Group #1 Pedagogy - Teaching
Justice
·
Prism
Advocacy: Refracting the White Light in Asylum Law
Kaci Bishop,
University of North Carolina School of Law
“But as attorneys,
don’t we have a duty to play the game?” A student asked me this question when
we were exploring the pervasive client narrative in asylum law: that of a
helpless victim fleeing an evil country to be saved by the U.S.—and the ethics
in propagating that narrative. My reply: What is our duty to change the rules
of the game?
Playing the game
often means zealously going for the win regardless of cost, including
sustaining stereotypes and risking a client’s dignity, such as casting our
clients in a distorted, unidimensional white light of being a victim in need of
rescue. But with asylum, playing the game rarely means winning. So, what can we
do to change the game?
While systemic
interventions may be required for substantial change, this article focuses on
the potential change effected through direct representation—and how we can
teach students to mine this potential. The article engages with the perennial
conversation about the tension in serving our clients and serving the cause. It
also draws on elements from critical race and feminist theories to provide
students and asylum advocates with additional tools and lenses for
interrogating their own identities, gathering details from their clients, and
building alternative case theories and narratives. Together, these tools and
lenses form a prism that helps students refract the white light in which we
view and cast asylum cases, expanding their understanding of what might be
possible in terms of advocacy and changing the game.
·
Teaching Doctrine
for Justice Readiness
Amanda
Levendowski, Georgetown University Law School
Clinics strive to
teach students lawyering skills. But clinics should also teach students how to
use those skills to confront injustice and promote justice, an approach Jane
Aiken refers to as “justice readiness.” Casework for clients presents many
opportunities for students to become justice ready, but not all matters do so
equally. Some matters involve injustices in one area of law while leaving
others untouched. Others don’t connect with broader themes of injustice. And
some don’t require creative advocacy for justice. Casework remains a powerful
driver of justice readiness, but it cannot do the job alone.
Teaching students
doctrine through a social justice lens can bridge the justice readiness gap.
This essay introduces two new pedagogical approaches cultivated within
Georgetown’s new Intellectual Property and Information Policy Clinic that do
just that: Doctrine x Social Justice and Deep Dives. Doctrine x Social Justice
uses cutting-edge social justice case studies that illustrate themes of
injustice and creatively explore lawyers’ bending the law toward justice to
teach underlying doctrine in nine substantive areas of intellectual property
law and information policy, setting students up to observe themes of
(in)justice within the field. Deep Dives empower students to create their own
Doctrine x Social Justice sessions by using current issues of law and policy to
explore underlying doctrine. Together, these approaches provide a fresh way of
teaching doctrine for justice readiness.