This session will use the current Bellow Scholar research projects to explore different empirical methodologies suited for research by clinical legal educators. While the session will use the current Bellow Scholars’ research as
examples, it is intended to be useful for any clinicians conducting or considering empirical research projects.
The Bellow Scholar program
recognizes and supports empirical research projects designed to improve the
quality of justice in communities, enhance the delivery of legal services, and
promote economic and social justice. The Bellow Scholar Program recognizes and
supports projects that use empirical analysis as an advocacy tool and involve
substantial collaboration between law and other academic disciplines. This
session features the 2021-22 Bellow Scholars. The next class of Bellow Scholars
will be selected in Fall 2022.
Co-Chairs and Moderators:
Wendy A. Bach, University of Tennessee
College of Law
Fatma Marouf, Texas A&M University School of Law
Sabrineh
Ardalan and Philip Torrey, Harvard Law School
Solitary
Confinement in Immigration Detention
This project
will examine how frequently solitary confinement is used in immigration
detention and the reasons ICE and detention facilities give for placing
individuals in solitary confinement. We will focus on whether there are safeguards
in place to protect individuals with mental illness from solitary confinement
and what treatment options are available. We will focus our research on data
obtained through FOIA requests and Privacy Act requests from our home state of
Massachusetts and subsequently expand on that research to study other states
across the country. Given the lack of available public data on the number of
immigrants placed in solitary nationwide since 2013, our first goal is to
discover how many immigrants have been affected by this practice and the
reasons given. We will then examine the safeguards and processes in place to
screen people before, during, and after they are subjected to these conditions. The
project is a collaboration between Sabrineh Ardalan, Philip Torrey, and Dr.
Arevik Avedian, a Lecturer on Law and Director
of the Empirical Research Group at HLS. Her expertise is in applied
quantitative analysis, and her research, teaching, and scholarship have an
interdisciplinary focus in various areas of political science, law, and
economics.
Lisa
Martin, University of South
Carolina School of Law
Domestic
Violence and Access to Civil Justice in South Carolina
The goals of this
project are to learn about the people seeking civil legal protections from
domestic violence in South Carolina, how their claims for relief are faring in
courts, and whether court outcomes meet the needs conveyed by petitioners. In
doing so, the project aims to shine light on court and judicial practices that
often remain hidden and examine the impact