Author Archives: Faculty

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Faculty Post: the Conviction of General Efrain Rios Montt and the Impact on Victims of Violence

View of Guatemala City with the "Agua&quo...

View of Guatemala City (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Katherine E. Schulte, Supervising Attorney, Domestic Violence Institute, Northeastern University School of Law

On Friday May 10, 2013, General Efraín Ríos Montt, the former dictator who ruled Guatemala during one of the most violent periods of the country’s 36-year civil war, was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity.  In addition to charges that he masterminded the massacre of 1,771 Ixil Mayans, Ríos Montt was convicted of 1,485 acts of sexual violence and acts of torture.  The 86-year-old was sentenced to 80 years in prison, and victims and their families will receive reparations in various forms.

You might be wondering why I, a domestic violence attorney in Boston, would care about a genocide trial in Central America.  Viewed through the widest lens, this is a pivotal moment in the international human rights movement.  It was the first time that a former head of state was tried for genocide in his home nation in genuine proceedings in his home nation (despite several delay tactics, procedural roadblocks, and the lingering scent of corruption along the way).  Guatemala has been under the microscope since the trial began in March, as the nation was given a chance to prove to its citizens, and the rest of the world, that it could uphold the rule of law.  This was a true test for a country that has been grappling with a legacy of extreme violence since the armed conflict officially ended in 1996.

But my interest in understanding Guatemala’s sense of justice runs much deeper. I have relatives who live in Guatemala City, and I visited them a handful of times throughout my childhood.  However, it wasn’t until the last decade, as my awareness about Guatemala’s internal conflict evolved in step with my interest in advocating for survivors of domestic and sexual violence here in Boston, that I truly began to understand the struggles facing victims in Guatemala.

During the civil war, the Guatemalan army—commanded by Ríos Montt, and with financial and training resources from the United States—developed and implemented a series of plans designed to exterminate the Ixil Mayan population, believing that the counterinsurgency could only be ended by eradicating Ixil support of the guerillas.  Rape was one tool used by the military as part of the systematic and intentional plan to destroy the Ixil ethnic group; exercising violence on women’s bodies was seen as a way to destroy the social fabric and thereby stop the growth of the Ixil population. Although these crimes occurred more than 30 years ago, during the past several weeks the court heard testimony from dozens of survivors who described the extreme atrocities they suffered at the hands of the army.  Day 8 of the trial was dedicated solely to hearing the testimony of survivors of sexual violence perpetrated by the military.  [Trigger warning—link contains descriptions of extreme sexual violence]. 

The violence persisted in very real ways after the war.  As Giovana Lemus from the Guatemalan Women’s Group has stated, “Guatemala went from war to peace but came out with organized crime and clandestine groups who deny the rights and integrity of all women and act with impunity.”  Guatemala’s legal system was in no way equipped to deal with this; statutes criminalizing femicide and other violence against women did not become law in Guatemala until 2008. Add to this a pervasive culture of patriarchy and “machismo”… In short, what Guatemala was left with after the war was a justice system at best incapable—and at worst unwilling—to respond adequately to the rights of victims of violent crime, especially women.

So, what could this recent monumental verdict mean for victims in Guatemala?  Without a doubt, Ríos Montt’s conviction is necessary to encourage justice and healing in Guatemala.  As David Tolbert, president of the International Center for Transitional Justice, noted in a statement released after the verdict, “Today will be carved into history…as a victory for victims in the country, and for all who care about the state guaranteeing, rather than abusing, the fundamental rights of citizens.”

But as I contemplate this victory for Guatemala, I am drawn to compare the experiences of my clients, survivors of domestic and sexual violence here in Boston.  I am left with this question:  What does it mean for a state to truly protect its victims?  Here, our clients know that laws protecting them from violence exist, and police officers and prosecutors are aware of their obligations to enforce them.  But what does that actually mean for our undocumented clients, or those in communities of color, where there may be deep-seated distrust or fear of law enforcement?  In a city like Boston, with a troubled history of racism and xenophobia, can survivors really rely on the state to protect them?

As an attorney who has spent the past several years watching our students navigate the justice system with their clients, I do have faith that there is value in accessing the system.  I have seen clients emerge on the other side of the criminal justice process safer and more empowered, having helped send messages of deterrence and accountability to the perpetrator.  But there are just as many cases where law is not the answer.  And if the justice systems at home and abroad are as limited as they seem, it seems that the better question to be asking is:  What more can we be doing to stem the violence at its sources in our communities?

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Faculty Post: The Boston Tragedy Reveals the Need for Community-Based Counterterrorism Strategies

This blog post was written by Northeastern University School of Law Professor Deborah Ramirez, who founded the Partnering for Prevention and Community Safety Intitiative (PfP), and her colleague, Tara Lai Quinlan, for the Huffington Post.

As part of the Boston community, we share the sadness of last week’s Boston Marathon bombings. Thanks to excellent police work and public cooperation, Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev were identified as the perpetrators and are reportedly unaffiliated with any larger terrorist network. But going forward, how can law enforcement increase its ability to identify would-be terrorists operating below the radar?

Experts point out that many terrorist groups like al Qaeda are increasingly decentralized, making them difficult to monitor and infiltrate. Experts also highlight the limited ability of the federal counterterrorism infrastructure to identify independent terrorist cells and lone wolf terrorists; the difficulty of identifying readers of extremist propaganda; and, most importantly, the challenges determining which individuals will turn to violent action. In this case, the FBI questioned Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011, possibly about his interest in extremist Internet propaganda or ties to Chechnya, but apparently lacked sufficient information to detain him further. With this in mind, how can law enforcement gain the intelligence necessarily to stop potential terrorists before they act?

Congressman Peter King, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, has one proposal: he has renewed calls for increased surveillance of all Muslim communities. King asserts that this is the same practice used against Irish and Italian gangsters involved in organized crime. But that is simply not the case. Monitoring individuals suspected of involvement in organized crime is readily distinguishable from surveilling millions of American Muslims absent any reasonable suspicion criminal wrongdoing.

Moreover, there is now significant consensus among most intelligence experts that profiling based on religious affiliation is ineffective because it is too widely shared a characteristic to be a shortcut for identifying those who might engage in violence. Furthermore, as civil liberties experts have long argued, profiling based on religion unnecessarily alienates communities that could potentially serve as important partners for law enforcement in countering terrorism.

Rather than support Congressman King’s approach, we believe the Boston tragedy offers lessons to improve our national security infrastructure but remain more consistent with our democratic values of justice, fairness, and human decency.

In this case, it is now emerging from friends and associates of the Tsarnaevs that, upon reflection, they sensed something might have been amiss before the attacks. For example, Tamerlan Tsarnaev reportedly twice disrupted services at a local mosque. And there may be an additional trail of unusual speech or behavior — refusing to see friends or family, posting violent messages on the Internet, contemplating death — that would have alerted family, friends or community members to something being out of place. But whom could they have alerted to these concerns? Could they have confidence that information shared with law enforcement would be discreetly and professionally handled? Could they be assured that police would not overreact, but would instead rationally determine if there were genuine issues requiring further investigation? For law enforcement to benefit from voluntary community intelligence they must create trust relationships allowing community members to articulate concerns that may or may not indicate an intention to engage in violence. This also means incorporating collaborative, long-term community-police partnerships into the national counterterrorism strategy.

But partnerships are not easy to build. Partnerships are not achieved through coercion, force, or infiltration. They require voluntary engagement with communities through mutual trust and cooperation. This means winning the hearts and minds of communities so they become real partners in counterterrorism efforts and work collaboratively to address problems of common concern.

Partnerships have already been piloted in domestic counterterrorism efforts, and have been used for years in cities like Dearborn, Los Angeles, and London. And beyond the counterterrorism context, partnerships have achieved success in reducing gang violence in cities like Boston and Glasgow, and drugs sales in places like High Point, North Carolina. It is by relying on common sense that the national security infrastructure can be expanded to address some of its current limitations.

It is true that not all terrorist acts in the United States can be avoided, and unfortunately more will succeed. But by incorporating voluntary, partnership-based community intelligence gathering practices into our national security infrastructure, we can improve our chances of preventing some attacks.

(Reprinted with permission from Professor Ramirez. You can find original post here.)

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Faculty Post: The Art of Co-op

by Luke Bierman, Associate Dean for Experiential Education and Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law

Cooperative Legal Education (“co-op”) is like art. Its beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. For each student, it’s the opportunity to create a canvas of professional development and achievement. For each member of the faculty, it’s the opportunity to make teaching more vibrant. For each employer, it’s the opportunity to identify and benefit from each student’s passion, enthusiasm and knowledge. For legal education, it’s the opportunity to rethink how to prepare lawyers to serve clients now and in the future.

My introduction to Northeastern University School of Law came a couple of years ago when I was exploring options for the next phase of my career. Having graduated from law school in 1982, I didn’t follow the usual path, which centered on progressive advancement in a law office of some kind with a capstone as a managing attorney or judge. Instead, I have gravitated between teaching and practice or policy work, back and forth. This unusual approach to a career, at least for someone of my generation, mirrors the co-op experience. Back and forth, back and forth, in a clerkship, in practice, in a Ph.D. program, in advocacy jobs, in universities, in government, in a law school, all the while integrating these activities and experiences into a fulsome palette of a career.

Little did I know that I was rehearsing for a job at the most innovative and interesting law school in America. Like so many things in life, I wasn’t expecting this opportunity at Northeastern. But I was prepared for it because I had developed skills and knowledge that were useful. The value of not just thinking but also doing has begun to infiltrate a broader spectrum of education but it is not news to Northeastern. And since my career has been built on thinking and doing, over and over, it made perfect sense for me to come work in that environment.

I learned quickly that something special was going on at Northeastern. Steve Subrin, of the founding generation of co-op, quietly explained to me that I’d love it at Northeastern because people are helpful in ways that other schools can’t emulate.  Steve didn’t describe it all to me; this is after all a place of experiential education.

So I’ve learned quickly that students are busy learning through classes and co-op and activities, focusing on coursework and co-op while simultaneously looking forward to co-op and coursework, instead of being overly competitive or overly harsh. Combining thinking and doing, integrating classroom and co-op, Northeastern students immerse themselves in the reality of law and its practice in all possible settings in service to the public interest. Northeastern’s community, rooted in experiential learning and social justice, truly practices what it preaches.

There is no doubt that there are many challenges in the legal profession. But with challenge comes opportunity. As the delivery of legal services changes, today’s students will be able to influence the development of our profession and the system of justice in which it operates. My generation had great ambition but many problems remain to be solved. This generation of law students can avail itself of all the new cultural, technological, economic and social developments to help address the challenges and solve the problems. And they will create art while doing good for themselves and those around them.

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Faculty Post: Supreme Court of India Rejects Pharmaceutical Patent Application

by Professor Brook K. Baker

This is an exciting day for me to be writing an admissions blog for the School of Law because the Supreme Court of India has just issued a landmark decision rejecting a patent application for a Novartis cancer medicine, Glivec.

Wait a minute, you might ask, how can it be important what a court in India does about something as esoteric as a patent on one drug.  Well, because India, like many countries previously, did not grant patents on medicines from 1972-2005, it developed a robust generic industry capable of producing medicines to global quality standards.  India became the “pharmacy of the developing world” thereafter, particularly with respect to AIDS medicines where its companies supply nearly 90% of the antiretrovirals used to treat 8 million HIV-infected people in low- and middle-income countries. Even when India was forced to become compliant with the WTO agreement addressing intellectual property rights, it adopted strict (high) standards of patentability designed to prevent so-called secondary patents on minor variations of existing medicines.

I have worked with an international coalition of AIDS activists for 13 years who have, among many other things, worked for the adoption of these strict standards of patentability in India and to preserve those protections.  Novartis, on the other hand, has filed successive court suits against India’s strict standards of patentability, first challenging them as unconstitutional and contrary to international law.  That case was thrown out in 2007 by the Madras High Court.  More recently, Novartis raised a more technical argument that attempted to eviscerate India’s strict patent standards on pharmaceuticals by arguing either that they don’t ordinarily apply or that the standard should be reinterpreted to cover such issues as solubility and shelf life rather than therapeutic efficacy.  In a decision, now celebrated around the world, the Supreme Court of India rejected that challenge, labeling it essentially frivolous.

The threat to Indian generics, which for AIDS medicines cost .5% of what they cost in United States, is not over.  Both the European Union and the United States are proposing terms in “free” trade agreements that would make high standards such as those in India unlawful.  The U.S. is putting intense diplomatic pressure on India both with respect to these standards and with respect to other lawful flexibilities that India has incorporated into its patent law.  I got up at 5:00 this morning to read the opinion, to contact journalists, and to write on activists listserves about the decision.  This is the kind of issue that brings passion to my scholarship, service, and teaching at Northeastern.

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Faculty Post: Property Laws Affect All of Us

Colorado Meadows

by Professor Mary E. O’Connell

Spending a semester sitting in property law.  Sound exciting?  Well, do you know who owns your spleen?  Do you think you do? Well, hang on to it.  When John Moore’s spleen was removed during cancer surgery, cells taken from it were turned into a cell line that earned a lot of money for the University of California.  Did Mr. Moore own the cells that had been taken from his body? Nope.  Did he get any of the proceeds from the Mo cell line – ironically given his name? None.

How about the rain?  What if, being pretty green, you decide that putting out a rain barrel and catching the rain to use it on your garden an eco-friendly way to go. Great idea?  Well, stay east of the Mississippi River.  Once you venture into the high desert, things get a little dicey.  Colorado would be safe. In 2009, the Colorado legislature passed two new laws to make legal what had been illegal since Colorado became a U.S. territory in 1861—collecting rain as it fell from the sky.  The laws were needed because under Colorado’s “prior appropriation” water system, every drop of water in the state is owned by someone, and a raindrop was just somebody’s water on its way home.  Utah held out longer, but as of 2011, you can take your rain barrel there too.  But an Oregon man who built three reservoirs on his land to catch rainwater went to jail last year. He didn’t have a water rights permit from the Oregon Water Resources Department.

“Ownership” may sound like a technical concept – and in some ways it is.  And defining and regulating ownership is one of property law’s major tasks.  If someone can own it, it’s property. But what is property?  The mind-bending part of the property course is that the definition is always changing and law is usually running to keep up with science, technology – and the weather.  Before the science developed to grow human cells in self-replicating cell lines, Mr. Moore’s spleen would not exactly have been a prize.  And when the earth seemed to be full of fresh water, only deserts – like Oregon and Colorado – treated it as “owned” as it fell from the sky.  But who owns the water is likely to be one of the great property debates of the 21st century.  Japan, with a shrinking population and substantial fresh water, is selling some of its water rights to China.  The United Nations recently warned that by 2015, two-thirds of the earth will be “water stressed”.  The wars and ecological disasters that our thirst for petroleum brought us (BP is being tried for gross negligence in the Deepwater Horizon disaster as I write this) may pale in comparison to the coming water wars.

And speaking of petroleum, the receding ice cap at the North Pole is opening access to parts of the sea bottom that have been encased in ice throughout human memory.  The U.S., Russia, Canada, Denmark, Norway and Sweden have all made the claim that their territory extends under the sea into the polar region – rich with, of course, petroleum.

Can sensible people of good will make rational plans for allocating the earth’s resources? Can we harness the promises of science without stripping individuals of their rights and their dignity?  Ah, well, just another day in property class!

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Faculty Post: The Downside of Discretion: Prosecutorial Overreaching in Boston?

courthouse, Boston

John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse, Boston (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Professor Daniel S. Medwed

I sincerely hope that you decide to join us in the Fall! One of the wonderful features of studying here is that Northeastern University School of Law faculty members often seek to share their research passions with you and work on joint scholarly projects.  I teach and write in the area of criminal law, with a special interest in the topics of wrongful convictions and prosecutorial ethics.  My recent book, Prosecution Complex: America’s Race to Convict and its Impact on the Innocent (NYU Press, 2012), explores how discretionary decisions by prosecutors can inadvertently contribute to the conviction of innocent because of cognitive biases and an overly-deferential regime of legal and ethical rules.  In Chapter One, “Charging Ahead,” I focus on how prosecutors might become consumed by “tunnel vision” after reviewing an arrest file and then develop a firm hypothesis of guilt despite evidence to the contrary.  This could lead to the filing of criminal charges against innocent suspects or, at a minimum, the filing of excessive charges in cases where the suspect may be “guilty” but perhaps not deserving of severe punishment.

In recent weeks, Carmen Ortiz, the chief federal prosecutor in Massachusetts, has come under attack for a series of dubious charging decisions in her office.  Most notably, observers have criticized her office’s vigorous pursuit of renowned internet activist Aaron Swartz for allegedly hacking into a proprietary database and disseminating legions of scholarly articles to the public.  The weight of the pending criminal charges may have played a role in Swartz’s decision to commit suicide earlier last year.  The publicity surrounding the Swartz matter has prompted investigative journalists and lawyers to dig deeper into her office’s practices — and the results are startling.  A joint investigation by the local NPR affiliate, WBUR, and the journal Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly exposed that Ortiz’s lieutenants have apparently sought indictments in a number of borderline cases.

Being a prosecutor is undoubtedly a tough job, among the toughest in the legal profession.  As a result, we must defer, on some level, to their exercise of discretion.  But deference does not necessarily mean acceptance.  We need to scrutinize the decisions of our nation’s top law enforcement officials to make sure they are not overreaching and exceeding the boundaries of their vast powers.  Please come to NUSL and help me do this!

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Faculty Post: Civil Rights & Restorative Justice

by Professor Margaret A. Burnham

As of this writing, the Alabama Legislature is poised to adopt a measure that would illustrate perfectly the measures that states can take to address even remote miscarriages of justice.  On February 12, the legislature’s Judiciary Committee approved a bill to allow the Alabama Board of Pardons and Parole to grant posthumous pardons, paving the way to pardon the famous Scottsboro defendants, who were charged with capital rape in 1931 and who are now all deceased.  Alabama joins a number of other states excavating and redressing past racial harms.

Scottsboro was once just a small mountain town in the northeast corner of Alabama – until the arrest of nine youths on charges of interracial rape catapulted the place onto the international stage and linked its name with that of the accused youths, known universally as the “Scottsboro Boys.”  The Scottsboro case defined and reflected the politics of race, gender, class, and regional conflict of the interwar years. The legal case commenced in March 1931, but not until 1950 was the last of the accused paroled from an Alabama prison.  In the end the defendants served, collectively, more than 100 years in prison.  In the United States, the case was the most significant arena of interracial organizing since slavery.  Thousands of young Americans came to the cause of civil rights as a result of the movement protesting the treatment of the Scottsboro defendants. The case also broke new legal ground, for the Supreme Court addressed the Alabama prosecutions of the Scottsboro defendants in two landmark decisions, marking a rare departure from the Court’s practice of leaving state courts free from federal oversight.  In Powell v. Alabama, the Court established that a defendant in a capital case has a due process right to counsel, and in Norris v. Alabama, the Court held the exclusion of blacks from state grand and petit juries violated the Equal Protection Clause.

It all started when an Alabama sheriff removed nine youths, ranging in age from thirteen to twenty, from a train passing through northern Alabama headed to Memphis.  The hoboing youths were searching for work and food, as were several young white riders.  What began as a fight between the two groups led to the allegation that the black youths had raped two young white women, who were also hopping a ride on the train. The nine were speedily locked up in Scottsboro, where, a few days later, hoping to head off an ugly mob set on a lynching party, the authorities convened a grand jury to indict the group.  Within two weeks after the arrests, on evidence most observers thought to be weak, eight of the nine were tried, convicted, and sentenced to be executed in July 1931.

After the death sentences the Alabama county court prepared to return to its regular business, and nothing more might have come of the matter but for the involvement of civil rights lawyers and activists, who, having learned of the convictions and impending executions, rallied international support for the accused and successfully appealed the cases in the state and federal courts.  Protests across Europe and the United States focused fresh attention on southern justice and American race relations.  By most accounts the accused were innocent – one of the two alleged victims recanted – but they spent decades defending themselves and years in prison.  In 1950, nineteen years after the freight train stopped in Alabama, the last Scottsboro “Boy,” Andy Wright was released from prison in Alabama and paroled to New York City.  Then in 1976, Governor George Wallace pardoned another defendant, Clarence Norris, who, having violated his Alabama parole in 1947, was living in New York.  Hence the case came to a close, forty-five years after it started – or so we thought, until last week’s developments in Montgomery.

If the Alabama legislature gives the state’s parole board a green light to grant a pardon, it will be following in the footsteps of other states that have granted relief,  posthumously, to wrongfully convicted victims of race-infected criminal proceedings.  In 2006, a Mississippi judge exonerated a man falsely charged in 1961 with burglary because he sought to attend an all-white college.  Clyde Kennard was sentenced to seven years on the burglary charge, fell ill and died in 1963, shortly after his release from prison.  The exoneration restored his good name and set the record straight more than forty years after his death.  And in 2009, the South Carolina board of pardons granted posthumous relief – a first for that state – to two men who were wrongfully executed for the 1913 murder of a white farmer.

The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University School of Law offers legal aid to public officials and communities seeking to render a truthful account of our country’s history of race-based criminal justice and to find appropriate remedies for these remote travesties.  We have compiled the most comprehensive archive on race-based homicides in the country and we have provided legal services to families and communities in over 100 such cases across the country.    While long overdue, this month’s developments in the Scottsboro case signal an important turn in our country’s encounter with past racial harms, suggesting that there are ample means and opportunities to make it right, even seventy two years after the harms.

To learn more about the work of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, please take a moment to view “The Trouble I’ve Seen,” which follows the investigations of three harrowing civil rights cold cases.

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Faculty Post: Dean Paul on Co-op

by Jeremy Paul, Dean and Professor of Law

After 30 years in the legal academy, including teaching stints at four different law schools and five years as dean at the University of Connecticut, I am thrilled to find myself occupying the dean’s office here at Northeastern. Of course, Boston was a draw. From our campus, I can walk easily to the Boston Symphony, the Prudential Center, the Museum of Fine Arts and the particular house of worship known as Fenway Park.

But what ultimately lnews_02ured me to my new professional home on the Avenue of the Arts is a passion for the virtues of experiential learning. People often say that the value of law school is that it teaches each student to “think like a lawyer.” But when I get into a taxi downtown, I don’t want someone behind the wheel who “thinks like a driver.” I want someone who “drives like a driver.” Similarly, I want an attorney who “acts like a lawyer.”

I can’t think of a better way to train such an attorney than to have him or her experience the joys and challenges of working in a professional setting while still in school. That’s the philosophy behind our signature Co-op Program, in which each student completes four, full-time work placements, acting as a lawyer within law firms, government agencies, legal services organizations, corporate legal offices and countless other workplace environments in which legal skills are needed.

Those unfamiliar with our model may misunderstand the Northeastern experience as one that grapples only with the practicalities of going to court or advising a client. We do teach these invaluable skills, but our aspirations are far higher than conveying directions to the courthouse. Co-op isn’t like taking typing lessons while your classmates elsewhere read Shakespeare. Co-op is more like playing a piano recital of Bach or Beethoven while students at other law schools work on perfecting scales.

But we need not search for the ideal metaphor to convey the advantages of Northeastern’s co-op model. Consider:

  • Our students graduate with roughly a year of practice experience giving them confidence and the ability to hit the ground running.
  • Our students launch at least four professional networks while still in school, creating a lifelong cadre of attorneys with whom they network.
  • Our students complete multiple interview processes, creating opportunities to be far more reflective about whom they are and what they have to offer, not to mention providing considerable experience interviewing and perfecting their resumes.
  • Our students sample different forms of law practice so they make far more intelligent decisions about how to manage their careers. They select the geographic locations that best fit their objectives.
  • Our students experience numerous transitions from one setting to another just as they will do in the professional world.
  • Our students bring their practice lessons back to the classroom thus making class much more interesting because EVERYONE in the classroom has legal and life experiences to share.

We augment the virtues of co-op by providing each student a career coach who stays with each student from the moment they arrive on campus. We are here to guide students at every step as they grow into confident professionals. But the ultimate strength of the Northeastern model grows from our faith in our students.   We have built a program based on the idea that students arrive on campus as adults ready to steer their own educational development. I urge readers considering a legal career to join us in this exciting approach to professional education.

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Faculty Post: Consumer Bankruptcy As A Social Safety Net

by Daniel A. Austin
Associate Professor of Law

Our society provides a variety of benefits for people in difficult financial circumstances—food stamps, subsidized housing, low-cost or no-cost health care, disability and unemployment compensation, to mention just a few.  These are in addition to Social Security and Medicare for older citizens, which are available even for those who are not in financial distress.  Most of us do not consider consumer bankruptcy to be part of the social safety net, but, in fact, bankruptcy is one of the first things that people consider when facing serious financial problems such as loss of income, excessive debt, or debilitating medical circumstance.  And, unlike government assistance that is available only to people with lower incomes, consumer bankruptcy (with some conditions) is accessible for people in middle-income brackets.  Thus, bankruptcy is part of the social safety net that allows people to continue their lives with a degree of normalcy even when faced with severe economic circumstances.

I teach bankruptcy and commercial law.  Prior to joining the faculty at Northeastern University School of Law, I practiced for sixteen years as a bankruptcy and commercial law attorney.  While much of my legal practice was on behalf of corporate and business creditors, my research at Northeastern is focused mainly on consumer bankruptcy, in particular, issues related to family and individual debt.  Recently, I examined the treatment and growth of student loan debt in consumer bankruptcy, including what policy changes should be made so that student loan debt can be more readily discharged in bankruptcy.  This work would not have been possible without the excellent research assistance of six law students.  My current work deals with medical expenses as a component of consumer bankruptcy.  Again, a number of law students are working with me to create a database of medical debt information from some 5,000 consumer bankruptcy cases filed between 2004 and 2011.  After the project is complete, the database will be publicly available for researchers and others interested in this issue.  This type of research collaboration between professors and students is typical of NUSL.

Northeastern University School of Law is not a place where you can quietly hide in class and just look to the final exam for your grade.  NUSL classes require you to analyze real-client facts and prepare written work product in a format and quality that is expected in legal practice.  This type of class experience combined with NUSL’s four co-ops provides unparalleled preparation for a career in law.

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Faculty Post: Violence Against Women with Disabilities

This blog post was written by Northeastern University School of Law Professor Hope Lewis, who co-founded the law school’s Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy, and her colleague, Stephanie Ortoleva, for the IntLawGrrls blog.

As members of a Working Group on Violence against Women with Disabilities, the two of us, Hope Lewis and Stephanie Ortoleva, are pleased to announce the release this month of a report entitled Forgotten Sisters: a Report on Violence Against Women with Disabilities—an Overview on its Nature, Scope, Causes, and Consequences. An abstract and the report are now available for download on SSRN here, and the 228-page report is also available here via the website of WomenEnabled, the education and advocacy project that Stephanie founded. In this post, we summarize some of the points explored in our report.

A Global Issue

IntLawGrrls readers know that the problem of violence against women is global (on violence against women with disabilities, see paragraph232(p) of the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, available here, and paragraph 69(j) of the “Beijing + 5” document on “Further actions and initiatives to implement the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action,” summarized here.) Violence against women is pervasive; it shows no respect for class, disability, race, ethnicity, or religion.

There are more than 1 billion persons with disabilities worldwide. Many of them are women or girls, according to recent World Bank and World Health Organization reports linked here. Gender-based violence is an international and transnational issue. In response to increasing activism, advocacy, legislation, and judicial recognition, the international community and UN mechanisms should take additional note as well.

According to our report:

‘The Working Group recognizes the need to ensure that women and girls with disabilities are included as full participants in data-gathering, analysis, and proposed solutions as the mandates of Ms. Rashida Manjoo, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its Causes and Consequences, and Mr. Shuaib Chalklen, the Special Rapporteur on Disability, move forward. Additionally, the Working Group calls on international organizations, especially those focused on women’s rights such as the UN Commission on the Status of Women (which will consider as its priority thematic issue violence against women at its 57th session in March 2013) and UN Women, and the international community, governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to join us in the effort to highlight these critical issues.

‘Because women with disabilities make up a significant part of the world’s population, principles of fairness and equality require that the world engage in a vigorous discussion on how to end violence against them.’

Violence against women and girls with disabilities takes many forms. Women with disabilities experience violence in armed conflict situations, violence in the home from partners, other family members or caregivers, as well as inadequate or non-existent access to justice when they report such violations. They may be denied treatment for physical harms or literally and figuratively shut out from domestic violence shelters, police stations, courthouses, or doctors’ offices. The violence and isolation they experience may be exacerbated by poverty, employment or housing discrimination and social exclusion.

An Intersectionality Approach to Women with Disabilities

Although violence against women with disabilities occurs among every class, racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural category, such social and class distinctions make a difference when analyzing specific responses to violence as well as its nature, causes, and consequences in context.
Our report argues that effective responses will require multilayered local as well as global approaches:

‘The 2011 Report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women focused on the multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination that contribute to and exacerbate violence against women, noting that factors such as ability, age, access to resources, race/ethnicity, language, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity and class can exacerbate the violence women experience. Although women with disabilities experience many of the same forms of violence all women experience, when gender and disability intersect, violence takes on unique forms, has unique causes, and results in unique consequences. Further, women with disabilities who are also people of color or members of minority or indigenous peoples, or who are lesbian, trans-gender or intersex or who live in poverty, can be subject to particularized forms of violence and discrimination. These intersections must be explored in greater depth to ensure that the complexities of violence against women with disabilities are properly understood and addressed.’

Resource List

The report contains an extensive “Selected Resources” appendix (primarily compiled by Northeastern University School of Law student, Sari M. Long ’13, and us two co-authors). The Resource List includes links to major international treaties, statements of Human Rights Council mechanisms, leading international, regional, and domestic judicial decisions, numerous academic and social media articles, as well as non-governmental organizations.
We hope the report will be widely disseminated and that it will be a useful tool for policymakers, activists, legal advocates, students, and scholars.

Note: We are also the Co-Chairs of the International Disability Rights Interest Group of the American Society of International Law, but the views expressed in our report do not necessarily reflect those of the interest group or of ASIL as a whole. Heartfelt thanks to our colleagues Professor Michael Stein, Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, and Janet E. Lord, Senior Partner at Blue Law International, and to the many committed and talented student researchers who assisted us on this project, including, but not limited to: Katherine Warren, Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges student and research assistant to the Harvard Project on Disability; Northeastern University School of Law students Gautam Jagannath, ’12, Sari M. Long, ’13, and Deena Sharuk, ’12; Meredith Leeson ’13, a student at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law; and University of Virginia School of Law students Natalie D. Morris ’12 and Lars D. Trautman ’12.

(Reprinted with permission from IntLawGrrls blog. Find the original post here. If you are interested in reading more by Professor Hope Lewis, please check out some of her blog posts here.)