Reicher delivered the honoree speech during ESF’s convocation May 13,2012 and explained how the ESF degree was especially meaningful since his interest in environmental science began in Syracuse, where, as a child, he rode his bike regularly from Nottingham High School to ESF, slipped quietly into the classrooms and lecture halls, and took it all in.

Reicher has more than 25 years of experience in energy technology, policy, and finance, including serving in the Clinton administration at the Department of Energy as Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and recently as a member of President Obama’s Transition Team. Reicher came to Stanford in 2011 from Google, where he served since 2007 as Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives.

The Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University, a joint center of the Stanford Law School and Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Professor Mark Kelman is chairing the committee, which also includes Rick Banks, Juliet Brodie, Dan Ho, Pam Karlan, and Mark Lemley from SLS faculty, Teddy Kider (3L, Stanford Law School), Stephanie Kalfayan (Vice Provost for Academic Affairs), alumna Michelle Galloway and Jack Rakove (Professor of History and Political Science).

The search committee does not select the new dean; it will assess potential candidates and present the President and Provost of the University with an unranked list of plausible candidates. The committee will consider internal candidates and will also conduct an outside search. The President and Provost will make the final decision about the next dean of Stanford Law School.

The search committee will not communicate broadly about the progress of its work; in fact, to protect confidentiality, it may not be in touch again until later in the process. However, the search committee welcomes suggestions, not only about individual candidates, but also about concerns and hopes for the school going forward and about important traits for the next dean. Input from all the members of the SLS community—faculty, staff, students and alumni—is valued. Contact the committee by writing to deansearch@stanford.edu.

While these “guiding cases” do not formally constitute binding precedents in the Western sense, they may evolve to have a similar effect.

The China Guiding Cases Project website

The overarching goal of the CGCP website is to advance knowledge and understanding of Chinese law and enable judges and legal experts (inside and outside of China) to contribute to the evolution of Chinese case law through ongoing dialogue of these “guiding cases.”

The CGCP has also published two new expert commentaries:

The first is written by Judge CHEN Kui, president of the Dongguan Municipality No. 2 People’s Court of Guangdong Province:  How to Apply the Guiding Cases of the Supreme People’s Court in Judicial Practice.

The second is written by Judge OU Zelin of the Second Civil Tribunal of the Dongguan Municipality No. 2 People’s Court of Guangdong Province: Discussing the Guiding Case System with Chinese Characteristics By First Combining Guiding Case No. 1 with Adjudication Practices.

The CGCP will add more new content and features to their website later this month, including:

• China Law Summaries describing how Contract Law, Environmental and Resources Law, Intellectual Property Law and Labor Law is practiced in China, and
• Guiding Cases Quotes compiling what has been said about each of the first batch of guiding cases since their release last December.

Law and business school students participating in a new pro bono program teach formerly incarcerated women the basics of starting and operating a successful business.

By Brooke Donald

Three of the clients, June Lee, Mary Campbell and Chloe Turner, right, share a lighter moment in class. Photo by L.A. Cicero

The list of successful businesses started by students while at Stanford is well known. Think Google, Yahoo, Kiva, Cisco. Now, students are taking that entrepreneurial spirit into the community with a new pro bono project at the Stanford Law School to help women recently out of prison. Project ReMADE, which stands for Reentry: Making a Difference through Entrepreneurship, is a 12-week program, taught by students, on the nuts and bolts of starting your own business. Founded by law student Angela McCray, who comes from a family of self-starters, Project ReMADE hooks up the recently released women with mentors from Stanford and the business community to help them design a business strategy. “Working for yourself actually is a really good model for the formerly incarcerated,” McCray said. “There are certain barriers to employment for those with a criminal record, not least of which is simple bias. So if they go it alone, they aren’t subjected to those judgments or the scrutiny they may get under a boss.” One of the goals of the program, which is supported by the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, is to help reduce the rate of recidivism among participating women. “They are committed to making better lives for themselves so we’re just trying to lend our skills to help them do that,” McCray said.

Second-year law student Anglea McCray, who founded the program, explains aspects of advertising and marketing. Photo by L.A. Cicero

During the program, the women alternate each week between two-hour group classes in San Francisco and two-hour meetings with mentors. They are taught business principles, marketing and accounting, as well as negotiation and financial literacy and how to secure funds and get credit. “They are also building social capital,” said Debbie Mukamal, executive director of the Criminal Justice Center and co-author of Venturing Beyond the Gates: Facilitating Successful Reentry with Entrepreneurship. “Through mentor meetings and classes, they are creating a Rolodex that they never had.” That social networking component is what sets apart the Stanford program, Mukamal said. “Stanford sits in the middle of Silicon Valley with myriad entrepreneurship programs, resources and connections,” she said. “We’re giving them a pipeline to these connections, making them a little better resourced. It’s a natural fit.” By the end of the program, each participant will have drawn up a detailed business plan and a pitch that she can take to potential investors. The women will get a trial run on June 1, when the members of the group present their plans to a handful of local micro-development organization executives at a law school ceremony marking completion of the program.

Building a business

The project is based on a curriculum the law school received from MercyCorps Northwest, a microenterprise development organization in Oregon that has been providing entrepreneurship courses inside Coffee Creek Correctional Facility for several years.

Student Max Carter-Oberstone answers questions about getting a small-business loan. Photo by L.A. Cicero

A team of Stanford students condensed that 26-week program and added additional subjects on social networking and technology. Currently, the program has four participants, down from five after one dropped out for personal reasons. Candidates were selected with help from the San Francisco Reentry Council. There were certain criteria: participants had to be working or be enrolled in school, had to have been out of prison for at least a year, and had to show true dedication to wanting to start their own businesses. “They bring knowledge, common sense, enthusiasm and energy to their ideas,” McCray said. “We try to meet them with the other stuff – the nitty-gritty of accounting, regulations, all of that.” The women in this group are pursuing a variety of businesses, including event planning, domestic services and retail. At a recent group class, the women heard from two law students about loans, banking and credit. “You be the bank and decide who gets a loan,” said Nayna Gupta, a second-year law student who served as a fellow for an education microfinance project in Peru before beginning her studies at Stanford. After explaining how to evaluate credit worthiness, Gupta and fellow student Max Carter-Oberstone provided the women with various scenarios of people looking for loans – contractors wanting to build homes, a couple wanting to open a restaurant, a woman looking to start a hair salon, for example. “Well, you’d want to know how they plan to pay the money back,” offered Chloe Turner, who is hoping to start a business selling LGBT apparel and accessories. “It seems a little risky for these people since they haven’t had success in the past,” added June Lee, who makes purses, bracelets and other jewelry using such materials as leather and denim. During the class, McCray also spent an hour going over marketing, advertising and creating a brand image.

After class, Executive Director Debbie Mukamal, left, looks over some of the leather bracelets designed by June Lee. Photo L.A. Cicero

“I have learned how to be a part of a team and to work together with a specific goal in mind,” said Mary Campbell, who wants to plan events. “I was ready to make a major career choice in my life and really wanted to get some direction about where I fit.”

Students become teachers

The lecturers, recruiters and curriculum developers all are students – most from the law school, some from the Graduate School of Business. And two of the three mentors assigned to each woman is a student. (The other is a business leader.) “It’s a great opportunity for our students to work directly with people who’ve been involved in the justice system,” Mukamal said. Distinguishing it from many other pro bono programs is that Project ReMADE has attracted students from many disciplines within law, not just criminal law, including student-entrepreneurs and students with tutoring or teaching backgrounds. Stanford’s Center for Teaching and Learning provided workshops for lecturers and mentors in how to be effective presenters. The San Francisco Reentry Council also provided cultural competency training. McCray said she is hopeful the program can accept more applicants next year, and possibly add more weekly sessions. “We’re the first stop,” McCray said. “We fully expect that they’ll go on to other programs that will help hone their skills even more. We can’t make them full-fledged entrepreneurs in 12 weeks but we can give them a foundation on which to build.”

Read an abstract and download the journal article here.

Reference information:

Journal Article: The Political Economies of Immigration Law

Author: Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar – Professor and Deane F. Johnson Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School; Co-Director of the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC); FSI Senior Fellow; CDDRL Affiliated Faculty; FSE Affiliated Faculty

Published by: UC Irvine Law Review, Vol. 2 no. 1, page(s) 101
March 22, 2012

CONFERENCE INFORMATION:

ICC conference programme (2012) & speaker bios (PDF)

This year marks the ten-year anniversary of the International Criminal Court (ICC). This significant milestone provides an opportunity to review and discuss the work of the ICC–its impact, successes and challenges over the past decade, and to assess future challenges, especially with regard to ICC-U.S. relations.

Confirmed speakers include:

• H.E. Judge Cuno Jakob Tarfusser, Vice-President of the International Criminal Court
• H.E. Justice Mrs. Silvana Arbia, Registrar of the International Criminal Court
• Ms. Shamila Batohi, Senior Legal Advisor to the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court
• H.E. Ambassador Stephen J. Rapp, US Ambassador-at-Large, Office of Global Criminal Justice
• Mr. Benjamin Ferencz, Former Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Military Tribunals
• Mr. Michael S. Greco, Chair, ABA Center for Human Rights and former President of the ABA
• Prof. David Kaye, Executive Director of the International Human Rights Program at UCLA, School of Law
• Prof. Allen Weiner, Stanford Law School
• Prof. Ruth Wedgwood, Director of the International Law and Organizations Program, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University

Moderators include:

• Helen Stacy, Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
• Jenny Martinez, Professor of Law and Warren Christopher Professor in the Practice of International Law and Diplomacy
• Professor James Cavallaro, founding director of Stanford Law School’s International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic

The conference is sponsored by the following organizations: Stanford Law School, the American Bar Association’s Center for Human Rights, the American Society of International Law, the Stanford Center for International Conflict and Negotiation, the Planethood Foundation, the Stanford Program on Human Rights,  the Stanford International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic, the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation.

This event is open to the public at no cost. Registration is required. Please register online here.

For more information, please contact Sam S. Shoamanesh at sasansh@stanford.edu or Katherine Hubbard at kchubbar@stanford.edu.

During his tenure, Larry Kramer transformed the Stanford Law School's program and then oversaw creation of a facility to support the new program. (Photo: Michael Johnson)

STANFORD, Calif., March 28, 2012—Larry Kramer, the dean of the Stanford Law School since 2004, has announced that he will depart the university to assume the presidency of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation on Sept. 1.

During Kramer’s tenure, the law school has spearheaded new opportunities for legal education and a multi-dimensional JD degree that combines law with the study of other disciplines. The education effort emphasizes team-oriented, problem-solving techniques together with expanded clinical training that allows students to represent clients and litigate cases while in school.

Kramer also spearheaded a renewed commitment to public service and public interest law, underscoring the value of pro bono service as part of any legal career.

He has championed deeper integration between the law school and the broader university, encouraging law students to be more multidisciplinary while also integrating law into disciplines throughout Stanford, such as engineering, business and medicine.

Read the full Stanford University announcement here.

More information:

Stanford Law School Advances New Model for Legal Education

A “3D” JD: Stanford Law School Announces New Model for Legal Education

CISAC is c0-directed by Stanford Law Professor Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar.

Learn more about the grant and efforts to improve nuclear safety and security at CISAC’s website.

David L. Rosenhan, Professor of Law and Psychology, Emeritus

STANFORD, Calif., February 16, 2012—David L. Rosenhan, professor emeritus at Stanford University and leading expert on psychology and the law, died Monday, February 6, 2012, at Stanford University Hospital in Stanford, California. He was 82 years old.

Professor of law and of psychology at Stanford since 1971, David Rosenhan was a pioneer in the application of psychological methods to the practice of trial law process, including jury selection and jury consultation. He was the author of more than 80 books and research papers, including one of the most widely read studies in the field of psychology, “On Being Sane in Insane Places” (1973). He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a former president of the American Psychological Association, a former director of the American Psychology-Law Society, a former president of the American Board of Forensic Psychology, a former vice-president of the Institute for Psychosocial Interaction, a former director at the Mental Research Institute, and a member of the Clinical Projects Research Review Committee at the National Institute of Mental Health.

Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, David L. Rosenhan was a yeshiva student in his youth and received a BA in mathematics (1951) from Yeshiva College, and an MA in economics (1953) and PhD in psychology (1958) from Columbia University.

As part of his research study for “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” Professor Rosenhan and seven others had themselves admitted as patients to a total of 12 mental hospitals during a three-year period. They described hallucinations and “empty” feelings and were diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenics. As soon as they were admitted they began acting normally and waited for the hospital staff to notice. The hospital staff never did notice, although many of the real patients caught on to the fakes.

Rosenhan wrote, “It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals. … The consequences to patients hospitalized in such an environment—the powerlessness, depersonalization, segregation, mortification, and self-labeling—seem undoubtedly counter-therapeutic.”

Former psychology department colleague Professor Lee Ross, recalls, “David was a spell-binding lecturer, and this famous study was as much an exercise in pedagogy as research. While it offered an important lesson about the failure of hospital staff (in contrast to the patients) to distinguish sane from insane behavior a second lesson was no less important. That is, normal behavior—simply writing notes and going about one’s normal activity—when it occurred in the relevant institutional setting—was perceived by the staff to be a manifestation of mental illness. The lessons he cared most about offering, in his research and in the classroom, were most importantly ones about human dignity and the need to confront abuse of power and human frailties.”

At a time when legal scholars were just beginning to look to economics for insights into legal analysis, Professor Rosenhan was among the first to draw from the social sciences, especially experimental psychology, to examine assumptions made by legal scholars in the trial process. Building on research on juror behavior undertaken by the University of Chicago Law School Jury Project in the 1950s, Professor Rosenhan began to focus on other aspects of juror behavior. Among his interests was the jurors’ ability to abide by the judge’s instructions to disregard evidence the judge had ruled inadmissible.

Stanford Law School Professor Emeritus Miguel A. Méndez, whose own work was influenced by Rosenhan, said that his former colleague played a key role in attracting students to the law school interested in the intersection of law and psychology and was known for his generosity, always making time to mentor young faculty and students.

Before joining the Stanford faculty, David Rosenhan was a member of the faculties of Swarthmore College, Princeton University, Haverford College, and University of Pennsylvania. He also served as a research psychologist at Educational Testing Service. He was a psychologist for the Counseling Center at Stevens Institute of Technology from 1954 to 1956; a lecturer at Hunter College and director of research in the Department of Psychiatry at City Hospital at Elmhurst from 1958 to 1960; assistant professor for the Departments of Psychology and Sociology at Haverford College from 1960 to 1962; lecturer for the Department of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania from 1961 to 1964; lecturer for the Department of Psychology at Princeton University from 1964 to 1968; professor in the Department of Psychology and Education at Swarthmore College from 1968 to 1970; visiting professor in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University from 1970-1971; visiting fellow at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Wolfson College and Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University from 1977 to 1978; visiting professor at University of Western Australia, Tel Aviv University, and Oxford University from 1984-1985; and a visiting professor in the Department of Psychology at Georgetown University in 1988.

David L. Rosenhan is survived by his son Jack Rosenhan of Palo Alto and his beloved granddaughters Cecily and Yael, as well as his brother Hershel of Jerusalem.

The Barnum Tower of the the Neukom Building references the historic entry gates of the main university quad and serve as the law school's new, main building entrance.

STANFORD, Calif., February 13, 2012—Stanford Law School today announced the completion of the first phase of comprehensive reforms to its legal curriculum that began in November 2006—successfully transforming its traditional law degree into a multi-dimensional JD, which combines the study of other disciplines with team-oriented, problem-solving techniques together with expanded clinical training that enables students to represent clients and litigate cases while in law school.

Stanford Law School’s JD program preserves the essential components of a rich, traditional legal curriculum while leveraging the rest of Stanford University to enable law students to understand their future clients’ needs through courses and joint degree programs coordinated with Stanford’s other top-rated graduate programs and departments. Students also develop sophisticated problem-solving skills through multi-disciplinary project courses, which present real-world business and policy problems, and they are exposed to professional practice through full-time work in a clinic that offers experience in a wide range of practice areas—from Supreme Court litigation to corporate transactional law.

Stanford Law School Dean Larry Kramer

“What we’re doing here no other law school has done,” said Larry Kramer, Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean, “and no other law school can do, because no other university matches Stanford in the number of top-notch programs and departments relevant to lawyers. We’ve utilized the whole university to create a multi-dimensional legal education, because we think lawyers have a valuable role to play in helping to solve the world’s problems and that calls for more than knowing how to analyze case law. And we think we are uniquely positioned among law schools to produce lawyers who do that.”

Background

Business, medicine, government, education, science, and technology have all grown immensely more specialized, and legal practice has had to adapt by growing more specialized too. And, while traditional legal education does a wonderful job teaching lawyers how to spot problems, it does not teach them how to solve them. To do this, especially in a world where the problems have grown more intricate, lawyers need to understand what their clients do at a much more sophisticated level than can be taught through the traditional law school curriculum or in the traditional law school classroom.

At the same time, lawyers today practice in a global context, across national borders. As recently as a generation ago, a graduate of Stanford Law School might spend his or her entire career without encountering foreign or international law or handling a transaction across national boundaries. Today, the opposite is true. Today’s law graduates enter a world in which almost nothing stops at the borders between nations. International trade and tribunals, human rights and intellectual property, business deals and war crimes—there is a pervasive global dimension to the work of lawyers, judges, and legal scholars.

“At Skadden, we value innovation tremendously, and Stanford Law School’s curriculum reforms reflect a truly forward-looking holistic approach to legal education,” said Howard L. Ellin, global hiring partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP & Affiliates. “The law school is dedicated to anticipating and fulfilling the practical and intellectual needs of both its students and the legal and business communities they enter after graduation.”

“In order to contribute to solutions,” explained Dean Kramer, “lawyers must be able to work collaboratively as part of cross-disciplinary professional teams. They have to be able to think like their client, a way of thinking that can and should begin in law school, and they should learn how to operate in a global context.”

“In rethinking our curriculum,” Kramer continued, “we recognized that we could lay the foundation of traditional legal analysis in the first year while enriching and enlarging our students’ experience by modifying their opportunities in the second and third years—making better use of their time in school to ready them for the role they can and should play in practice and in society.”

Concrete changes:

• Since 2006, Stanford Law School has successfully revamped its course offerings, modified its academic calendar from semesters to quarters to integrate with the rest of Stanford University, and broadened the joint degree option. It offers 23 formal joint degree programs and 28 individual joint degrees (including two with outside institutions). At the same time, the law school continues to allow students to tailor their own joint degree program in almost any discipline. The number of law students enrolled in joint degree programs has increased ninefold over the past six years. As an indicator of strong student interest, law students have now registered for more than 600 classes outside the law school each year—a twentyfold increase from six years ago—and non-law student registrations for courses at the law school have grown by a similar amount.
• The law school has developed a range of sophisticated team-oriented, problem-solving courses that are co-taught by faculty from the law school and Stanford’s other top-rated schools. Examples include courses on how to bring an invention to market (evaluating the technology, drafting a business plan, protecting intellectual property, and managing the regulatory process), how to engineer a complex business deal, how to translate complex scientific concepts into a courtroom or policymaking setting, and how to develop technology solutions to legal problems.
• The law school greatly expanded its clinical education program: it reorganized the clinics so they operate as a single law firm, The Mills Legal Clinic; it increased the number of clinics to ten, broadening the range of practice areas of clinics (including practice in international law); and introduced a clinical rotation—based on the medical school model—with no competing exams or courses. In 2010, 65 percent of the second and third year students took a clinic.
• The law school expanded the international dimension of its curriculum to emphasize international business, trade, and tax, as well as national security, integrating this new emphasis with the traditional public international law curriculum. The school added a third LLM program, International Economic Law, Business and Policy, and expanded the size of its existing programs so that international students now make up 15 percent of the upper-level student body. These students hail from all over the world and are already established in their home countries as highly qualified attorneys and policymakers. Not only are JD students and advanced degree international students able to learn from each other, together they’ve forged a truly international community of emerging leaders in the law.
• In addition, the law school developed a wide variety of new programs to give law students direct experience of studying and working in a global setting. These include study abroad and student exchange programs, enlarged opportunities for externships and summer jobs abroad, an international clinic, and law and development programs that have students doing work in countries around the globe (including Afghanistan, Bhutan, Timor Leste, and Iraq).
• The law school enlarged and modified student and faculty research opportunities through the launch of a dozen new research centers and programs, in areas as diverse as constitutional and criminal law, energy, corporate governance, the legal profession, and more. As part of this process, students have been afforded new opportunities to work on important public policy problems for government and other agencies, such as how to implement California’s Public Safety Realignment Act.
• To inculcate the important values of public service and community responsibility in every Stanford law student, the school launched the John and Terry Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law, which offers future lawyers of every professional ambition diverse intellectual resources and hands-on opportunities in public service, through pro bono work, externships, superb networking and mentoring opportunities, career services, speaker series, opportunities for financial assistance, and close integration with The Mills Legal Clinic.

Change in curriculum facilitated by a change in the physical campus:

To implement this new and enlarged program, the law school expanded its physical campus to create an integrated, interdisciplinary living and learning environment—adding both a new academic building and a five-building housing complex designed specifically to mix Stanford Law students with Stanford University graduate students in other fields.

One of the many informal meeting spaces in the William H. Neukom Building

The William H. Neukom Building, dedicated in May 2011, is the new central hub of the law school. The 65,000-square-foot building is named for 1967 graduate of Stanford Law School William H. Neukom, who donated the lead gift for its construction.  It houses the clinic and academic faculty in a setting designed to foster both formal and casual interaction in dozens of indoor and outdoor spaces.

“The Neukom building encourages interaction and collaboration, which are essential to a rich educational experience and the kind of intellectual environment that is the hallmark of Stanford Law School,” said Kramer.

Interior of the Munger Graduate Residence

The Munger Graduate Residence, which opened in 2009, is a new concept in interdisciplinary living. Made possible by a generous gift from Charles T. Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, and his wife Nancy Munger (BA ‘45), the Munger Residence forms a rich social and intellectual community. Here, students from Stanford Law School and Stanford University’s other top-ranked graduate schools and departments come together to live, study and exchange ideas in a complex structurally designed to encourage interaction in units having full kitchens and living room/dining room areas, as well as a restaurant and grocery store.

Online curriculum and career guidance tools for students:

To assist students in choosing a career path, the school built and launched two proprietary online tools: a career and curriculum guide called SLSNavigator, and a social and professional networking site to facilitate mentoring called SLSConnect. These online devices work together. Navigator matches courses to practice areas and helps students navigate the more than 1,500 preapproved courses offered in the law school and throughout the university. If a student knows what he/she wants to do upon graduation, Navigator helps the student develop a curriculum for years 2 and 3. If not, it offers students a sense of what lawyers do and need to know to practice in a given field, thus helping them decide what their interests might be. SLSConnect then enables students to connect with alumni working in that particular field to get mentoring and career advice.

Stanford Law School’s five-year initiative to transform legal education coincided with a university wide, five-year fundraising campaign, The Stanford Challenge, which has now successfully concluded and which has enabled the law school to finance the curricular and infrastructural changes.

More information about the law school’s participation in The Stanford Challenge is available online, here: http://thestanfordchallenge.stanford.edu/highlights-by-school/law/.