Street Law, Inc.: Context, History and Future

In 1972, a small group of Georgetown University law students developed a series of practical law lessons for use with public high school students in Washington, D.C. These visionaries recognized that ordinary citizens—not just lawyers—needed a basic understanding of practical law in order to take on civic responsibilities. The lessons were popular with the high school students and with their law student teachers. Responding to their practical nature, the high school students called these lessons “Street Law.” The name stuck.A pilot program in two local high schools in 1972–73 launched a movement—first in the United States but eventually around the world—to teach the public about law and public policy using learner-centered, interactive teaching methods. Today, Street Law programs can be found in every state in the U.S. and in more than 40 countries around the world.Propelling this global movement to advance justice through practical education about law and democracy is Street Law, Inc., a Washington, D.C. area non-profit organization that is an outgrowth of the early Street Law program at Georgetown University Law Center. That pilot effort has also grown into a full-fledged, credit-bearing experiential education program at Georgetown that has served as a model program for more than 120 law schools across the country and around the world. Nearly 1,000 upper division Georgetown Law students have participated in this program since its inception. Many have gone on to positions as law firm partners, corporate counsel, government officials in the U.S. and abroad, and even members of the federal court bench. They have taken from their law school experience a commitment to public education about law and democracy

Street law : a course in practical law

xix, 647 p. : col. ill. ; 26 c

Street law : a course in practical law

xix, 647 p. : col. ill. ; 26 cm

Sreet Law: a course in practical law

580 hlm

Street law: A course in practical law

xix, 647 hal.; 24 c

A Comparative-Law Perspective on Street Law in Italy: Drawing Best Practices from Common-Law Traditions to Boost Civic Engagement in a Civil-Law Context

The chapter provides a comparative-law perspective- specifically the US and Italian models - on legal, civic and legal educational cultures. In particular, it describes the content of a proposed course in Street Law, being taught for the first time in Italy in the spring of 2019 at Roma Tre University. The course will instill law students with the tools and techniques needed to teach high school students the basics of civic education - including concepts such as rule of law, subsidiarity and democracy - largely lacking in the Italian educational system. By partnering with the non-profit volunteer organization Retake Roma, the course participants will organize a cleanup, involving the local Retake neighborhood group and a local high school. Didactic approaches, a best-practices lesson plan and interactive strategies are explored, as well as the challenges such a course will meet in the Italian legal-education system and local context. Other contributers to this volume include: Rebecca Grimes, Lee Arbetman, David McQuoid-Mason, Ulviyya Mikayilova, Lamiya Sharafkanova, Vitaly Radsky, Jeff Giddings, Arpeeta Mizan, Rolf Gollob, Lucia Madlenakova, Harrison Belley, Angeliki Aroni, Rosa Tedjabuwana, Hesti Septianita, Leni Widi Mulyani, John Lunney, Sean Arthurs, Chris Malcolm, Ramona Biholar, Bruce A. Lasky, Wendy Morrish, Stephen A. Rosenbaum, Bebs Chorak, Chigizori Ojiaka, Boubacar Tall, Coline Bruintjies, Nancy Flowers, A Gascón-Cuenca, Rainer Adam, Pimrapaat Dusadeeisariyakul, Ben Fourniotis, Seda Gayreti, Ted Huddlestone, Richard Grimes, Margaret Fisher, Judy Zimmer, Mary C. Larki

Data from: Ranked tree shapes, non-random extinctions and the loss of phylogenetic diversity

Phylogenetic diversity (PD) is a measure of the evolutionary legacy of a group of species, which can be used to define conservation priorities. It has been shown that an important loss of species diversity can sometimes lead to a much less important loss of PD, depending on the topology of the species tree and on the distribution of its branch lengths. However, the rate of decrease of PD strongly depends on the relative depths of the nodes in the tree and on the order in which species become extinct. We introduce a new, sampling-consistent, three-parameter model generating random trees with covarying topology, clades relative depths and clades relative extinction risks. This model can be seen as an extension to Aldous' one parameter splitting model (β, which controls for tree balance) with two additional parameters: a new parameter α quantifying the relation between age and richness of subclades, and a parameter η quantifying the relation between relative abundance and richness of subclades, taken herein as a proxy for overall extinction risk. We show on simulated phylogenies that loss of PD depends on the combined effect of all three parameters, β, α and η. In particular, PD may decrease as fast as species diversity when high extinction risks are clustered within small, old clades, corresponding to a parameter range that we term the `danger zone' (β1). Besides, when high extinction risks are clustered within large clades, the loss of PD can be higher in trees that are more balanced (β>0), in contrast to the predictions of earlier studies based on simpler models. We propose a Monte-Carlo algorithm, tested on simulated data, to infer all three parameters. Applying it to a real dataset comprising 120 bird clades (class Aves) with known range sizes, we show that parameter estimates precisely fall close to a danger zone: the combination of their ranking tree shape and non-random extinctions risks makes them prone to a sudden collapse of PD