|
The first course taken by UDC-DCSL
students, Law & Justice, begins
with the definition from legal philosopher,
Edmond Cahn:
"Justice means the active process of
remedying or preventing what would
arouse the sense of injustice."
First-year law students meet daily
with Edmond Cahn’s son Edgar, but
the course does not end with classes. It
includes a requirement of 40 hours of
community service that enlist students
in ongoing struggles that give new
meaning to that definition. Student essays
are now recounting some of their
contributions:
The Rescission Act of 1946
stripped Filipino soldiers drafted into
the US military service in the Philippines
during World War II of their
status as US veterans, depriving them
of eligibility for such veterans benefits
as health care, disability compensation,
pension, burial, housing loans, education
and vocational rehabilitation. To
Pamela Montana Eclar, daughter of a
career Navy sailor and herself a former
military officer, justice meant engaging
in the struggle to redress that injustice.
Her community service with the National Asian Pacific American
Legal Consortium (NAPALC)  consumed
far more than 40 hours building
support for passage of the Filipino
Veterans Equity Act: researching the
historical background, creating a database
containing all contacts, chronicling
prior unsuccessful legislative
efforts, participating in a veterans
rally, assisting with preparation for
press conferences, helping with the
logistics and staffing of NAPALC’s
8th annual American Courage Awards
including an award to the Japanese
American Military Intelligence Service Service
WWII Veterans for their
invaluable linguistic skills
said to have saved over 1 million
American lives and other
awards acknowledging courageous
advocacy and efforts at
empowerment that have built
bridges for the Asian Pacific
American community.  Her
commitment and her engagement
have now taken on continuing
life for Pamela Montano Eclar, as newly
elected President of the UDC-DCSL’s
Asian Pacific American
Law Student Assn chapter.
Interning with DC Prisoner’s Legal
Services project meant researching
female inmate rape and interviewing
prisoners concerning health care.
Direct contact with women in prison
yielded "vast stories" about life experience
and awareness of the appalling
state of health care in correctional
systems for Alterik Wilburn. The
presence of students sheds light on
dark places where correctional officials
rarely acknowledge fault and
typically assert that the prisoners are
lying. The exposure generated a determination
to continue working in this area – and an expanded awareness of
the meaning of these words, penned
by George Bernard Shaw over a century
ago:
"Judges spend their lives in consigning
their fellow creatures to prison;
and when some whisper reaches
them that prisons are horribly cruel
and destructive places, and that no
creature fit to live should be sent
there, they only remark that prisons
are not meant to be comfortable;
which is no doubt the consideration
that reconciled Pontius Pilate to the
practice of crucifixion."
|
Nearly a dozen students have served as
judge advocates for the Time Dollar Youth
Court, where a jury of teenagers weekly
handles between twenty and thirty non-violent
teenage offenders. One essay recalls
how one juror explained to an offender that
friends who get you into trouble are not your
friends. Others describe how jurors struggle
to get beyond merely imposing hours of
community service as a sentence and try to
think of ways that this experience can become
a turning point in that youth’s life.
One such sentence included a requirement to
write a five-page essay on the topic "how to
be a leader, not a follower." Frequently, juries
seeing the humiliation expressed by the
parent will sentence the youth to an apology
for the pain he or she has caused their parent,
and somehow, that ends up generating a
hug, an embrace, and often tears. The scale
of involvement by UDC law students has
helped lift the youth court from a pilot program
to the cornerstone of a community-based
system of juvenile justice. This year,
nearly all offenders are sentenced to eight
weeks of jury duty so that youth themselves, including respondents, are becoming
the first line of defense to prevent
their peers from penetrating
deeper into the system. Recidivism
has been sharply reduced.
The range in types of community
services continues to expand.
This year it includes interning for
Superior Court judges, the Attorney
General’s office, with a private
law firm trying to halt illegal
waste dumps near housing complexes,
with Catholic Charities Immigration
Legal Services and the
Equal Justice Center.
The Law and Justice course,
combined with the community service,
preserves a fundamental
commitment of this school: to provide
the legal profession with
graduates who have first-hand
knowledge of injustice – and first-hand
experience in efforts to remedy
or prevent it.
|
Community Service Program Fair
Photos on these pages from our annual
Community Service Fair attended
by D.C. government agencies
and public interest organizations
seeking the assistance of
UDC-DCSL first-year students.
Participating organizations:
Alliance for Justice
American Association of Retired Persons (AARP)
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
ASHA
Center for Immigration, Law & Practice
Covenant House
Democracy in D.C. Coalition
D.C. Prisoners Legal Services Project
D.C. Zoning Board
Federal Bureau of Prisons
Empowered Women International
HALT! Americans for Legal Reform
Manna, Inc.
Neighborhood Legal Services
Time Dollar Youth Court
U.S. Attorney General, Washington D.C.
|
|
|
