Transcript A Manual for Environmental Law Service Learning Pedagogy in Central American and the Dominican Republic Alezah Trigeros J.D.

A Manual for Environmental Law
Service Learning Pedagogy
in Central American and the
Dominican Republic
Alezah Trigeros
J.D. Candidate 2012
Indiana University
Maurer School of Law
Julia Curtis
J.D. Candidate, 2012
University of Richmond
T.C. Williams School of Law
The Purpose
 In September 2011, the University of Costa Rica
College of Law will host a 4 day workshop of legal
education institutions’ faculty from Guatemala,
Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic.
 The Manual will serve as a reference guide for the
design of environmental law service learning
programs that may be appropriate for these
countries. Through a review of extant models, the
manual will aid faculty in persuading law school deans
with limited resources of the pedagogical and societal
value of these programs.
What is Service Learning?
 “Service Learning” is a method in which
students learn and develop through active
participation in thoughtfully organized service
experiences that meet actual community
needs, that are integrated into students
academic curriculum, and provide structured
time for reflection that enhance what is
taught in school by extending the learning
beyond the classroom and into the
community.
Characteristics of Service Learning
 Meet a genuine community need. Service learning should
achieve an actual goal, as determined by external or
community-led assessments. The actions undertaken
should make positive contributions towards solving a
problem.
 Link the community need to classroom goals. A strong
linkage between the service action and ongoing
classroom instruction ensures that students improve
their skills, both in and out of the classroom.
 Provide opportunity for student reflection. In addition to
the benefit to the community, the students should grow
as individuals through deeper understanding of broader
lessons, such as morality and justice.
Types of Service Learning
 Volunteerism: An individual provides time and resources to a
beneficiary; service is primarily determined by the recipient.
 Community Service: More structured volunteerism; focus
shifts from not only the service action, but also broader
education in the community about the beneficiary’s needs.
 Internships/externships: Student engagement in service;
primary objective is to provide students with hands-on
experience in the field.
 Field Education: Co-curricular service opportunities external,
but necessary to student education.
 Clinical Education: Students provide services to beneficiaries
in highly structured environment; integrated into education;
outcome for client is primary focus.
Value of Service Learning
 Boosts students’ academic achievement
 Fosters a lifetime commitment to civic
participation
 Improves students’ social skills
 Prepares students to enter the workforce
 Gives students a sense of competency
 Addresses real community needs
 Strengthens connections between schools
and communities
 Improves the overall school climate
History of Service Learning in
Higher Education in the U.S.
 1960s: Civil Rights Movement &
Peace Corps
 1980s: Campus Outreach Opportunity
League & National Association of
Service and Conservation Corps
 National Community Service Act of
1990
 2000s: Private support
 Serve America, W.K. Kellogg Foundation,
Carnegie Corp., Ford Foundation, etc.
Legal Clinics
 Legal Clinic: An educational institution that
operates as a law firm.
 Law students work as student associates,
supervised by faculty.
 Student associates are responsible for real cases &
treated as functioning attorneys.
 Student associates are exposed to the stress of
litigation, collegial working conditions, and the
broader legal community.
 Clinics typically represent parties unable to
secure representation any other way.
The Development of Environmental
Law Clinics: In the United States
 1920s: Yale law students set up volunteer legal aid clinics,
without receiving credit, to assist people too poor to hire
attorneys.
 1960s & 70s: Clinic Explosion
 Concern that law schools were failing to expose and
sensitize students to professional ethics, moral, & social
obligations issues inherent in the legal profession.
 Focused on the major social issues of the time: poverty,
civil rights, women’s rights, consumer rights, &
environmental protection.
 1976: University of Oregon institutes first environmental law
clinic.
 2010: 1/5 of law schools have an environmental law clinic.
The Development of Environmental
Law Clinics: In Latin America
 Legal clinics in Latin America date back to the
60s, in part influenced by the Clinic Explosion
in the U.S.
 Not until the 90s that clinics develop a publicinterest based ideology.
 Focused on issues such as free speech, due
process, human rights, & treaty enforcement.
 Trying to connect law school to social issues.
 10 years later the first environmental law
clinics appear in Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile,
Argentina, and Brazil.
Law Schools’ Contribution to
Service Learning
 Clinical legal education has been the primary vehicle
for service learning within the law school curriculum.
 Clinical courses mirror the essential values of the legal
profession: provision of competent representation;
promotion of justice, fairness, and morality;
continuing improvement of the profession; and
professional self-development.
 Law schools also provide a unique laboratory for
social justice, providing a place where undesirable
clients and untested strategies can converge.
Models of Environmental Law Learning:
Simulation Courses vs. Live-Client
Clinics
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Simulation Courses: Simulates the experience of live practice
through the use of experiential and public based case simulations;
students realistically address real-life scenarios, in an insulated
environment.
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PROs:
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CONs:
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Easy to set up
Require few resources
Provide a manageable and predictable learning environment for
students
No contribution to the community
Students miss opportunity to grow through service and uncertainty
Live-client Clinic: Students fully engage in the legal system to
solve an actual problem for a real client.
Models of Environmental Law
Clinics: Nature of Clinic
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Litigation
Non-Litigation (Transactional)
Dispute Resolution
Judicial
Community Organizing
Legislative Activity
Ombudsman/Informal Advocacy
Interdisciplinary
Hybrid
Models of Environmental Law
Clinics: Degree of Representation
 Full representation: Clinic allows
students to manage entire cases
through to completion, as they would
in law firm.
 Partial representation: Students
provide initial advice, assess cases,
and help when possible, but for
complicated cases, refer the client to
another firm or agency.
Models of Environmental Law
Clinics: Structure of Clinics
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In-house Clinic
External Clinic
Internship
Practicum
Externship
Certificate Program
Single Client Clinic
Hybrid
Models of Environmental Law
Clinics: Academic Status
 Curricular: Students work for a grade
and for credit hours; same requirements
as a course.
 Co-curricular: Follows the same
overarching principles but without the full
requirements of a course; complements,
but is not fully part of the curriculum.
 Extra-curricular: Entirely voluntary;
falling outside of the realm of normal
coursework.
Necessary Infrastructure for
Environmental Clinics
 Internal and External Community
 Interested students and potential clients
 Logistics and Administration
 Staffing, location
 Internal Policies and Procedures
 Curriculum review
 Potential Liability
 Written agreements with clients
Pedagogy: Strategies of
Instruction
 Skills Development
 Exercises & teaching tools
 Actual case management
 Reflective Learning
 Written work product
 Student interviews
 Classroom Teaching
 Seminar component
 Collaborative or Interdisciplinary Projects
Potential Problems: Funding
 Lack of monetary funds is the major
challenge facing clinical legal
education generally.
 Because of the low student-to-faculty
ratio, legal clinics are extremely
expensive for law schools compared
to large lecture-style courses.
Funding Options
 Hard Money: Financing directly from the university;
difficult to obtain due to budget restraints.
 Soft Money: Outside financing such as grants; difficult
to obtain & unreliable.
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Runs additional risk of subjecting clinic to outside interference
from donors.
 Seed Money: University provides funding to start & in
time the clinic will (hopefully) become self-sufficient.
 Attorney’s Fees: Very difficult to secure; not
recoverable until end of litigation; sometimes require a
separate action to collect.
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Clinics that rely on attorney’s fees may go unfunded for a
significant period of time.
Potential Problems: Legal
Formalism & Curricular Rigidity
 Legal formalism: The treatment of law as a
science with the purpose of legal education
being to instruct students in the elements of
this science.
 The aim of education is not skills development
but exposure to legal theory and doctrine.
 Curricular rigidity: Curriculum at civil law
universities tends to be limited to doctrinal
offerings; circular change and addition of new
courses can be difficult.
Legal Formalism & Curricular
Rigidity
 Obstacles:
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Political opposition
Lack of political will and financial wherewithal to hire new
professors or redistribute existing professors’ workloads
Excessive curricular rigidity makes the procedure for creating
clinics extremely slow and cumbersome
Lack of student interest
 Combative Strategies:
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Create publications and organize academic events to discuss the
new approaches to legal education and the benefits of law clinics.
Promote among students the importance of xperiential learning
offered by clinical legal education.
Create or strengthen links with those that work in established
clinics.
Potential Problems:
Political Interference
 Clinics have a responsibility to promote
access to justice by representing poor
and unpopular clients and causes.
 The U.S. experience has shown that
politicians, business interests, and even
university officials sometimes attack law
school clinics for their choices of clients
and cases.
Political Interference: Why?
 Clinics bringing suits that wouldn't be brought at all
if not for the clinic.
 Environmental law cases by their nature tend to
jeopardize economic interests.
 Seek to prevent government or industry from
carrying out land use, industrial development, and
manufacturing projects.
 Outside parties, such as government or industry,
want to control what cases environmental law
clinics take on.
Political Interference: How?
 Funding
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Legislatures restrict clinical practice by conditioning the
university’s funding on the clinic not bringing suits against the
state.
Private defendants with deep pockets back initiatives to
withhold clinic funding, limit the types of cases clinics are
permitted to take, or establish external boards to chose clinic
cases.
Benefactors, alumni, and boards of trustees can attempt to
sway clinic politics with donations or put financial pressure on
the law school to eliminate clinics they object to.
Alumni, as potential employers of graduating law students,
may dissuade students from participating in a clinic that they
feel an alumnus may disapprove of.
Political Interference: How?
 SLAPP Suits
 A bullying tool used by defendants’ lawyers in
environmental suits to intimidate plaintiffs from pursuing
their claims.
 Counter environmental suits with common law tort actions
(ex: defamation).
 Most SLAPP suits are dismissed before trial—goal is not
legal victory, but intimidation.
 Takes advantage of the comparative economic insecurity
of the plaintiffs, who, facing potentially ruinous legal bills
and risk of liability, drop their suits in exchange for the
defendant dropping their SLAPP suit.
Political Interference: How?
 Legislation
 Cut off state funding to law schools or clinics
 Create faculty committees to select cases for the
clinics
 Prevent clinics from filing suits against state or
political subdivisions
 Prevent law professors from assisting in litigation
against state
 Ban courses, clinics, or classes in which students
assist or participate in any suit against a state
Political Interference: Legacy
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In some cases, legislative or university-imposed restrictions have
foreclosed clinics from representing certain clients, advancing certain
types of legal claims, or advancing claims against certain parties.
More commonly, clinics self-impose such restrictions out of fear that
pursuing these cases could threaten the clinic’s continued existence.
 Careful about what cases they accept
 Try to avoid “high profile” cases
Clinics that intentionally take challenging or controversial cases to
expose students to more complex legal issues run a heightened risk
of being targeted for political interference.
Ultimately the greatest victims of political interference are the
potential clients whose rights are lost due to lack of legal
representation.
Political Interference: Preventative Measures
(Lessons from the U.S. Experience)
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Important to have support for your clinic in the academic, legal, and
greater community prior to political interference:
 Cultivate support among non-clinical faculty and law school deans
by explaining what the clinic does and how cases are selected
based on pedagogical values.
 Cultivate contacts with local media. Explain to them the important
work that the clinic is doing.
In the event of political interference:
 Resist: The goal of interference is to intimidate the clinic into
avoiding cases against certain businesses or government entities.
When a clinic drops or refuses to take an otherwise good case out
of fear, the clinic is succumbs to intimidation.
 Point out the interference: Use the media to characterize the
conflict as one in which powerful business or government entities
are seeking to deny indigent clients access to the courts.
Pedagogical Value of Clinics
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Research findings show that service-learning benefits
students by boosting students' academic achievement,
fostering a lifetime commitment to civic participation,
improving social skills, and preparing students to enter the
workforce.
Service-learning also gives students a sense of
competency; they see themselves as active contributors
rather than passive recipients.
Through addressing real community needs, and building
stronger connections between schools and communities,
and students grow as individuals which improves the overall
school climate.
Service learning provides a mechanism through which
students' personal and social growth is tightly interwoven
into their academic and cognitive development, for the
greater benefit of the community at large.
Case Studies:
Success Stories and Lessons Learned
 Costa Rica: The University of Costa Rica
Environmental Law Clinic (Consultorio
Juridico Ambiental)
 Argentina: The Center for Human Rights Law
and the Environment (CEDHA)
 Brazil:
 Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso
 Universidade Federal do Para
 Universidade do Estado do Amazonas
 United States: Tulane Environmental Law
Clinic