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UPCOMING EVENTS

Greetings,

This week, we recognize some of the extraordinary scholarship happening at our law school. In a forthcoming article, Clinical Professor Diana Newmark, a longtime advocate for children, tackles difficult issues at the intersection of students’ rights and school discipline. In addition, Professor Ellen Bublick was recently cited by the U.S. Supreme Court, while Director of the Tribal Justice Clinic Heather Whiteman Runs Him filed an amicus brief on behalf of tribes of the Navajo Nation arguing for Colorado River water rights.

The intellectual rigor and notable faculty scholars are among the factors that draw students to the law school. A couple of weeks ago, we met some of those students during the annual Admitted Students Weekend. With the backdrop of the beautiful Pima County Historic Courthouse, we enjoyed discussing their impressions of the school and questions about becoming members of the LawCat Community.

Until the footnotes,

Marc

Students have lost millions of days of instructional time due to out of school suspensions. Despite the Supreme Court ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines that students do not “shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate,” most students who find themselves in these situations see that their right to due process is largely illusory in practice, creating a system that undervalues the interest a child has in attending school and overestimates a school’s capacity to handle issues of discipline fairly.

That is the argument being made by University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law Associate Clinical Professor of Law Diana Newmark in an upcoming paper set to be published by the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal and the focus of her research and clinical work over the past few years.

Diana directs University of Arizona Law’s Education Advocacy Clinic and has spent her career advocating for the rights of children, first as special education teacher, then as a lawyer for the Children’s Law Center in Washington, D.C. and the Legal Aid Society in the Bronx, New York, where she represented court-involved children in school discipline and special education matters.

“The school-to-prison pipeline is well researched and shows that school discipline and zero tolerance policies can have a huge impact for many students, particularly students of color,” Diana commented in a recent presentation at the William & Mary Law School Bill of Rights Journal Symposium which focused on constitutional issues within educational spaces. “And in addition to all of that, kids involved in other legal systems can have significant collateral consequences to school discipline – leading to disrupted foster home placements, violations of juvenile probation and even deportation.” 

See here to learn more about Diana’s research and forthcoming paper.

AROUND THE COLLEGE

Bublick Cited in Bartenwerfer v. Buckley Supreme Court Opinion 

On February 22, the Supreme Court in Bartenwerfer v. Buckley, 2023 WL 2144417 (U.S. Feb. 22, 2023), held that a debt incurred by business partners and obtained by fraud may not be discharged in bankruptcy even when the debtor is an innocent partner who did not commit the fraud. Professor Ellen Bublick’s book Law of Torts was cited in the Supreme Court opinion. 

Whiteman Runs Him Files Amicus Brief on Behalf of 37 Tribes  

In March, Director of the Tribal Justice Clinic Heather Whiteman Runs Him filed an amicus brief on behalf of 37 tribes in support of the Navajo Nation, which has been battling for the right to draw water from the Colorado River. Although the river runs along the border of the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona, the tribe has never had a right to use that water on its reservation.  

IN THE NEWS

A water crisis out West will test our politics

Washington Post, featuring Robert Glennon

Twitter, @uarizonalaw

It is always a pleasure to celebrate the wide-ranging and high-impact work of our scholarly community – which includes not only our great faculty, but many students who write on critical legal issues. As the story on Professor Whiteman Runs Him illustrates, that scholarship appears not only in the form of articles, chapters and books, but also in briefs, policy documents and in forms that engage the broader community.

Warmly,