CPR President Rena Steinzor (former director of the University of Maryland’s Environmental Law Clinic) and Robert Kuehn, president of the Clinical Legal Education Association, have a post over at ACSBlog putting the recent attack on the independence of the Maryland clinic into the context of other such moves across the country.
The Maryland legislature recently stepped back from an earlier threat to withhold funding to the clinic if it did not turn over private client information to the state. The issue came up when the clinic represented two advocacy groups suing chicken farmers over alleged pollution violations, leading to a backlash from the industry and its supporters (see Shana Jones’ earlier post).
Steinzor and Kuehn put the Maryland incident in the context of a “rising tide of attacks on law school clinics by those powerful interests affronted by law clinic opponents' access to pro bono assistance.” They conclude:
Few issues are more important to the legal profession than the lesson taught by Atticus Finch: lawyers who do not defend access to justice for those shunned by society's most powerful interests betray the profession's reason to exist.
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Ben Somberg | April 9, 2010
CPR President Rena Steinzor (former director of the University of Maryland’s Environmental Law Clinic) and Robert Kuehn, president of the Clinical Legal Education Association, have a post over at ACSBlog putting the recent attack on the independence of the Maryland clinic into the context of other such moves across the country. The Maryland legislature recently […]
Daniel Farber | April 9, 2010
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. When I sat down to write this blog posting, I started by going through my environmental law casebook and noting down the cases in which Justice Stevens had written the majority opinion or a major dissent. When I got done, I was startled by the central role Justice Stevens had played […]
Yee Huang | April 9, 2010
In preparing CPR’s recent white paper, Failing the Bay: Clean Water Act Enforcement in Maryland Falling Short, we conducted interviews with sixteen stakeholders across Maryland to assess MDE’s enforcement program as it operates on the ground. Collectively the stakeholders have decades of experience with enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels, as well as […]
Ben Somberg | April 8, 2010
AP: A New Orleans federal judge on Thursday awarded seven Virginia families $2.6 million in damages for homes ruined by sulfur-emitting drywall made in China, a decision that could affect how lawsuits by thousands of other homeowners are settled. It remains to be seen how the plaintiffs can collect from Chinese companies that do not […]
Yee Huang | April 8, 2010
Today CPR releases a new report, Failing the Bay: Clean Water Act Enforcement in Maryland Falling Short. The report, which CPR Member Scholar Robert Glicksman and I co-authored, details the results of an investigation of the Clean Water Act (CWA) enforcement program at the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE). CPR provided a copy of […]
Matthew Freeman | April 7, 2010
About a year ago in this space, I wrote a piece taking the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to task for its unhinged reaction to the Environmental Protection Agency’s then-nascent efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. As an example of the bombast, I included a link to a speech made by Chamber board member Don Blankenship, head […]
Ben Somberg | April 7, 2010
Seven state attorneys general have written a letter this week, released today, urging senators Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman to retain key state authorities on combating climate change in their upcoming bill (The Hill, National Journal). The letter, from the AGs of California, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont, follows two recent letters (see […]
Rena Steinzor | April 7, 2010
The system of checks and balances devised by the Framers of the Constitution 220 years ago was all about the sharing of power. In practice, it makes for a messy flow chart, and lends itself to lots of inside-the-Beltway conversation about who’s in, who’s out, who’s winning and who’s losing. But as messy as the […]
Ben Somberg | April 6, 2010
Twenty-five people have been killed in the coal mine disaster in West Virginia. At ABC News, Matthew Mosk and Asa Eslocker report on the safety history of the Upper Big Branch mine: The West Virginia coal mine where an explosion killed 25 workers and left another four unaccounted for in the worst mining disaster since […]