Clinical Scholarship and the Justice Mission

To many people, the relationship between clinical programs and the justice mission of American law schools is so clear as to be self-evident. These programs may pursue justice on behalf of individual clients or for groups of clients through class-action or other impact litigation. Moreover, clinical teachers frequently discuss with their students the need for the latter to serve justice in their legal careers, whether as the principal focus of their legal work or through pro bono publico activities. Indeed, for many law students, the law clinic may be the only place in which concerns about justice are discussed and, at least sometimes, acted upon. In this brief essay, I want to suggest that clinical scholarship is not an oxymoron. Such scholarship already has contributed to nascent understandings of the different meanings of justice within the academy. If it develops to its full potential, it can broaden still further our understanding of the various visions of justice that exist within both the academy and society at large

Tales from a Supportive Guardianship

F or a number of years now, I have been a committed advocate of supported decision making as an alternative to guardianship for people with intellectual disabilities. In writings, presentations, classes, and meetings,1 I have argued that supported decision making is not only less restrictive than guardianship but more consistent with principles of client-centered counseling and person-centered planning that animate approaches to lawyering and the delivery of services to people with intellectual disabilities. Even the most humane and limited forms of guardianship shift decision-making focus from the individual with a disability to his or her guardian or other surrogate decision maker. In contrast, although the person with an intellectual disability may get significant support from one or more supporters, that person remains the primary decision maker in his or her life

Optimal length and signal amplification in weakly activated signal transduction cascades

Weakly activated signaling cascades can be modeled as linear systems. The input-to-output transfer function and the internal gain of a linear system, provide natural measures for the propagation of the input signal down the cascade and for the characterization of the final outcome. The most efficient design of a cascade for generating sharp signals, is obtained by choosing all the off rates equal, and a ``universal'' finite optimal length.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figures, LaTeX fil

Fifty Years of Clinical Legal Education at American University Washington College of Law: The Evolution of A movement in Theory, Practice, and People

Clinical legal education has evolved substantially in the fifty years since Elliott Milstein initiated the clinical model at American University Washington College of Law (“WCL”) that, notwithstanding numerous changes in program and personnel since that time, remains essentially in effect today. In this Article, we explore the theoretical, pedagogical, structural, programmatic, and personnel developments that have occurred during this period. We link these developments to broader developments within the national and international clinical legal education spheres. WCL’s Clinical Program, and its clinical faculty, have been leaders in shaping these developments, but, in the best clinical tradition, we have not done so alone but in dialogue with other colleagues. We conclude with a discussion of the unfinished business of the clinical legal education movement