The Power of the Public Defender Experience: Learning by Fighting for the Incarcerated and Poor

This Essay discusses how public defender apprenticeships impact law students and help mold their future careers. Brayer discusses the tangible advantages that the apprenticeship imparts on students as well as the transferable skills that students gain. Brayer then analyzes the internal and professional growth of students that participate in this apprenticeship. Brayer situates this growth within the context of Chief Justice John Marshall’s own similar experience, arguing how the public defender experience focuses and matures aspiring lawyers

Roger Nash Baldwin and the St. Louis Civil Liberties Trail: Celebrating 100 Years of the ACLU with a Search for the Organization’s Conceptual Founding

This article traces the role of Roger Nash Baldwin as a leading figure in the American civil liberties movement in the early twentieth century. In particular, the article highlights the central role of St. Louis in this history. At the advice of family friend Louis Brandeis, Baldwin moved to St. Louis to become a sociology professor at Washington University. At the time, St. Louis was a center of migration for African Americans escaping oppression in the South. The article traces a variety of geographical locations throughout St. Louis that were important to Baldwin’s development as a leader in the civil liberties movement

Pandemic, Protest, and Agency: Jury Service and Equal Protection in a Future Defined by COVID-19

This essay calls for an expansive view of Fourteenth Amendment equal protection against the discriminatory empanelment of juries grounded upon a culture of systemic racism. For an individual juror fundamental elements of survival during a pandemic are access to health care, safe transportation, and connective technology. Yet, structural and systemic racism precludes many potential jurors of color from securing these necessary supports, thus denying them the ability to be recognized on juror source list or accommodated for jury service. Jury service is a direct and impactful act of citizen agency over the justice system, and the systemic exclusion of individuals from jury service based on race and economic status is a denial of that agency and a constitutional violation. Supreme Court rulings like Duren v. Missouri are inadequate to provide relief in the face of such violations and only provide outdated and ineffectual remedies to this mass denial of equity

Hidden Racial Bias: Why We Need to Talk with Jurors about Ferguson

Issues of race frame our national identity and define our capacity to achieve true equality for all individuals. By its very nature and traditions, the law is a profession tasked with confronting inequality and discrimination in our society. As issues of race continue to influence our communities, nation, and world, the legal profession will be charged with leading future discussions on how prejudice and bias affect our clients. Unfortunately, as legal professionals, we still struggle with the question of whether to talk about race in voir dire. This essay discusses our obligation as judges, academics, and practitioners to understand how unconscious racial bias exists in the hidden belief systems of many, if not all, jurors. These actors must also recognize that open dialogue in jury selection is a proven strategy against the effects of individual undetected prejudice. Furthermore, attorneys must concede hidden bias in themselves before fully comprehending the devastating impacts of racial biases

Opposition to Clinics Tests Attorney-Client Privilege; Students Working on Pro Bono Cases Leave Schools Vulnerable to Confidentiality Challenges

This National Law Journal article draws attention to past attempts by government and private parties to pierce the protections of the attorney client relationship, specifically confidentiality, when it comes to the representation of clients by law school clinics. Several law school clinics and innocence projects have defended themselves against actions by prosecuting attorney offices and opposing parties who have attempted to obtain information that is traditionally protected by state and federal confidentiality rules. Law school clinics, public interest organizations, innocence projects, government agencies and Public Defender organizations can better protect themselves from future attempts by opposing parties to invade the attorney client privilege and seek confidential client information from student sources. The article outlines a recommended strategy for legal organizations that utilize students as both practitioners and assistants, advising how best to prepare in the present against future requests for privileged information

Cross-Examination Content and the Power of Not

One of the challenges in constructing an impactful cross-examination (cross) is creating content. Many trial attorneys can effectively identify issues in the discovery process but fail to communicate to the fact finder the power of the facts as they relate to the case. Depositions can be artfully conducted and interrogatories expertly administered, but if the presenter of the evidence is unable to translate basic facts into vivid images and stories, then once-dominant discovery revelations can often be reduced to tepid references. After years of preparing one case, many trial attorneys are so hardened to the basic facts that they fail to emphasize in cross the importance of obvious, yet highly influential, pieces of evidence