The Andragogical Basis of Clinical Legal Education

Clinical legal education offers law students the opportunity to work together with faculty on cases that present the types of problems which law students want to learn how to solve. Andragogical theory holds that adult learners such as law students should be taught through mutual inquiry between teacher and student, through the use of actual experience, and with the recognition that students are ready and oriented to learn about that which they perceive to be relevant to their current social roles and professional goals. The clinical method of law teaching adds an important andragogical component to professional legal education; at the same time, andragogy provides both a theoretical basis for clinical legal education and some suggestions about a model for implementing the clinical method. Clinical legal education works in large part because it is andragogically sound. Legal education in general can benefit from andragogical theory, and the recognition of the andragogical basis of clinical legal education perhaps can hasten the integration of the clinical method into the mainstream of legal education

Access to Justice and the Global Clinical Movement

This Essay takes up the question of clinical legal education’s commitment to access to justice from a global perspective and argues that an emerging global clinical movement can strengthen that commitment and increase the level and quality of law-school-based access-to-justice activity worldwide. This Essay consists of four main parts, the first three of which focus on the three key components of a global clinical movement: its global reach, its clinical base, and its status as a movement. Each of these three components is critical to the development of a global clinical movement and to its ultimate success—both generally and in its efforts to improve access to justice. Moreover, each must support and reinforce the others. Therefore, each of the next three parts of this Essay first examines one of these key components in the context of the other two and then addresses the importance of that particular component to a global clinical movement that seeks to improve access to justice around the world. The last part of the Essay suggests an approach for mobilizing the global clinical movement to improve access to justice around the world, drawing on the experience of the Global Alliance for Justice Education (“GAJE”)

Three Steps and You\u27re Out: The Misuse of the Sequential Evaluation Process in Child SSI Disability Determinations

The federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program provides cash benefits to financially needy persons who are 65 years of age or older, blind, or disabled. It also provides cash benefits to children with disabilities under the age of 18. This Article examines three sets of regulatory efforts to implement special disability standards for children, based first on the original SSI legislation, then on a seminal Supreme Court decision, and finally on amendments to the Social Security Act overruling the Court\u27s decision, and shows how the sequential evaluation process, which has been useful for adjudicating adult disability claims, has been a counterproductive force in the child\u27s SSI program. It then suggests how the Social Security Administration might meet the program\u27s goals more effectively by breaking with the sequential evaluation model and replacing it with a unique disability determination process for children

Representation and Advocacy at Non-Adversary Hearings: The Need for Non-Adversary Representatives at Social Security Disability Hearings

The use of independent non-adversary representatives responsible for development and presentation of all relevant evidence and issues would resolve most of the deficiencies in the hearing stage of the present Social Security process, including those resulting from deficiencies in the prehearing stages. Administrative law judges would be relieved of unmanageable responsibilities and the hearing would be conducted fairly and on a complete record without undermining the advantages of a non-adversary system or incurring the cost of instituting truly adversary proceedings