Jason Keller – Page 3 – University of Baltimore School of Law Magazine

Kenneth Lasson: Author, Teacher, Civil Libertarian Retires

Posted on September 13, 2021November 11, 2022 by Jason Keller in Past Issue

By Jack Lynch

Have law professors become unduly obsessed with scholarship to the detriment of their obligations to their students and the legal profession? It is a question too seldom broached in education. Why mess with a good thing?

But it was raised by Prof. Ken Lasson over three decades ago — in the Harvard Law Review article “Scholarship Amok: Excesses in Pursuit of Truth and Tenure,” 103 Harv. L. Rev. 962 (1990). Paradoxically, the article is a scholarly feather in Lasson’s cap — no Baltimore colleague has adorned the pages of that journal since, though hope springeth eternal.

But being first, or at least earlier than most of us, to some of the most significant issues in legal education, and the academy as a whole, has been a hallmark of Ken’s career. Are speech codes for students constitutional, or even a good idea? What reasonable person could possibly question regulation of offensive speech? Can religious defamation be regulated? Is Jonathan Pollard being punished too severely, and why?

Ken is true-blue, through and through a Baltimorean. He’s a stalwart Orioles fan who wore his ornithologically incorrect Orioles cap during the years that he was the skipper of the law school’s softball team — our “Earl” of Baltimore, if you will. He received his A.B. and M.A. degrees at Johns Hopkins University and his J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law. While most of his colleagues needed time to become acclimated to the charms of Charm City, Ken has been a lifelong booster of our community.

Before coming to the University of Baltimore School of Law, Ken taught at Loyola College of Maryland, was a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution and a consultant to Ralph Nader’s Center for the Study of Responsive Law. Before and during his decades at Baltimore Law, Ken has served with many local civic and religious organizations.

When I met Ken over four decades ago, he told me pointedly: “I guard my writing time very closely.” And a damn good thing! In his scores of books and articles, he has written only about things that he felt mattered — and most of the time, they have. He has authored 12 books. When I first joined the faculty, in a year I hesitate to say out loud, Ken had just published Private Lives of Public Citizens, about the personal lives of public employees. Some of its passages describing the day-to-day lives of his subjects are vivid to me today. He published a book with Sen. William Cohen, Getting the Most Out of Washington. He has published approximately two score articles in scholarly journals and a similar number of op-ed pieces in local, national and international media.

Although I suppose that over the decades the zeitgeist of the faculty has been the persona of our Kingsfield, Royal Shannonhouse, Ken has personified a gentler approach. Seminars, focused on diverse areas of the law, where students have been free to develop their writing skills in areas stimulating to them, have been his primary focus. Indeed, in retirement, he will continue to teach the seminar closest to his heart, Civil Liberties.

Perhaps Ken may best be described as a cheerful contrarian. And while contrarian is not readily associated with the tenets of Orthodox Judaism, Ken has even assessed his faith in accordance with his nature. Most people have been indoctrinated that Hebrew National “must answer to a higher power.” Yet most religious Jews will not eat their hot dogs. One of Ken’s most nervy campaigns has involved his contention, in word and deed, that such hesitancy is rooted not in scruples about the validity of ritual slaughter, but in economic and other less noble motives. And yet, in his faith, he has also demonstrated great generosity to his friends and colleagues. He has regularly extended hospitality to colleagues on religious holidays. Full disclosure — in my own journey from ally to adherent of Judaism, Ken has been a gentle and understanding mentor.

He has been a caring friend to so many of us, as he will continue to be. We wish him and Barbara much nachas from both the domestic and international branches of his family. No doubt we will be hearing from him, sometimes where we least expect to.

Jack Lynch is a professor at Baltimore Law.

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Barbara Babb: Retired Founder of CFCC Has Changed Practice of Family Law

Posted on September 13, 2021September 21, 2021 by Jason Keller in Features

By Robert Rubinson

I joined the law faculty at The University of Baltimore in the summer of 1997 to teach in the Civil Advocacy Clinic. At the time, the clinical law offices were at 40 West Chase Street, which is where Maryland Avenue turns into Cathedral Street while, at the same time, converging with Chase Street. The result is a tangle of roads with an island in the center.

On my first day of work, I stood on that island, utterly confused about where I should go. The confusion was not only physical: it reflected my fear of starting a new job in a new city, wondering which way I should turn. I must have been quite a sight, alone, befuddled and anxious.

And then a car slowed down. It was Barbara Babb. With warmth and good humor, she pointed me in the right direction. We have laughed about the absurdity of the moment ever since, but I quickly found out that it reflected the role Barbara would play for me at Baltimore Law. Her appearance was happenstance, but it was also a moment when Barbara was my guide when my footing was unsure. She has played that role many times since.

I appreciate what Barbara has given to me as a friend and colleague. Far more importantly, though, Barbara has given extraordinary things to countless students, colleagues and families across the country. While she has been a wonderful teacher of family law for decades and a trouper in the unheralded, yet important, work that goes on behind the scenes at the law school, she has done much, much more. I’ll describe two of her achievements.

First, some 30 years ago, Barbara played a crucial role in reimagining the law school’s Clinical Law Program. Much has happened since — the program has grown from four clinics when I arrived to 11 now, and counting — but Barbara helped to build the foundation upon which the clinical program rests today. And what a foundation it is. The program is renowned across the country and remains a model to which other law schools aspire.

And then she did some more reimagining. The result was the Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children and the Courts (CFCC). At its founding and in the 20 years since, Barbara built CFCC upon a sturdy and innovative intellectual foundation called therapeutic jurisprudence. Therapeutic jurisprudence examines legal rules as an element of larger social phenomena, with good or bad consequences for individuals. At its heart, it focuses on the well-being of people who come in contact with an, at best, indifferent judicial system which, while “resolving” a conflict, often leaves families worse off than when they began.

It is not in Barbara’s makeup, though, to rest on theory. She is a doer, and through her leadership, CFCC has done an awful lot. She has spearheaded the national movement to develop “problem-solving courts” built upon the idea that the “problems” families face extend far beyond legal ones. She has consulted with judicial systems nationwide to guide (there’s that word again) them in developing an integrated system that reflects a more humane, positive view of families in need. She has mentored and educated students through the CFCC Student Fellows Program, and I can personally attest to the profound impact this program has had on future lawyers — lawyers who will take her ideas into their own practices and into the world at large.

Barbara has transformed lives. She has set in motion efforts to create a system designed to help families at vulnerable, if not catastrophic, moments in their lives. She has given children the chance to live better, more fulfilling lives. Barbara’s accomplishments will no doubt redound to the benefit not only of those children, but to those children’s children. It is not hyperbole to say that the work Barbara has done will last through generations.

I am grateful for the guidance Barbara has shown to me as a colleague and as a friend. If only I could express, in a few words, the gratitude of generations of Baltimore Law students, parents and children whose lives, through her creativity, commitment and sheer tenacity, she has enhanced. What a legacy!

Robert Rubinson is a professor and director of the Mediation Clinic for Families at Baltimore Law.

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Steve Grossman: Exceptional Faculty Member Leaves Legacy of Mentorship

Posted on September 13, 2021September 21, 2021 by Jason Keller in Features

By Jane Murphy

“Almost as good as Professor Grossman.” Ten years into my teaching career, this was among the most gratifying comments ever recorded on my student evaluations. It meant I was approaching the summit — teaching like Steve Grossman.

From my first days at the law school, I learned from Steve. It was 1988: My colleague Jane Schukoske and I had just arrived at the law school with the charge to build a clinical program. Although now firmly entrenched in every law school, clinical education was, to put it mildly, not yet fully accepted or understood by law school faculties, including ours. In fact, some of our faculty were downright hostile to the idea that the school would devote substantial resources to a program in which students “learn by doing.”

Only Steve, as chair of the law school’s first “Ad Hoc Committee on Clinical Education,” could have navigated these choppy waters. With his characteristic wit, common sense, and intuitive understanding of how students learn, Steve gained widespread approval for our proposals and laid the foundation for Baltimore Law to become a leader in clinical education.

His skills at the helm have put Steve at the center of all major decisions at the law school during his 40-plus years on the faculty. As our colleague Mike Higginbotham put it, “With a powerful story, funny joke, or one-liner, Steve could reduce tension, bridge divisions and solve problems. He was the person on the faculty you made sure you heard from, before a decision was made that you absolutely had to get right. [T]he thing I will miss most when he retires is being able to ask, as I have done often over the last three decades, ‘What does Steve think?’”

Lest you mistake him for a mere consensus builder, Steve is also a respected scholar. His text on trial advocacy is widely adopted and his numerous articles (on topics ranging from eyewitness identification to plea-bargaining to search and seizure law) are consistently cited. In June of this year, he published his latest book, Plea Bargaining Made Real. He is well known to members of the Maryland General Assembly for his expertise on all things criminal procedure, and dozens of members of the judiciary were among his lucky students at the Judicial Institute of Maryland.

And it is his astounding skill as a teacher that we all admire most about Steve. It struck me when, as a new teacher, I first observed his Criminal Law classes, and again, 30 years later, when I asked Steve to help me start a new clinic to assist clients who had been given lengthy sentences as children. I was drawn to this area by its opportunities for student learning and the lack of lawyers to represent these clients, but I knew very little about juvenile sentencing law.

Steve might have discouraged me, saving him from yet another round of mentoring. Instead, he invited me and my students into his “Sentencing and Plea Bargaining” seminar. I was dazzled once again by his ability to draw students in with a combination of lecture, discussion and respectful Socratic dialogue. No props, no PowerPoints — just Professor Grossman gracefully leading students through complex topics. You could almost hear the crackle of connections being made as he led debates about the reach of the Eighth Amendment or the merits of plea bargaining.

Afterward, Steve generously joined me in clinic seminars to assist students in fact investigation and case strategy. Informed by his years as both a prosecutor and defense attorney, Steve would challenge students to dig deeper: what led to a life sentence for a 14-year-old who pled guilty to homicide, or a 50-year sentence for felony murder for a 16-year-old who was merely present at a crime scene? His questions and feedback not only showed students what it means to be fully prepared, but also led to important insights about the racism built into this country’s criminal justice system. Later I would learn that these discussions continued in his office, as he devoted hours to this unofficial teaching role.

It is hard to imagine the law school without Steve Grossman. But his years of mentorship and guidance will help the school’s new faculty leaders confront the challenges ahead. May they strive always to be “almost as good as Professor Grossman.”

Jane Murphy is a professor emerita at Baltimore Law.

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Commencement for 2020 and 2021 Grads Held at Towson University

Posted on September 13, 2021September 15, 2021 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

The 2020 and 2021 graduating classes received their degrees in a June 19 commencement ceremony at Towson University’s SECU Arena.

Recipients of the Juris Doctor degree, Master of Laws in Taxation, and Master of Laws in the Law of the United States had their degrees conferred upon them by University of Baltimore Provost Catherine Andersen.

Valedictorians from both graduating classes presented remarks, as did Baltimore Law alumnus the Hon. Mark Scurti, J.D. ’91. Guests were welcomed by School of Law Dean Ronald Weich, University System of Maryland Regent Nathaniel Sansom, and alumna Jasmine Pope, J.D. ’18, president of the University of Baltimore Law Alumni Board. Isabel Jorrin Garcia, of the Class of 2021, sang the national anthem.

13 Students Earn Summer Public Interest Fellowships

Posted on September 13, 2021September 22, 2021 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

Every year, the law school supports students in paid summer public-interest fellowships. These fellowships provide critical work experience at nonprofit and government organizations

Students learn of the fellowship positions through UB Students for Public Interest (UBSPI), a student group that promotes working in public interest law and connects students with opportunities. Typically, UBSPI holds a winter auction to raise funds for the fellowships, but the coronavirus pandemic made this impossible.

Congratulations to these 13 fellowship recipients.

Ouranitsa Abbas
rising 2L, Maryland Office of the Public Defender, Baltimore City

Amelia Bradshaw
rising 2L, St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center

Amanda Daly
rising 2L, State’s Attorney Office of Baltimore City

Alexandria Hodge
rising 2L, Maryland Office of the Attorney General, Department of Education

Marie Jensine Marcelino
rising 3L, CASA de Maryland

Kyle Kirwan
rising 2L, Maryland Office of the Public Defender, Baltimore City

Vidhi Kumar
rising 2L, Community Legal Services of Prince George’s County

Devita Mohandeo
rising 2L, Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Services

Megan Nally
rising 2L, Senior Legal Services

Kaitlin O’Dowd
rising 2L, Maryland Office of the Public Defender, Baltimore Juvenile Division

Braden Stinar
rising 2L, Maryland Office of the Public Defender, Baltimore City

Ernesto Villaseñor Jr.
rising 2L, Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County

Faith Zellman
rising 2L, State’s Attorney’s Office of Baltimore City

Student Sabrina Marquez Receives One of Three Baker Donelson Diversity Scholarship Awards

Posted on September 13, 2021September 21, 2021 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

Sabrina N. Marquez, a member of the Class of 2022, has won a Baker Donelson Diversity Scholarship. Each year for the past 13 years, the firm has awarded $10,000 scholarships to three rising 2L students throughout the United States. Scholarship winners also receive a salaried 2L summer associate position in one of their offices.

Recipients are selected based on three criteria, according to the firm: demonstrated commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion in the legal profession; personal and professional achievements; and established leadership qualities, work experience, community involvement and ability to overcome obstacles.

Marquez is past president of the law school’s Latin American Law Students Association and served as community service director for the Student Bar Association. She grew up in Ellicott City, MD, and graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park with a degree in Criminology and Criminal Justice.

She says she is leaning toward a career in civil litigation. “This is one reason why I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to work at Baker Donelson, to experience the many litigation groups the firm offers. As a summer associate, I will gain invaluable legal research and writing skills in a practical environment,” Marquez says.

“I would also like to give a shoutout to the [Law Career Development Office] — the resources their office provides were crucial in preparing me throughout the application and interview processes.”

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27th Annual Awards Ceremony

Posted on September 13, 2021September 22, 2021 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

Law school held its virtual awards ceremony April 27

For the Class of 2021, Cassandra Brumback was valedictorian, and Scott Jenkins was salutatorian. Cooper Gerus won the 2021 Pro Bono Challenge Award.

The Law Faculty Award winners were Naseam Jabberi, day student, and Eaujee Francisco, evening student.

Jessica Carrick received the J. Ronald Shiff Award for Academic Excellence in Tax. The Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) Outstanding Student Awards went to Jameka Carter, for externship work; and to Xuan Mai and Sean Murphy, for their work in the Mediation Clinic for Families. Naseam Jabberi received the Center for International and Comparative Law Director’s Award.

Clinical Excellence Awards went to Stacey Loundsbury, Community Development Clinic; Rohina Azizian Zavala, Civil Advocacy Clinic; and Julia Zheng, Bronfein Family Law Clinic.

The award for Outstanding Teaching by a Full-Time Faculty Member went to Prof. Matthew Lindsay, and Itta Englander received the award for Outstanding Teaching by an Adjunct Faculty Member. The Saul Ewing Award for Outstanding Teaching in Transactional Law went to Prof. Robert Lande.

Prof. Gilda Daniels received the Faculty Scholarship Award for Traditional Research, and Prof. Colin Starger was given the Faculty Scholarship Award for Non-Traditional Research.

The Law Faculty Service Award went to Prof. Angela Vallario, and the Rose McMunn Distinguished Staff Award went to Katie Rolfes.

Prof. Dionne Koller Named Co-Chair of U.S. Olympics and Paralympics Commission

Posted on September 13, 2021September 21, 2021 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

Prof. Dionne L. Koller, director of the Center for Sport and the Law, has been named co-chair of the Commission on the State of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (also known as the USOPC Commission).

The USOPC Commission is a product of the Empowering Olympic, Paralympic, and Amateur Athletes Act that passed on Nov. 2, 2020. It directs the chairs and ranking members of the Senate Commerce Committee and House Energy and Commerce Committee to each appoint four members to the USOPC Commission. The USOPC Commission must conduct a study reviewing recent USOPC reforms and must submit its findings and recommendations to Congress.

“The USOPC exists to protect athletes and uphold the integrity of sport,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-WA, commission chair, in announcing the commission on April 2, 2021. “There are many issues that plague sports, from unequal pay and treatment to sexual abuse. Having the right members on this Commission ensures that these issues can be properly addressed and remedied, so that Olympic and Paralympic athletes can feel safe in their sports environment.”

Koller’s scholarly focus is on Olympic and amateur sports law. She is a former chair and current member of the Executive Board of the Association of American Law Schools’ section on Sports and the Law. Koller also serves as a member of the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s Anti-Doping Review Board and provides pro bono support for Olympic Movement athletes.

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Privacy Was Focus of 12th Feminist Legal Theory Conference

Posted on September 13, 2021September 22, 2021 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

“Applied Feminism and Privacy” was the theme of this year’s 12th Feminist Legal Theory Conference on April 22 and 23, presented by the Center on Applied Feminism.

As always, current events provided an impetus for the conference theme. Our nation is at a critical time for a broad range of privacy issues. State-level abortion bans have put a spotlight on the importance of decisional privacy to women’s equality. Across America, advocates are fighting for reproductive justice and strategizing to preserve long-settled rights.

At the same time, our informational privacy is increasingly precarious. Data brokers, app designers and social media platforms are gathering and selling personal data in highly gendered ways. As a result, women have been targeted with predatory marketing, intentionally excluded from job opportunities, and subject to menstrual tracking by marketers and employers. In online spaces, women have been objectified, cyber-stalked, and subject to revenge porn.

With regard to physical privacy, the structural intersectionality of over-policing and mass incarceration impacts women of color and other women. And while a man’s home may be his castle, low-income women are expected to allow government agents into their homes — and to turn over reams of other personal information — as a condition of receiving state support. In addition, families of all forms are navigating the space of constitutionally protected family privacy in relation to legal parentage, marriage and cohabitation, and child welfare systems.

The first session examined menstrual justice and activism across employment, homelessness, education and data privacy, and in school and carceral settings. Panelists included Center co-directors Margaret E. Johnson, associate dean for experiential education and professor of law, and Michele E. Gilman, Venable Professor of Law.

This year’s keynote speaker was Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center.

13th Feminist Legal Theory Conference

Save the date for the 13th Feminist Legal Theory Conference scheduled for April 8, 2022. Themed “Applied Feminism and ‘The Big Idea,'” this year’s conference aims to capture, develop, and disseminate cutting edge theorizing around issues of gender equity and intersectionality.

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Noted British Historian Quentin Skinner to Present Stead Lecture Oct. 8 as Part of CICL Republicanism Conference

Posted on September 13, 2021September 21, 2021 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

The Wilson H. Elkins Conference on Republicanism will take place Thursday, Oct. 7 through Saturday, Oct. 9, 2021, at the School of Law.

Regents Professor and Wilson H. Elkins Professor M.N.S. Sellers, co-director of the school’s Center for International and Comparative Law, and other noted lawyers, philosophers and political scientists, will discuss Republican law, Republican justice and the Republican form of government. The results of the conference will be published by Oxford University Press as The Oxford Handbook of Republicanism.

Philip Pettit, the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values at Princeton University, and Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University, will deliver the Wilson H. Elkins Lecture on “Republican Democracy” at 5:30 p.m. on Oct. 7.

Quentin Skinner, the Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humanities and co-director of The Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary University of London, will deliver the John Sumner Stead Lecture on “Liberty and Rights: A Neo-Roman Approach” on Oct. 8 at 9:45 a.m.

Pettit works in moral and political theory and on background issues in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics. He was elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009, honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2010, and Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2013; he has long been a fellow of the Australian academies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

Pettit’s recent single-authored books include On the People’s Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy (2012); Just Freedom: A Moral Compass for a Complex World (2014) and The Robust Demands of the Good: Ethics with Attachment, Virtue and Respect (2015).

Skinner is a fellow of the British Academy and a foreign member of several other national academies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

His scholarship, which is available in 20 languages, has won him many awards, including the Wolfson History Prize and a Balzan Prize. His two-volume study, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (1978), was listed by the (London) Times Literary Supplement in 1996 as one of the 100 most influential books published since World War II.

Skinner’s other books include Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (1996), Liberty Before Liberalism (1998), Machiavelli (2000), Hobbes and Republican Liberty (2008), Forensic Shakespeare (2014), a three-volume collection of essays called Visions of Politics (2002), and From Humanism to Hobbes: Studies in Rhetoric and Politics (2018).

The Republicanism Conference is supported by grants from the Wilson H. Elkins Fund of the University System of Maryland and the John Sumner Stead Fund of The University of Baltimore Center for International and Comparative Law. To learn more, email cicl@ubalt.edu.