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10-MAR-17
11:06
REBELLIOUS LAWYERING IN BIG CASE CLINICS JEENA SHAH* On the 25th anniversary of the publication of Gerald López’s Rebellious Lawyering: One Chicano’s Vision of Progressive Legal Practice, this article contemplates the need to incorporate rebellious lawyering in law reform and international human rights clinics, or as referred in this article, “big case clinics.” This article seeks to add to the existing scholarship on incorporating rebellious lawyering practices into clinical legal education by specifically focusing on big case clinics, and how big case clinicians can better prepare law students for the world they are entering into – a world where it is becoming increasingly harder to miss (or ignore) the power and strength of people fighting for their own liberation. This article focuses specifically on ways to channel rebellious lawyering principles that account for the unique challenges in big case clinics. It posits that big case clinics require a slightly different approach from other types of clinics, one that builds on the docket choices of community-oriented clinics and collaborative lawyer-client skills taught in small case clinics, but accounts for the limited and distant exposure of students to client communities. This clinic format requires an intentional teaching of rebellious lawyering theory, so that students can not only view their clinic fieldwork through a broader lens, but also learn how to apply this theory to their practice beyond the clinic. In addition to guided discussions on fieldwork during supervision and case rounds, the theory of social change undergirding rebellious lawyering should be unpacked in the clinic seminar – a space that is not tied to the uneven pace of big case work, but can rather help students step back and consider the role the clinic’s tactics play (or fail to play) in the broader struggle for social justice. * Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor of Law, Constitutional Rights and International Human Rights Clinics, Rutgers Law School in Newark. I would like to thank Kumar Rao for his feedback on early drafts. I would also like to express my deep appreciation for the many movement lawyers and organizers across the U.S., in Haiti, and in India, who have provided me with an invaluable education on the struggle for social justice over the past decade of my practice. While they are too many to list here, they are rare in their dedication to building power in subordinated communities. They have taught me, above all, the meaning of these words by Angela Davis: “We fight the same battles over and over again. They are never won for eternity, but in the process of struggling together, in community, we learn how to glimpse new possibilities that otherwise never would have become apparent to us, and in the process we expand and enlarge our very notion of freedom.” 775