Walking the Clinical Tightrope: Enhancing the Role of Teacher

The University of Maryland School of Law is celebrating thirty years of providing exceptional clinical education. Such occasions offer unique opportunities to reflect. In thirty years there has been a lot of growth and a lot of change. Some say that the change has detoured us from the ultimate goal of client service and access to justice. I say that the thirty years have changed us for the better. One thing that hasn\u27t changed is that clinicians still have an abiding interest in dealing with social injustices and in playing a proactive role in ensuring a just society. Thirty years ago, it was a hearty band of Legal Aid attorneys who said, “OK, I\u27m coming into the academy; this is great. You\u27re going to fund my public interest law practice and I\u27m going to have all these students and we\u27re going to do this clinic stuff. It\u27s going to be terrific.” Things have changed. There\u27s a new breed of clinician coming into the academy and some of us who were already here have evolved into that new breed

Provocateurs for Justice

Clinical legal education offers unique opportunities to inspire law students to commit to justice. Merely providing a justice experience is not enough. We must provoke a desire to do justice in our students. As provocateurs, we determine where our students are in the developmental process toward justice readiness. This article outlines those developmental stages and suggests interventions to assist students in their transition from stage to stage. Being justice ready requires sensitivity to the ways in which assumptions color all aspects of our cases. The article closes with suggestions and examples of how to critically reflect on assumptions that hinder social justice

AIDS - Pushing the Limits of Scientific and Legal Thought

Perhaps one of the greatest challenges to the scientific and legal community confronts us now-not by choice but by tragic happenstance. It has taken the form of a mysterious disease that is striking down its victims at an alarming rate. The disease is AIDS. The scientific community is pushing the limits of medical knowledge in its effort to cure and contain the illness. At the same time the legal community, in the face of scientific uncertainty, must balance the needs of a frightened public and the rights of those persons who are affected by the disease. One thing is clear: it is important for the law to confront these challenges by anticipating needs before they overwhelm us

Protecting Plaintiffs\u27 Sexual Pasts: Coping with Preconceptions Through Discretion

Part I of this Article traces the development of the civil application of Rule 412, the so-called “Rape Shield Rule”. Part II analyzes the inconsistencies within the cases decided under the new civil rule and links those inconsistencies to the language of the rule. It identifies the trends within the cases about what constitutes probative value for purposes of the rule and how courts assess prejudice. The Article concludes that rules of evidence designed to remedy bias of fact finders should not be cast as discretionary. Many of the problems that arise in the interpretation of Rule 412 could be solved, if the civil application of Rule 412 were as specific and nondiscretionary as the criminal rule. Therefore, in Part III, the Article proposes a rule designed to offer such specificity

Leveling the Playing Field: Federal Rules of Evidence 412 & 415: Evidence Class as a Platform for Larger (More Important) Lessons

Teachers often approach Federal Rules of Evidence 412 and 415 with trepidation. After all, it means that a law teacher will have to talk about sex, with a group (often a large group) of law students - many of whom are in their early twenties and have never had a non-peer conversation about sex. It looks like a recipe for disaster. Let me suggest just the opposite - it offers the law teacher an opportunity to address perhaps one of the most important lessons of law school: the law only works if there is a level playing field

Intimate Violence and the Problem of Consent

The juxtaposition of intimacy with violence is striking. Intimacy implies a closeness and a vulnerability that is treasured and inviolate. Intimacy should foreclose the possibility of violence. Intimate violence should be an oxymoron. Yet, intimacy sometimes creates its own special kind of violence, one that can erupt into rape or assault. On a less physical level, intimacy may cause violence to a woman\u27s personal integrity and economic independence. Intimate violence manifests itself with a certain subtlety that forces women to walk a careful tightrope in order to avoid threatened harm. This essay is about that tightrope: the double binds women experience in their intimate lives and the ways in which the law reinforces those binds by interpreting women\u27s constrained choices as consent. This essay focuses on familial and sexual intimacy to see how the law reads women\u27s behavior as indicating consent to what would otherwise be redressable harm

Lessons from Nepal: Partnership, Privilege and Potential

Dramatic differences in culture present students with the opportunity to gain considerable perspective on their own perceptions and a chance to operate in a legal environment that, like most endeavors in the world today, has become increasingly globalized. This kind of experience has generally been missing in the training of our university law students. The students in Washington University\u27s Civil Justice Clinic have provided legal services to women and children who have been victims of violence in a wide array of socio-economic settings. They have also worked on policy initiatives that shape government on city, state and federal levels. But they have not typically had the opportunity to see how these issues – especially those involving human rights – play out in other countries. Social justice is an international endeavor-awareness of global human rights issues is essential for lawyers concerned about justice

Ex Post Facto in the Civil Context: Unbridled Punishment

This Article outlines the historical background of the Ex Post Facto Clause, focusing on the intent of the framers and the Supreme Court\u27s narrowing of the Clause to apply only to criminal statutes and any civil statutes that are unmistakably punitive in nature. The focus then shifts to the problem of mixed motives in legislative acts