Digging Them Out Alive

From 2013-2018, we taught a collection of interrelated law and social work clinical courses, which we call “the Unger clinic.” This clinic was part of a major, multi-year criminal justice project, led by the Maryland Office of the Public Defender. The clinic and project responded to a need created by a 2012 Maryland Court of Appeals decision, Unger v. State. It, as later clarified, required that all Maryland prisoners who were convicted by juries before 1981—237 older, long-incarcerated prisoners—be given new trials. This was because prior to 1981 Maryland judges in criminal trials were required to instruct the jury that they—the jury—had the ultimate right to determine the law. Our clinic helped to implement Unger by providing a range of legal services and related social services to many of these prisoners. Through the five years, the great majority of the Unger group were released by agreements, on probation, and not retried. In all, approximately 85% of the 237—that is, 85% of all state prisoners in Maryland convicted by juries of violent crimes before 1981—were released. This article describes why and how we created the Unger Clinic; why we made it interdisciplinary; what the students and we learned in it and from our clients; and what we would do differently. We believe the clinical education model we developed—an interdisciplinary clinic working in partnership with a major legal services provider and a citizens’ advocacy group—can be used effectively to address other significant access-to-justice problems nationally. In the end, the Unger Project has been a criminal justice laboratory. The qualitative experiences support many criminal justice reforms with the overriding lesson being that the continued incarceration of older, long incarcerated prisoners convicted of violent crimes serves no public safety purpose

Normalizing the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling

This Article represents a revised version of a paper that was made available to the International Whaling Commission in connection with the current deliberations concerning the future of that organization

Summary of State v. White, 130 Nev. Adv. Op. 56

The Court determined whether a person could burglarize his or her own home

Flattening Hierarchies in a Round World: A Multilogue Response to Goldenberg’s “Youth Historians in Harlem (Part 2 of 2)”

Michael Bowman continues the discussion of Barry Goldenberg\u27s work, asking what history does and who benefits from flattening hierarchies

Summary of Las Vegas Sands Corp. v. Eighth Judicial Dist. Court, 130 Nev. Adv. Op. 69

The Court determined whether a former CEO is within a “class of persons” allowed to use the corporation’s privileged documents in litigation against the corporation