Stanford Law School has announced that two faculty members who teach the
Supreme Court Litigation Clinic will each argue separate cases before
the Supreme Court of the United States today. The clinic is arguing six
cases before the Court this semester, outpacing every private law office
in the country for the Court’s January through
April sittings.
Since the clinic was founded four years ago, in spring 2004, Stanford
Law School students enrolled in the clinic have worked on 63 cases
before the Court -- a record not approached by another law school.
Twenty of those are merits cases, and the running tally of 63 includes
only cases for which the clinic appears as counsel; it does not include
every case for which students helped other legal teams prepare cert.
petitions or for which the clinic filed amicus briefs. As it stands now,
the clinic will likely be representing the petitioners in three cases
next fall.
The Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic is the first of its kind at
any law school; it is also the largest and most emulated, and the only
law school clinic principally run by full-time faculty members at the
law school instead of run out of a law firm with faculty participation.
All of its work is pro bono -- the clinic never charges its clients.
“Compared to when the clinic started, people
are now coming to us asking us to take cases,”
said Associate Professor Jeffrey Fisher, who is arguing Burgess v.
United States (06-11429) today. “Most of the
six cases we are arguing this semester, including Kennedy v. Louisiana,
are ones where local lawyers came out and asked the clinic for help.”
The clinic, which has quickly matured as an institution, also serves the
public interest.
“There was a real gap in the Supreme Court bar
for certain kinds of clients and certain kinds of issues that go before
the Court,” said Fisher, “particularly
criminal defendants, and civil rights and other kinds of plaintiffs.
Even if they have access to lawyers, they’re
often not the experienced Supreme Court insiders who often have a leg up
in the Court. So the clinic stepped into the breach. We’re
not just out there doing work that any law firm would be doing anyway.
In fact a lot of the cases we do by definition —
particularly the employment discrimination cases —
are ones where almost all of the Supreme Court practices in the country
expressly will not take it because it’s
adverse to their business clients and therefore their institutional
interest. The clinic is free to take those cases.”
Stanford Law School offers a variety of clinics that litigate in
specialized fields, including environmental protection, immigrants’
rights, community law, cyberlaw, and educational advocacy. The clinics
provide pro bono representation and operate cohesively as a single law
firm, the Mills Legal Clinic of Stanford Law School. The Mills Legal
Clinic provides students an opportunity to apply classroom theory to
real client situations and to develop a lifelong commitment to public
service values.
Unlike other Stanford clinics, which concentrate on one substantive area
of the law, the Supreme Court clinic focuses on the wide range of legal
issues decided by the nation's highest court. Under the direction of
professors Pam Karlan and Jeff Fisher and lecturers Tom Goldstein, Amy
Howe, and Kevin Russell, students prepare briefs and other filings,
participate in moots for oral arguments, meet with Court personnel and
reporters, and learn firsthand how the High Court operates. In the past
several Terms, the clinic has represented a wide variety of clients,
such as: workers raising claims under federal anti-discrimination laws,
the Civil Service Reform Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act; criminal
defendants with constitutional claims under the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth,
and Eighth Amendments; and various public interest and trade
associations, ranging from the California Medical Association, to the
National School Boards Association, to the National Women’s
Law Center.
The clinic has compiled a record at both the certiorari and merits
stages that would be the envy of any appellate practice. Among law
schools, the clinic is known as particularly writing-intensive; students
typically work in shifting teams to produce at least three briefs over
the course of a semester.
“By the time they leave, students have really
learned to write a first-rate brief and formulate their arguments,”
said Professor Pam Karlan, who co-founded the clinic and who will argue
Riley v. Kennedy (07-77) today.
Clinic alumni have gone on to a variety of clerkships, public-interest
fellowships, positions in the Department of Justice, and jobs at private
law firms.
About Pam Karlan, Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public
Interest Law
A productive scholar and award-winning teacher, Pamela S. Karlan is also
the founding director of the school’s
extraordinarily successful Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, where
students litigate live cases before the Court. One of the nation’s
leading experts on voting and the political process, she has served as a
commissioner on the California Fair Political Practices Commission and
an assistant counsel and cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund. Professor Karlan is the co-author of three leading
casebooks on constitutional law and related subjects, as well as more
than four dozen scholarly articles. She is a widely recognized
commentator on legal issues and is frequently featured on programs such
as the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Before joining the Stanford Law School
faculty in 1998, she was a professor of law at the University of
Virginia School of Law and served as a law clerk to Justice Harry A.
Blackmun of the Supreme Court of the United States and Judge Abraham D.
Sofaer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
About Jeffrey Fisher, Associate Professor of Law
A leading Supreme Court litigator and nationally recognized expert on
criminal procedure, Jeffrey Fisher has argued several and worked on
dozens of other cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. His successes
include bringing and winning the landmark cases of Blakely v.
Washington, in which the Court held the Sixth Amendment right to a jury
trial applies to sentencing guidelines and Crawford v. Washington, in
which he persuaded the Court to adopt a new approach to the
Constitution's Confrontation Clause. In 2006, the National Law Journal
named Professor Fisher one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in
America. In addition to his Supreme Court practice, Professor Fisher has
published several articles on various criminal and constitutional
issues, and he speaks regularly to judicial conferences and leading
legal organizations. He joined the law school faculty from the national
law firm of Davis Wright & Tremaine LLP where he also offered his
services pro bono to the National Association of Criminal Defense
Lawyers. Professor Fisher clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court
Justice John Paul Stevens.
About Stanford Law School
Stanford Law School is one of the nation’s
leading institutions for legal scholarship and education. Its alumni are
among the most influential decision makers in law, politics, business,
and high technology. Faculty members argue before the Supreme Court,
testify before Congress, and write books and articles for academic
audiences, as well as the popular press. Along with offering traditional
law school classes, the school has embraced new subjects and new ways of
teaching. The school’s home page is located
at www.law.stanford.edu.
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