 2017, creeping into my hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia. Then, as the summer exploded into the helicopters and flaming torches of Aug. 12, I found myself writing from a land without doctrine; a post-Skokie howl of fury and pain at the ways in which the courts and the police had let us all down in Charlottesville. I could draw a perfectly straight line in that moment between Donald Trump’s sanguine reassurance that there were “some very fine people on both sides” of the Nazi invasion of Charlottesville and my own certainty that whatever journalism made of that day, “both sides” would not get equal time or equal sympathy from me.

Charlottesville cut too close to my bones that summer—that synagogue you read about was my synagogue, where both of my sons were named and raised.

That town square that might have been photo shopped in from “Back to The Future” was my town square.

Those faith leaders in the photo—standing down heavily armed racists—were my friends. To tell that story from anywhere other than my front lawn, felt like its Refugee Assistance Project—who had basically pulled

Police interact with

From that point on, I could feel the vocational blur

together the 2017 travel ban litigation out of used

counterprotesters

set in and take hold. Even when I was writing about the

drinking straws and twist ties—that dying of stress is

at the 2017 Unite the

ways in which lawyers were putting too much stock in

just not cool: “Oh please don’t let this have been the

Right rally.

Robert Mueller and the norms surrounding the rule of

first line of my obituary.”

own form of cowardice.

law, it read a bit like the winds of Charlottesville were

The one and only thing that kept me off the car-

still howling through me. And by the time December of

diac wing that morning was the phone call from my

2017 had rolled around and several women had come

ninth-grade son, who is not apt to wax philosoph-

forward with claims that federal appeals court Judge

ical when he can instead wax eye-roll. He was just

Alex Kozinski had behaved inappropriately toward

checking in, he said, and wanted to reassure me that

them, it had begun to feel as though my newsfeed was

“I know you don’t like to be the story mom, but this

now actually routed through my own life.

The piece I wrote that described my own complicity in not reporting what I had known about Judge Kozinski was perhaps the most difficult piece of writ-

time I think you needed to be the story so that other people could tell theirs.”

Which just about put me in the hospital in its own right.

ing I had ever done in my life. It wasn’t just a criticism

In the first days after that article, I declined to do any

of the court on which I had clerked and judges for

media on the theory that I couldn’t bear to be exposed

whom I had immense personal affection. It was also

any more than I had been, and because quite honestly, I

a confession about the degree to which I had been

was feeling ashamed and weird. But in another healing

aware, for all of my journalistic career, of the “open

act of journalism, I invited Heidi Bond, Emily Murphy

secret” of the esteemed judge’s treatment of female

and Leah Litman—all women who had come out as

subordinates. In the hour after that story went live

Kozinski accusers by name, to join me to podcast about

on the Slate website, I stood in the parking lot of an

it. Again, I found myself wondering what the temper-

urgent care clinic in Florida, thinking I was perhaps

ate, moderate journalistic middle ground could be in

having a heart attack. This would be awkward, as I was

this conversation. Again, I opted just to let people tell

in Florida to deliver a speech. What played on a loop

their stories. It was a rough and jagged fit for someone

through my head, outside the clinic, were the words

steeped in the language of due process and fact. But

of my friend Becca Heller, the founder of International

increasingly, it felt like a pathway through a minefield

LEX RENEGOTIATING ARRANGEMENTS

23

in which #MeToo and The Law were threaded through with stories and narrative and lived experience and pain.

As I reflect, with a bit of distance, and the sage counsel of friends (and a 14-year-old) it occurs to me that the through-line that connects the change in my journalism last year lay in the failures and disappointments of my two lodestars: legal systems and the press. I had banked my entire career and law school education on the norms around the legal system—not just the hard norms about truth and balance and fact-finding and process, but also the softer norms of civility and respect and justice. In many ways, 2017 represented a failure of so many of those values—from the judges being nominated for the federal bench who didn’t care about law to the failure of free speech doctrine to prevent a Nazi riot in the weeks it took to unspool.

In Charlottesville, I saw, firsthand, what it could look like in America if your courts and your police and your

“ The through-line that connects the change in my journalism last year lay in the failures and disappointments of my two lodestars: legal systems and the press.”

universities simply failed you. And in the journalism around it I saw falsity presenting itself as truth, and truth obscured by liars.

In the context of #MeToo as applied to the federal judiciary, I witnessed the same systemic failures. The failures of rules and norms and the ways in which a judicial clerkship could go from a cherished apprenticeship to an opportunity for life-altering pain and predation. How was it possible that all of the legal and social protections that law school had promised could amount to nothing? And if due process was just a code word for cover and collusion, what were those of us in the justice business even selling in the first instance?

There is—I still assert—no “I” in journalism, and I am ever more uncomfortable with the branding and the narrowcasting and the daily performance of virtue that feels like it has come at the expense of show leather and fedoras in my profession. For the first time in a career as a reasonably careful analyst and sports-reporter of the law, I go to sleep most nights afraid for this country, and wake up most mornings more so. I am well aware, now more than ever, that the cure for biased, emotional and performative reporting is not more of it. But to be silent now feels like moral capitulation, and to pretend that there are two sides when only one side is for genuine justice feels like falsity. I hope to return someday to the norms and conventions of “fine people on both sides,” dispassionate, mechanical journalism. My fondest wish, at this juncture, is that we will someday, again, have that luxury.

Dahlia Lithwick is a journalist who writes about the courts and the law for Slate and hosts the podcast, Amicus. In 2018, she was elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

ROBERT E. LEE STATUE CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA

CONFEDERATE MONUMENT

ROBERT E. LEE MONUMENT

JEFFERSON DAVIS STATUE

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

MACON, GEORGIA

LEX RENEGOTIATING ARRANGEMENTS

25

REFRAMING A HISTORIC NARRATIVE As happens so often in American history, the violence of the shooting in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015 led to discussions about our nation’s history and the current state of race relations. That led fairly directly to the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina, and that in turn prompted a discussion about the appropriateness of Confederate monuments on public property.

by Alfred L. Brophy By the spring of 2017, the movement to remove Confederate monuments from public property reached take-off speed. New Orleans removed Robert E. Lee from a pedestal in Lee Circle. The Lee statue was the most controversial of the monuments that New Orleans removed in 2017—the others were monuments to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard, and a monument to the riot of Liberty Place, which commemorated an attack on the integrated police force during Reconstruction.

The controversy about monuments turned violent in August 2017, in Charlottesville at the “Unite the Right” rally—itself a response to the movement to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee from a public park in Charlottesville. Heather Heyer was run over by an Ohio man who had come to Charlottesville for the rally. She was, one might say, the latest casualty of the American Civil War. And her death set off yet more discussions around the South. What followed were movements to remove monuments in many other cities, from Richmond and Charlottesville to Lexington, Kentucky and Memphis, Tennessee.

26

REFRAMING A HISTORIC NARRATIVE

We have increasingly seen Confederate monuments as honoring a cause we believe dishonorable.

In six Southern states, the movements to remove the monuments ran up against state heritage preservation acts that require the approval of the legislature or the state historical commission to remove a statue from public property. South Carolina passed the first of those preservation acts back in 2000, as it was dealing with the aftermath of the movement to take the Confederate flag from the state capitol dome.

Later, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and Alabama followed its lead. This effectively took the decision about keeping or removing a statue from the local government. In Memphis, the City Council got around the state statute by selling the public park that had a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the founder of the Klan, sitting atop a horse. The new owners then removed the statue.

On college campuses, the movement to rename buildings and remove monuments had been going on for a few years. Back in 2005, Vanderbilt had tried to rename “Confederate Memorial Hall” to just “Memorial Hall,” but the Tennessee Court of Appeals enjoined that renaming. The United Daughters of the Confederacy, a society for women whose ancestors fought for the Confederacy, had contributed to the building and had a contract right to the name. The Tennessee court held that if Vanderbilt removed the name “Confederate” from the building, it would have to pay back the money contributed to Peabody College (which was acquired by Vanderbilt in the 1970s), with interest.

More recently, schools like Duke and UNC renamed buildings named for leaders of the state during the dark years of segregation. Meanwhile, Yale recently renamed Calhoun College, which had been named back in the 1930s for Yale alumnus John C. Calhoun, who was vice president of the United States from 1825 to 1832. Calhoun was also one of the leading proslavery theorists and politicians before his death in 1850.

Most of those monuments have stood for decades, in many cases more than 100 years. Many were placed in the last years of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century. They were put up as the generation of Civil War soldiers passed away. Often in the South, the monuments were put up by Confederate memorial associations,

Efforts to remove the Robert E. Lee statue in

such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Those groups

Charlottesville, Virginia sparked a legal battle

pushed a narrative of the heroism of the Southern soldiers as fighting

and inspired the 2017 Unite the Right rally in

for Southern independence and they down-played slavery as an issue

which a counter-protester was killed.

in the war. For instance, the statue of Jefferson Davis on Richmond’s Monument Avenue lauds him as a statesman and a supporter of the Constitution but does not mention slavery. In the North, monuments went up about the same time. Philadelphia’s major monument to Civil War soldiers, the Smith Memorial Arch in Fairmont Park, for instance, was funded in 1895 by the will of industrialist Richard Smith and completed in 1912.

For a very long time, the monuments were ignored or were moved with little fanfare from public squares to more remote locations. William Faulkner wrote in“Requiem for a Nun” of how many in the South had moved on to other issues than remembering the Civil War. Many thought “that old war was dead” and that Southerners were more concerned with the Spanish American War. As Faulkner wrote, “the sons of those tottering old men in gray had already died in blue coats in Cuba,” and “the macabre mementos and testimonials and shrines of the new war already usurping the earth.” But some clung to the ideas of white supremacy that the Southern cause represented, and during the Civil Rights movement, that Confederate flag and Confederate monuments took on new salience.

And in recent years, many are now re-examining the display of Confederate monuments. I used to count the Confederate flags that

The Robert E. Lee statue is one of four

I would pass on my semi-annual drives home to Philadelphia from

Confederate monuments that the

the Southern college towns where I have spent most of my adult life—

New Orleans City Council voted to remove.

Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. But in recent

years, I typically see none, or oddly maybe one somewhere in rural Pennsylvania. The Confederate flags have largely been taken down.

And increasingly, the Confederate monuments are seen as having different meanings, too. Where once those in the North often sub-

LEX RENEGOTIATING ARRANGEMENTS

27

scribed to the idea that Confederates fought honorably for a cause they believed just, even if we now know different, the Confederacy has been re-interpreted as a government established to promote slavery and white supremacy. And as that interpretation has changed, we have increasingly seen Confederate monuments as honoring a cause we believe dishonorable. And now, many are looking to remove the statues. Soldiers and politicians who were once seen as heroes, at least south of the Mason-Dixon Line, are now viewed very differently. And this is causing us to rethink those monuments that have stood for so long. The changes in ideas about the monuments is testimony to how much the values of our country have changed.

There are, I believe, good reasons for keeping the monuments as reminders that the people in power once celebrated the ideas of the Confederacy. But I also recognize that there are good reasons to take them down, so that the Confederacy is no longer celebrated in any way on public property. Some years ago, I was meeting with a Legal Aid client in a small North Carolina town, and as we talked about her case, she said she thought we would lose the next day in court because there is a Confederate monument in front of the courthouse. That astonished me, because while I am obsessed with monuments I do not

Commissioners of Macon-Bibb County

have any sense that she had any interest in history or monuments. It

Georgia have begun fielding requests

is just that she had seen that monument many times during her whole

from members of the public to relocate

life in that county and it told her that she would not get justice there.

a Confederate monument to a less

That caused me to rethink my general opposition to removing monu-

prominent location.

ments. I now realize they should not be in front of courthouses, where they tell members of the community that they are not welcome.

Monuments that have stood for generations are moving, and it looks like other attitudes about race are changing along with them.

Alfred L. Brophy holds the Paul and Charlene Jones Chair in Law at the University of Alabama. He is the coauthor, with Kline School of Law Professors Deborah Gordon and Norman Stein, of “Experiencing Trusts and Estates.” His most recent book is “University, Court, and Slave: Proslavery Thought in Southern Colleges and Courts and the Coming of Civil War” (Oxford University Press, 2016).

The mayor of Richmond, Virginia tasked a municipal commission with soliciting public comment on the fate of the Jefferson Davis statue, which was vandalized repeatedly in 2017.

28

PERSPECTIVES

Why are so many of America’s corporate giants suddenly drawn to health care like moths to a flame?

Walmart, Apple, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan Chase have announced plans to venture into one of America’s most complex industries, and others may follow.

They seem to think they can disrupt a bedrock of the economy with roots that date back centuries. If they succeed, where will they take a business on which we rely for our lives, health and a large portion of our economy?

As Industry Transforms Health Care, Bring on the Regulators

by Robert I. Field

Health care appeared on radar screens of the Fortune 500

LEX RENEGOTIATING ARRANGEMENTS

because it has embarked on its most sweeping transformation ever. After a slow and sometimes fitful gestation, technologies several decades in the making are turning every

29

aspect of the industry on its head. Health care experiences perennial change and has faced one crisis or another for

These and other challenges cry out for government

more than 50 years, but this transformation is more funda-

intervention. As important as it has been, private industry

mental. It is altering the foundations of care and the roles of

could not have brought American health care to its current

almost everyone in the system.

state by itself, nor will it carry health care to the next level

Let’s start with hospitals, the centers of care for more

singlehandedly. Government has a critical role in shep-

than a century. For the past 30 years, technological advances

herding private initiative into actual care—and the business

have allowed a growing array of complex treatments to

opportunities that go with it.

be rendered in outpatient clinics. Now, data analytics

Consider two institutional pillars of the system, academic

is enabling population health management systems to tar-

medical centers and for-profit hospital chains. They emerged

get patients for preventive interventions before they need

in the late 1960s only after Medicare emerged as a reliable

any kind of complex care. With such trends, hospital utili-

source of revenue. Medicare also provided financing that

zation began to decline several years ago, with the number

enabled specialist physicians to perform an ever-expanding

of inpatient days and hospital admissions each falling nearly

array of complex procedures. Pediatric hospitals grew into

10 percent between 2008 and 2012.

major institutions based on Medicaid reimbursement for

Physicians are losing their traditional role as the principal point of patient contact, as nurse practitioners and physician

the cost of caring for poor children—or about half of their patient population.

assistants assume greater responsibilities.

The modern pharmaceutical industry

Soon, computer algorithms, robotic devices

emerged in the 1930s after the National

and artificial intelligence will take over

Institutes of Health began to support basic

complex procedures that physicians now

biomedical research that private companies

perform. Apps will enable patients to diag-

could not afford and regulation by the Food

nose and treat some conditions themselves.

and Drug Administration offered public-

The new position of health care programmer

safety reassurances. Genomic treatments

analyst recently generated more than 500

relied on the findings of the Human Genome

openings on one employment website.

Project, a transformative government ini-

Pharmaceuticals are no longer simply

tiative in the 1990s. And population health

tools to mitigate diseases and conditions after

management owes much of its growth to the

they appear. New products based on genom-

emergence of accountable care organiza-

ics tailor treatments to each patient. And

tions, coalitions of hospitals and physicians

gene therapies, the first of which recently

incentivized by the Affordable Care Act to

reached the market, can actually change the

manage patient populations.

structure of cells to eliminate susceptibility

We will need the same level of regulatory

to inherited diseases. More than 300 clinical

intervention to meet new challenges. Com-

trials of new gene therapies are ongoing and another 800 are in the process of enrolling patients.

puter guided treatments, robotic devices and health care apps require new forms of oversight of safety

All of which leads to the transformation of health-care

and quality. Standards are needed for the programmers

business. Technology in various forms is replacing hospitals,

who design them and for new forms of physicians training.

physicians and conventional drugs as the foundation of care.

Personal health information needs more robust protection

And just as the internet has done to almost every indus-

than HIPAA and similar laws provide. And new forms of

try—from retail to banking to travel—technology will make

financing, both governmental and private, are needed to

existing health-care business models obsolete.

insure the flow of funds.

This serves as bait for other industries. Amazon and

Government intervention, through regulation, financial

Apple know a lot about industry disruption, and companies

incentives and otherwise, is not a barrier to be worked

like Walmart are struggling to keep pace. Maybe the right

around. It is essential in the industry’s evolution, as it has

combination of industrial expertise can tap the profit poten-

been for almost a century. To inventors, clinicians and far-

tial of a reconfigured health-care landscape.

However, before industrial titans can transform health

sighted businesspeople, add regulators to the list of heroes who will bring health care into the brave new world.

care, a host of new challenges lie ahead. Our current system of finance handsomely rewards high-end care but does little to encourage population health management. The extraordinary cost of developing genomic therapies is already busting the budgets of some insurance plans. And perhaps most significantly, the grist for much of medicine’s technological revolution is the analysis of sensitive patient information, whose security is frustratingly difficult to protect.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++ + + + +I.+ Field + + + +is+a+professor + + + + + + of + +law + + at + +the + + Kline + + + +School + + + + of ++++++++++ Robert ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++ + + and + + +professor + + + + + + of + +health + + + +management + + + + + + + + +and + + policy + + + + at +++++++++++ Law ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Drexel’s Public +++ + + + + +Dornsife + + + + + School + + + + +of ++ + + + +Health. + + + + +He + +directs + + + + the +++++++++++ +++ + + + + + + +JD-MPH + + + + + +program. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ University’s ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

30

PERSPECTIVES

This page: Guatemalans seek information about missing loved ones.

Opposite page: Guatemalan dictator EfraĂ­n RĂ­os Montt died April 1, 2018.

Transitional Justice and Peace: How, Exactly, the Twain Shall Meet

by Sarah Greenblatt

Scholars have long grappled with the question of which justice mechanisms should be pursued in nations facing human rights violations committed by predecessor regimes.

Professor Rachel López is adding depth,

prosecutors and provided essential evidence

LEX RENEGOTIATING ARRANGEMENTS

to help them prove their cases.

The narratives that emerged and were recorded especially by the U.N. commission

31

were used to corroborate testimony in criminal proceedings, provide a historic context

Faculty of Law in March 2018. The workshop,

for crimes that occurred and reveal patterns

“Atrocity’s Archives,” gathered academics

of misconduct that are useful to prosecutors,

and human rights attorneys from around

López found.

the world to devise strategies for employing

In all, López says, the spade work that the

archives in the pursuit of transitional justice.

truth commissions performed not only aided

In the meantime, López will explore the

prosecutors in their work but also spurred

role that the U.S. played in the Guatemalan

Guatemalan courts to embrace international

genocide

norms.

Nebraska Law Review, “The Duty to Refrain:

in

a

forthcoming

article

in

nuance and insight to the conversation about

“Before the truth commissions, they

A Theory of State Accomplice Liability for

transitional justice, following two six-month

were considered ordinary crimes: homicide,

Grave Crimes.” The article asserts that, just

stints as a Fulbright Scholar and as a Schell

kidnapping, etc. After the truth commis-

as states have a responsibility to protect the

Fellow at Yale Law School.

sions, they’re characterized as crimes against

human rights of another state’s people when

humanity,

it will not or cannot, they bear an analogous

For many years, debates among human

forced

disappearances—things

rights scholars reflected an assumption that

that are human rights crimes,” López said

burden not to facilitate grave crimes perpe-

truth commissions tasked with compiling

in an interview. “The truth commissions

trated by other states. In her article, López

historical narratives of wrongdoing without

brought the language of human rights to the

notes that the U.S. continued providing

holding offenders accountable would neces-

Guatemalan courts.”

Guatemala with military aid, weapons and

sarily dim opportunities for victims to obtain

During her fellowship at Yale, López

training, despite mounting evidence of grave

summarized her discoveries in an article,

crimes reported by the CIA and Department

“Post-Conflict Pluralism,” to be published in

of State. The article cites additional examples

heads of state such as the late Guatemalan dic-

the University of Pennsylvania Law School’s

in the modern era, including Russia’s ongo-

tator Efraín Ríos Montt moved forward, after

Journal of International Law in 2018.

justice.

As the criminal prosecutions of former

or simultaneously with truth commissions,

The article explores the ways in which

time has shown that the pursuit of peace need

truth commissions also have the power to

ing assistance to the Assad regime in Syria, which has committed atrocities against its own civilian population.

not bar the quest for justice. While there is a growing consensus among scholars and practitioners that employing varied mechanisms including truth commissions, amnesties and trials yields the best outcomes for the rule of law and democratic consolidation, they have not understood how or why.

López set about to answer those questions, burrowing deep into cases that addressed the genocide and war crimes perpetuated by the Guatemalan military regime during a 36-year armed conflict, during which some 200,000 Guatemalan civilians were killed. During her Fulbright Scholarship, López traveled to Guatemala to interview judges, prosecutors and human rights attorneys involved in the legal proceedings. She also conducted research in Spain, the first nation where

The truth commissions brought the language of human rights to the Guatemalan courts.

charges were brought against Ríos Montt and his allies for orchestrating the genocide.

advance the rule of law and transform local

The Penn and Nebraska articles are

López found that truth commissions

judicial decision-making by recasting the

the newest additions to a scholarly portfo-

backed by the United Nations and the Catholic

historical context in ways that influence how

lio that includes López’s article, “The (Re)

Church did not prevent perpetrators of human

judges define and determine responsibility

Collection of Memory after Mass Atrocity and

rights violations from facing criminal charges.

for crimes.

the Dilemma for Transitional Justice,” which

Indeed, the process had strengthened the

López, who is currently assembling an

appeared in the New York University Journal

hands of prosecutors. Furthermore, López

archive of criminal cases that involved grave

of International Law and Politics and became

concluded that the commission backed by the

crimes committed during the Guatemalan

the centerpiece of a symposium in 2015.

U.N., which was criticized as a second-rate

armed conflict that she plans to make acces-

substitute for justice and not identifying the

sible to the public, was invited to take part in

Sarah Greenblatt is director of communications

perpetrators, generated more fruitful leads for

a workshop hosted by the Oxford University

at the Kline School of Law.

32

PERSPECTIVES

BOOK REVIEW

“Rebooting Justice: More Technology, Fewer Lawyers, and the Future of Law”

by Blair Thompson ’11

We have heard the complaint: There are too many lawyers

available case law and statutes on the internet, and occasional online chats with virtual lawyers, Barton and Bibas argue that poor and

and not enough jobs. Yet it

middle-class Americans could successfully

only takes a few hours inside

Bibas acknowledge that court clerks will need

LEX RENEGOTIATING ARRANGEMENTS

33

represent themselves in court. Barton and thereby losing not only an income, but also health insurance.

a courthouse to notice that

“to change their default setting from ‘I do not

more than enough people

answer those sorts of questions’ to ‘What can

Aside from a criminal defendant charged

I do to help you and how can I best explain

with a felony, Barton and Bibas do not believe

need legal assistance.

the necessary steps?’” Similarly, they write

that the legal issues of the poor or middle-

How does this happen?

that judges will need to take a more inquisi-

class can be complex. They claim that the

torial role in their cases and to “take the lead

procedural and substantive complexity of the

on gathering the facts, calling the witnesses,

law primarily serves to create job security for

asking the questions, and finding and apply-

lawyers. The authors do not entertain the

In their book, “Rebooting Justice: More

ing the law.” A litigant who does not wish

idea that the law’s complexity is a necessary

Technology, Fewer Lawyers, and the Future

to represent himself, Barton and Bibas argue,

byproduct of the effort to apply universal

of Law,” Benjamin H. Barton and Stephanos

should be able to hire a paraprofessional to

rules to the complexities of human life in all

Bibas offer an explanation. Barton, the Helen

represent him. The legal paraprofessional

its messy, illogical and unpredictable glory

and Charles Lockett Distinguished Professor

would be analogous to nurse practitioners or

in such a way that its brings about justice.

of Law at the University of Tennessee College

physician assistants in the medical field who

While the authors concede that the facts of

of Law, and Bibas, a U.S. Court of Appeals

can fill many of the important roles of a doctor,

such cases can be disputed, they argue that

Judge for the Third Circuit, argue that the

at a lower cost.

the legal arguments involved are rarely novel;

conventional solution of providing more law-

While Barton and Bibas seek to solve an

therefore, a lawyer is a not required. While they claim that their proposal would not

yers for individual litigants is a costly and

urgent problem that is well worth the effort—

ineffective method of reducing unmet legal

how to make justice accessible for poor and

create a second-tier, “lower-level” court for

need. Barton and Bibas argue that technology,

middle-class Americans—an arguably elitist

poor and middle-class people armed with

which enables pro se representation or repre-

assumption underlies their proposed solution.

Google search results and fillable forms, and

sentation by non-lawyer paraprofessionals, is

Indeed, their approach may widen the very

a separate court for rich people with real

the cheapest and most effective way to bridge

gap that it seeks to close. Barton and Bibas

lawyers, it is difficult to imagine how their

assume that most poor and middle-class

proposal would not do exactly that.

the ever-increasing access to justice gap.

Barton and Bibas begin by presenting a

Americans’ legal problems are uncomplicated,

The question of why there are so many

dire state of affairs with respect to the lack

run-of-the-mill cases that can be resolved

lawyers and yet still so many poor and middle-class people in need of representation is

of legal services for poor and middle-class

with a cookie-cutter approach. Much like

Americans in criminal and civil courts today.

the authors’ repeated characterizations of

an important one, as is the question of how

They lament the state of public criminal

any father unable to make child support pay-

technology can increase access to justice.

defense as being rife with overburdened

ments as a “deadbeat dad,” this assumption

However, any attempt to incorporate tech-

attorneys—whether they be public defenders

ignores the complicated realities of the lives

nology, especially any attempt to replace

or contract attorneys—who have little incen-

of poor and middle-class Americans.

a fundamental right, such as the right to

Lawyers and policymakers should not

counsel, with technology must keep the

who are held to minimal performance stan-

judge the level of complexity of poor and

perspective of the litigants in mind. While

dards. Barton and Bibas provide a history of

middle-class Americans’ legal problems in the

doing so will necessarily frustrate the effort

the right to counsel in criminal court, cri-

same way that a spunky Ivy League college

to assign neat and clean objective valuations

tiquing much of the U.S. Supreme Court’s

graduate judges LSAT logic games. Missing

to legal issues, it will more accurately capture

expansion of Gideon v. Wainwright.

from Barton and Bibas’s work is the recog-

the nature of the legal issue itself.

tive to provide zealous representation and

In the civil courts, Barton and Bibas paint

nition that legal problems belong to people.

a picture of overwhelmed legal aid lawyers

Legal issues do not exist in a vacuum; they

who can only provide superficial advice to

are made of a person’s life. At one point, the

those who qualify under the poverty guide-

authors argue in favor of criminal case triage

lines, leaving many folks in the lurch who are

with respect to triggering an automatic right

dubbed too wealthy to qualify for legal aid, yet

to counsel. They state that current rules

lack resources to hire a private attorney. After

requiring appointed counsel for any actual

analyzing critical U.S. Supreme Court and state

imprisonment are overbroad because “[a]

cases on the issue, Barton and Bibas proclaim

weekend in jail by itself is unlikely to disrupt

the civil Gideon movement to be a failure and

someone’s whole life.” This argument ignores

its loyal advocates to be mere dreamers.

the reality of a single mother who has no one

Blair Thompson is a clinical teaching

Just as Uber and Lyft solved the problem

to watch her small children and may have to

fellow at the University of Baltimore

of substandard or unavailable taxi services,

answer to Child Protective Services after that

School of Law’s Bob Parsons Veterans

Barton and Bibas argue that technology will

weekend in jail, or the many Americans who

Advocacy Clinic. She received her JD

work miracles for legal services. Through

actually have to work on the weekends and

from the Kline School of Law in 2011.

fillable forms, message boards, publicly

who may be fired after missing just one shift,

C

B

A

University City

Center City

A

Kline School of Law

B

30TH Street Station

C

Trial Advocacy Institute

U CITY DIGEST As home to Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania, University City has long served as a leading engine of academic activity. In 2018, the capacity for research, innovation and entrepreneurship is growing exponentially, adding rocket fuel to Philadelphia’s efforts to build an innovation economy that will serve as a model for cities around the globe.

The growth that is under way reflects Drexel’s storied history of ambition and entrepreneurship and it creates abundant opportunities for the Kline School of Law. 35

Symposium Spotlights

Scholars explored the role that race has played in

Race and Policing

to contemporary times at the 2017-18 symposium

shaping police policy and conduct from slave patrols sponsored by the Drexel Law Review.

“Race & Policing: Defining the Problem and Developing Solutions” featured perspectives by legal scholars, former prosecutors and defense attorneys on the use of skin color to define criminality.

Professor Rashad Shabazz of Arizona State University discussed geographic, demographic and economic shifts that have made American cities ripe for aggressive policing, while Philadelphia attorney and former prosecutor Kevin Harden argued that integrating the law enforcement community has not abated racist practices and policy. Saint Louis University School of Law Professor Justin Hansford observed that key U.S. Supreme Court rulings in the 1960s turned on technicalities, rather than rights enshrined in the constitution.

Panelists Susan Shah of the Vera Institute of Justice, Professor Tryon Woods of the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and Professor Khalil Saucier of Bucknell University linked current dynamics with their historic roots. Woods contrasted the 1900 John Bad Elk v. United States ruling, where the Supreme Court upheld an individual’s right to resist an unlawful arrest with force, with the 2016 killing of Maryland resident Korryn Gaines, whose home police stormed to serve a warrant for a traffic stop.

In the keynote, Professor and Acting Dean Tamara

Professor Donald Tibbs, Kline School of Law

Lawson of the St. Thomas University School of Law explored the dearth of criminal charges or convictions that police have faced for aggressive tactics.

John Marshall Law School Professor andré douglas pond cummings, Defenders Association of Philadelphia Chief Defender Keir Bradford-Grey and Kline School of Law Professor and symposium organizer Donald Tibbs discussed shifts in the paradigm.

In Kingsley v. Hendrickson, the Supreme Court established standards for treating suspects held in pretrial detention that departed from the deference typically given to law enforcement officials, Tibbs noted.

“In Kingsley,” Tibbs said, “the Court was clear to

Professor Tamara Lawson, acting dean, St. Thomas University School of Law 36

remind prison officials that, even when incarcerated, ‘Black Lives Matter.’”

Clinic Scores Victory in Third Circuit Case

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit

matter, which had a lengthy appellate his-

ruled that a client represented by the Kline

tory. A state judge had vacated Bennett’s 1992

School of Law’s Federal Litigation and Appeals

conviction, prompting the District Attorney’s

Clinic was deprived due process when a jury

Office to appeal, first to the Superior Court,

convicted him of first degree murder, after

which agreed to overturn the conviction, and

receiving erroneous instructions.

then to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania,

In its ruling March 26, 2018, the court

which reversed the appellate court rulings.

concluded that the jury received instruc-

Third Circuit Judges Luis Felipe Restrepo,

tions that incorrectly led them to believe

Thomas L. Ambro and Richard Lowell Nygaard

that Philadelphian Tony L. Bennett could be

unanimously agreed with the students’ argu-

convicted of first degree murder, based on an

ments, thanking the clinic “for the skillful

accomplice’s intent.

pro bono advocacy provided to Mr. Bennett in

Two students enrolled in the clinic when

his appeal.”

they were 2Ls in 2017 argued that a first-

Professor Richard Frankel, who directs

degree murder conviction requires a jury to

the clinic, credited the students with working

find specific intent to kill on a defendant’s part.

tirelessly on behalf of Bennett, who is eligible

The students had previously filed briefs in the

for a new trial.

37

Class Combines Law Students and Incarcerated Women via Inside-Out Program

The course gave the “inside” students a measure of confidence as well as insight, said Corrigan, who organized and taught the course.

“Words and language have power,” Corrigan said. “They learned how to tell their stories in ways that are powerful.”

The law students were surprised to discover that some of their “inside” classmates sided with law enforcement more strongly than they did, while some aspiring prosecutors were troubled to learn of defects in the justice system.

The fact that many of the women did not understand why they had received the sentences they were serving, one Kline student said, is as disturbing as the process of mass incarceration.

The Kline School of Law offered a course on Crime and Justice in the U.S. through the Inside-Out Prison Exchange program, allowing 14 law students to take classes with women in the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia.

Hundreds of Inside-Out classes have been offered in the last 20 years, but this was among the first to feature a JD-level course.

“Race to Incarcerate,” a graphic textbook by Sabrina Jones and Marc Mauer that explores sentencing policy and the exponential growth of the prison system, served as the core text, but Professor Rose Corrigan also required students to read, write about and discuss articles from scholarly journals and the writings of philosopher and educator Paulo Freire.

38

Students met for class at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia

Colloquium Series:

Bending the Arc of Legal Thought

Informal gatherings of scholars create an opportunity for transformation in legal thinking.

The 2017-2018 Kline School of Law Faculty Colloquium Series attracted scholars from near and far who presented path-breaking work that stimulated rich and vigorous discussion and illuminated pathways for change.

April 9, 2018

September 6, 2017

November 13, 2017

January 22, 2018

Danielle Citron

Karen Tani

Josh Chafetz

Jordan Hyatt

Morton & Sophia

Assistant Professor of

Professor of Law at

Assistant Professor

Macht Professor of

Law at University of

Cornell Law School

at Drexel University,

Law at the University

California-Berkeley

of Maryland’s

School of Law

Francis King Carey School of Law “ Regulating Private

“Training the

“Congress’s

Department of

Constitution:

Criminology and

Legislative Authority

Justice Studies

Citizen—Enforcers of

and the Separation

Disability Rights”

of Powers”

“Measuring SelfReported Wrongful Convictions Among

Harms Online ”

Prisoners”

October 9, 2017

December 11, 2017

February 5, 2018

Teressa Ravenell

Molly Land

Alexandra Lahav

Professor of Law at

Professor of Law

Ellen Ash Peters

Villanova University

at the University

Professor of Law

Charles Widger

of Connecticut

at the University

School of Law

School of Law

of Connecticut

“Malicious Acts, Uncompensated

“Regulating Private Harms Online”

School of Law “The Curious Incident

Wrongs:

of the Falling

Compensating

Win Rate: Individual

§ 1983 Plaintiffs

vs System-Level

for Malicious

Justification and the

Police Conduct”

Rule of Law” 39

Alumni Fuel Innovation in Philadelphia

Kline alumni applying their knowledge and skills in creative ways include three Philadelphians who are stoking innovation and change in diverse spheres in the city and beyond.

A year after graduating in 2010, Emily Foote teamed up with Professor Karl Okamoto to co-found Practice, a startup based on applied learning methodology and patented video and feedback technology. In so doing, Foote harnessed both her legal training and her experience as a former teacher to advance educational technology. In 2017, when the Utah-based ed-tech company Instructure (makers of Canvas and Bridge) acquired Practice, they needed a savvy innovator to head up customer engagement for the company.

Emily Foote, ’13 Practice

To build or disrupt? The question is a mantra for Eamon Gallagher, ’13, program director of ic@3401, a partnership between Drexel University and the University City Science Center, housing Philadelphia’s largest group of funded, early-stage tech companies. An early organizer of Philly New Tech Meetup, Gallagher was described

by Technical.ly Philly as one of the city’s chief tech cheerleaders, building connections between the city’s Eamon Gallagher, ’13 ic@3401

entrepreneurs while providing legal research and analysis, conducting due diligence for investors and engaging in other activities that nurture the startup ecosystem.

Shana Weiner, ’13, was surprised to discover that Philadelphia lacks a legal services organization that serves survivors of domestic abuse in the Jewish community.

So she started one. In 2017, Weiner launched Dinah, a nonprofit organization that provides legal services and recruits and trains attorneys to help domestic abuse survivors with everything from family law to real estate, employment and immigration.

Shana Weiner, ’13 Dinah 40