While the legal industry and law schools have placed a greater emphasis on well-being and diversity issues in recent years, these issues are typically treated separately, though in reality they are inextricably intertwined. To explore this intersectionality and amplify the experiences of lawyers from marginalized backgrounds, Fordham Law’s Office of Professionalism hosted a panel on Feb. 10 titled “Voices of Recovery: Promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Lawyer Well-Being Movement.” The panel featured three attorneys who shared their personal stories about overcoming mental health challenges and discussed the unique challenges people of diverse backgrounds face in the legal industry.…
Author: Erin DeGregorio
The Winter 2020 issue of the Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development at St. John’s University School of Law was devoted to Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law Tanya Hernández’s second book, Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination. Published in 2018 by NYU Press, and just released in paperback, Multiracials and Civil Rights looks at series of court cases to demonstrate how multiracials often face the same types of discrimination as other racial groups. “Hernández’s book hails from legal studies and offers a much-needed lens to augment understandings of race, law, and the state,” writes Professor Jasmine…
Professor Bennett Capers’ expansive intellectual appetite ranges from criminal law to Andy Warhol and the television series The Wire, but at bottom is always personal. “I’ve always been interested in issues of race, gender, and sexuality—really, I’ve always been interested in aspects of my own identity,” says Capers of what drives his scholarship. “[S]peaking about my identities is liberating, a way to write myself into an academy that too often feels like a ‘white space,’ and into a conversation where people like me have long been the object of discussion, but rarely the subjects doing the discussing.” Professor Youngjae Lee,…
Throughout his career, Norris Professor of Law and former Dean John D. Feerick ’61 has been a strong proponent of teaching civics engagement so that students better understand the law and their responsibilities as citizens. This year, the Feerick Center for Social Justice, alongside Fordham University’s Center for Educational Partnerships at the Graduate School of Education, has partnered with a local New York City middle school—bringing proactive civics engagement to teens and a glimpse at the legal profession. “It wasn’t just about teaching civics, and it wasn’t just about providing the content of the lessons,” said Visiting Clinical Professor John…
This year’s spring orientation program for first-year students focused on programming around anti-racism and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues. Held on January 19, 2021, the orientation builds on last year’s spring orientation program, the first ever offered at Fordham Law. “To succeed in the legal profession–both in terms of building a career and in terms of fulfilling the responsibilities of the profession–you need much more than the ability to analyze a judicial decision or to parse a statute,” said Dean Matthew Diller to students during his opening remarks. “You need to be able to understand the human problems people…
The spread of COVID-19 has forced the criminal justice system to dramatically rethink how court proceedings take place. Many courts have transformed hearings to take place virtually over video conferencing software. During the Fall 2020 semester, students in Fordham Law’s Criminal Defense Clinic (CDC) appeared in five virtual court cases in New York City Criminal Court. The clinic’s supervisors, Professors Cheryl Bader and Martha Rayner, worked closely with students to prepare for the cases and navigate a new virtual world for their clients. Michelle Orchard ’21 and Pro Bono Scholar Sophia Rivero ’21 collaborated on an open case that had been…
To honor the late Judge Deborah A. Batts, a trailblazing legal scholar and pioneering jurist, Fordham Law School has created a new scholarship program and announced its very first recipients. Judge Batts, the first Black faculty member to receive tenure at Fordham Law and a U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York, passed away on Feb. 3, 2020. She joined Fordham Law School as a professor of law in 1984 and became a tenured associate professor of law in May 1990. Four years later, she resigned her tenure and broke barriers by becoming the first openly LGBTQ…
The Harold S. Geneen Charitable Trust, which provided a major gift in February 2020 to establish a new scholarship to support a full-time student in Fordham Law’s Master of Studies in Law (M.S.L.) in Corporate Compliance program, has renewed that support for the 2021-22 academic year. “Thanks to the Geneen Trust scholarship, a student can be fully dedicated to their studies and graduate with marketable skills in the growing field of corporate compliance,” said Robert Mascola, senior director of compliance programs at Fordham Law School. “And there is no better place than Fordham Law for getting a rigorous and practical…
This spring, Fordham Law’s Office of Professionalism will continue its efforts to build awareness around mental health and wellness within the Law School community through a wide range of programs and events. The upcoming spring semester lineup was developed to directly acknowledge and respond to the unprecedentedly challenging circumstances currently faced by all members of the Law School community, as well as to reinforce Fordham Law’s more general commitment to diversity and inclusion. The Office is also expanding its mental health services by offering two virtual support groups and a new online mental health screening platform for students. “As we…
Fordham University’s McGannon Center—which is dedicated to furthering understanding of the ethical and social justice dimensions of media and communication technologies—has awarded its annual book prize to the authors of #Hashtag Activism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice (MIT Press): Sarah J. Jackson, Moya Bailey, and Brooke Foucault Welles. #HashtagActivism explores how marginalized groups use Twitter to advance counter-narratives, preempt political spin, and build diverse networks of dissent. The book explores how hashtags like #MeToo, #SurvivorPrivilege, and #WhyIStayed have challenged the conventional understanding of gendered violence, as well as how online activism, storytelling, and strategy-building set the stage for #BlackLivesMatter.…