W&L Law School to Teach Practice of Law

In an innovation that may well transform the future of legal education, the Washington and Lee School of Law has announced a new third-year curriculum that will replace all academic classes with practical simulations, real-client interactions and the development of law practice skills. In addition to exposing students to “actual interactions with clients,” the program will teach them to “keep track of their billing hours” according to an article by Vesna Jaksic in today’s National Law Journal. The subject matter of the simulations will include traditional topics like banking and corporate finance, securities law, environmental law and family law. The program will require students to obtain a Virginia practice certificate and take part in real life client cases during the course of a year long professionalism program.

The pioneering program, aimed at providing more of a hands-on experience for future lawyers, may have some disadvantages that practice oriented professionals may overlook. Law schools by their nature are academic institutions that are devoted to scholarship. Arguably, the law school experience is already too short a time to learn a significant amount of substantive law. Devoting the third year to practice rather than substance might shortchange students in the study of law. After all, many of them will be spending the rest of their lives in the practice of law.

A medical school model for the third year of law school has its attraction from the point of view of the practitioner. Revising law school curricula to integrate more clinical education into traditional scholarship may be a better way to take into account the practical aspects of law without sacrificing the academic mission of law school. In any event, the challenge of a modern practical legal scholarship is a daunting one.

Law Student Mental Health Initiative

This month, the American Bar Association Law Student Division has launched a mental health initiative to help law students battling depression, anxiety and substance abuse. The culmination of the project is National Mental Health Day on March 27. According to the organization’s web site, it will provide participating law schools with a mental health toolkit for student bar organizations and law deans to make available to students. Included in the toolkit is The Hidden Sources of Law School Stress a pamphlet written by Lawrence Krieger, a clinical professor at Florida State University College of Law.

One objective of the initiative is to help de-stigmatize problems with depression and anxiety among students. Often students avoid seeking help because they are concerned that they may have to disclose their problems in order to sit for the bar exam in their jurisdiction. On February 11, 2008 the ABA House of Delegates adopted as ABA policy a new Model Rule on Conditional Admission to Practice Law for bar applicants who have substance abuse or mental health conditions. Many jurisdictions may deem applicants unfit to practice for those reasons. The model rule, which is only advisory, would allow admission authorities to monitor such individuals for a period of time to insure that recovery is successful. It also provides for confidentiality so that those using its provisions will feel free to seek treatment without suffering stigma or denial of admission.

Locally, the New York City Bar Lawyer Assistance Program (NYC LAP) has a free, confidential service, available to attorneys, judges, law students and their family members, in New York City, who are struggling with alcohol or drug abuse, depression, anxiety, stress, as well as other addictions and mental health issues.

Source: National Law Journal, Leigh Jones, ABA Law Student Group Tackles Depression, March 12, 2008

The Mann Act or the White Slave Traffic Act

With Gov. Spitzer’s resignation, now might be a good time to look at the federal statute on which the Justice Department based its wiretap investigation of him as we wonder why the federal government prosecuted him in the first place. The Mann Act, officially known as the White Slave Traffic Act, was passed in 1910. Now codified in 18 US Code §2421, it reads:

Whoever knowingly transports any individual in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or Possession of the United States, with intent that such individual engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

A 1986 amendment to the Mann Act substituted the current phrase "engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense" for earlier language, which prohibited transportation of any "woman or girl" in interstate or foreign commerce for the "purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose".

Historical events leading to the enactment of the original statute are worth noting. From 1907 to 1914, there was wave of hysteria about "white slavery," the alleged practice of actually kidnapping young women and forcing them into brothels. The statute, initially passed to implement US adherence to the 1904 International Convention for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic aimed at the trade in white women in forced sex-for-hire, was a legislative response to an early 20th century “white slavery panic”. Also, prostitution, being an established fact of life in big cities and the subject of intense concern among reformers, was viewed as a threat to public decency and public health due to the sexually transmitted diseases associated with it. Puritans, social reformers, and hygienists all agreed that prostitution was a behavioral problem that needed to be controlled and changed through legislation.

In a series of cases from Hoke v U.S., 227 U.S. 308 (1913) to Caminetti v U.S., 242 U.S. 470 (1917), the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the original language of the Mann Act under a view of federalism that expanded federal regulatory power. Since then, the Mann Act has been used to prosecute a number of controversial political and public figures. Among them were the famous black boxer Jack Johnson for his affair with prostitute Lucille Cameron whom he later married, Charlie Chaplin for his involvement with actress Joan Barry and singer Chuck Berry after he invited a 14-year-old Apache waitress whom he met in Mexico to work as a hat check girl at his club.

Whether the Mann Act is a legitimate exercise of federal power or a statute that has been misused by overreaching federal prosecutors is a debate worth having. Useful reading on the topic is David Langum's Crossing Over the Line: Legislating Morality and the Mann Act, Call # KF9449 .L36 1994 in the BLS Library.

See also Sex, Corruption, Federalism, & the Mann Act posted in yesterday’s PrawfsBlawg.

Preparation for Future Law Clerks

This month, the popular law blog, The Volokh Conspiracy, posts several entries of interest to soon-to-be judicial clerks that include reading recommendations of books, articles, blogs and other material. See the postings here and especially here to find useful comments of current and former judicial clerks. Most of the titles listed here were suggested in the comments and are available in the BLS Library collection with the Call Number:

Frank Morey Coffin, On Appeal: Courts, Lawyering, and Judging
Call # KF8750 .C62 1994

Frank Morey Coffin, The Ways of a Judge: Reflections from the Federal Appellate Bench
Call # KF8750 .C63

Erwin Chemerinsky, Federal Jurisdiction
Call # KF8858 .C43 2007

Bryan A Garner, Garner's Modern American Usage
Call # PE2827 .G37 2003

Ruggero J. Aldisert, Opinion Writing, West Pub., 1990.

Other recommendations are Joseph Kimble’s 2006 article on plain language, The Straight Skinny on Better Judicial Opinions; the Green Bag's Clerkship Politics and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines at http://www.ussc.gov/2007guid/Chap1.pdf. The law clerks suggested daily reading of leading blogs like Sentencing Law & Policy, How Appealing, Decision of the Day, SCOTUSblog and The Volokh Conspiracy.

The comments also include useful practical tips that prospective law clerks will want to read. Not the least of these is to “introduce yourself to the law librarians. They can be terrific sources of help to you with research, acquiring materials from other places, and information re navigating the courthouse and its personnel. Law librarians are hardwired to be helpful -- and they really want you to be a success at your clerkship.”

Episode 018 - Conversation with Professor Ann Althouse

Episode 018 - Conversation with Professor Ann Althouse.mp3

Visiting Professor of Law Ann Althouse joins the faculty at Brooklyn Law School this academic year from the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, where she has been a Professor of Law since 1984. At BLS, Professor Althouse teaches Constitutional Law and Federal Courts and the Federal System. In today's conversation, we discuss Prof. Althouse's popular blog, Althouse, which she has written since 2004, posting photographs and commentary on law, politics, and popular culture. Prof. Althouse also addresses the impact of blogs on the future of legal scholarship citing her 2006 article Why A Narrowly Defined Legal Scholarship Blog Is Not What I Want: An Argument In Pseudo-Blog Form from the issue of the Washington University Law Review on bloggership.

For the past twenty years, Prof. Althouse has made significant contributions to traditional legal scholarship. See a list of her key scholarly works in Wikipedia. She has been a guest columnist for the New York Times. And if you can’t get enough of the divine Ms. Althouse, check out Audible Althouse for a collection of pod casts talking about blogging and other topics.

Brooklyn Judge Urges U.S. to Stop Seeking Death Penalty

A recent order by the Hon. Jack B. Weinstein, Senior Judge of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn and former Adjunct Professor of Law at BLS, describes the high financial costs of a death penalty case in the federal courts. The order dealt with scheduling and jury selection in the case of a defendant charged with capital murder after he had confessed to a grisly double homicide of two fellow drug dealers. Judge Weinstein, after reciting the substantial judicial effort of the case involving 11 separate rulings, stated:

“To date, more than $769,000 has been spent on defense costs alone in this capital case. It is likely that the prosecution has expended an equal amount. Thus, from its inception until today -- before trial has even begun -- the insistence of the government on a death sentence has cost over $1.5 million. With 500 or more jurors and an extensive two-phase trial taking months, an additional amount equal to what has already been laid out will probably be required. These sums are typical of those expended in other capital cases in this district… Based on the history of the cases tried in metropolitan New York, the chance of Pepin receiving the death penalty is virtually nil.”

An article in today’s New York Sun describes the U.S. Courthouse in Brooklyn as the hub of death penalty prosecutions in the Northeast where other local federal judges have asked the Justice Department to reconsider decisions to seek the death penalty. The requests to the Justice Depart to review pursuing capital punishment are based on the monetary and manpower costs of holding capital trials rather than opposition to capital punishment. Judge Weinstein’s order shows that the monetary and ideological arguments are interwoven when he states:

“From an analysis of other capital cases brought in the Eastern District of New York…the killing of two colleagues over a drug trafficking disagreement [is] not likely to result in a jury verdict of death. Apparently, the only death penalty judgment imposed in New York federal courts in the last fifty years was one where the defendant deliberately killed, under terrible circumstances, two policemen.”

Source: New York Law Journal, Mark Fass, Judge Urges U.S. to Stop Seeking Death Penalty News Briefs dated March 3, 2008

BLS Law Students for Veterans Rights

One of the newest BLS student organizations, Law Students for Veterans Rights is devoted to representing veterans in the New York City area. Law students offer veterans returning from combat help in resolving problems of inadequate medical care, delays in benefits, treatment and rehabilitation for injuries, homelessness, unemployment, substance abuse, domestic problems and reintegration into civilian life. The organization works with other local public service groups such as Iraq War Veterans, LGBT Veterans of New York City, Congressional Advocacy groups and a clinic of 10 New York City law firms.

Elizabeth Towell, Class of 2009, and Susannah Ashton, Class of 2009, talk about the work of the Law Students for Veterans Rights. They also discuss the film When I Came Home which the group will screen on Wednesday, March 5 at 5pm in Geraldo’s at Feil Hall. The film features homeless American veterans who served in Vietnam and the current war in Iraq and looks at the challenges they face in obtaining veterans’ benefits.

Episode 017 - Conversation with Law Students for Veterans Rights.mp3