Symposia

2013 UDC Law Review Symposium
Expanding the Civil Right to Counsel: 50 Years After Gideon
Friday, March 29, 2013

Symposium Schedule

9:00-9:40am: Setting the Stage 
John Pollock presents a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction overview of civil counsel entitlements and access-to-justice issues.

9:40-10:20am: Conceptual Probing
Latisha Gotell Faulks discusses her article on the sometimes fuzzy boundary between criminal appeals, which are within the scope of Gideon‘s guarantee of counsel to criminal cases, and post-conviction relief (PCR) applications, which the Court has held is outside the scope of Gideon. Faulks argues that principles of substantive due process require constitutionally effective counsel in PCR applications, a view that recently received support from the Court’s ruling in Martinez v. Schriro. Does the fuzzy boundary between criminal appeals and PCR applications have the potential to prompt doctrinal developments that might result in the expansion of due process counsel entitlements to nominally "civil” actions?

10:20-10:30am: Break

10:30-11:15am: Parallel, Alternative History
Barbara Creel discusses her article on access to counsel for indigent Native Americans facing legal proceedings in tribal courts, which are not bound by Fifth Amendment due process guarantees and Sixth Amendment right to counsel guarantees.

11:15-noon: Access to Justice and the UDC-DCSL Clinical Program
Judge Peter J. Panuthos and Professor Charles Jeane discuss the access-to-counsel implications of Turner v. Rogers and the steps taken by the U.S. Tax Court and the UDC-DCSL Low Income Taxpayer Clinic to increase access to justice for unrepresented litigants. Professor Daniel Clark discusses the expansion of the UDC-DCSL Housing & Consumer Law Clinic into brief legal services, through the D.C. Superior Court’s Landlord Tenant Resource Center.

noon-12:30pm: Break

12:30-1:45pm: Lunch/Discussion
The Right to Counsel in Immigration and Removal Cases, part 1
Mark Noferi and Erin Corcoran discuss civil Gideon in the immigration context, and alternatives to a constitutional guarantee of representation.

Erin Corcoran presents her work arguing that efforts to create counsel entitlements for defendants in removal proceedings have failed, and that advocacy efforts should focus on nonlawyer representatives and forms of "unbundled” services.

Mark Noferi discusses his work arguing for further empirical research to define and test the distinctions between lawyers and non-lawyer immigration advocates, and to examine the implications of "two-tiered” representation for the larger civil Gideon debate.

1:45-2:00pm: 2013-2014 Editorial Board Introduction

2:00-3:20pm: The Right to Counsel in Immigration and Removal Cases, part 2
Maurice Hew, Carla Reyes, and Careen Shannon discuss their articles on the right to counsel in the immigration context:

Expanding the Civil Immigration Privilege of Being Represented by Counsel through the 6th Amendment’s Presumed Prejudice Doctrine, Professor Maurice Hew, Clinical Director and Associate Professor of Law, Thurgood Marshall School of Law

Appointed Counsel in Removal Proceedings: A Case Study for Exploring the Legal and Societal Imperative to Expand the Civil Right to Counsel, Carla L. Reyes, Perkins Coie LLP

Immigration is Different: Why Congress Should Create a Statutory Right to Counsel in Immigration Matters, Careen Shannon, Adjunct Professor, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, LLP

3:20-3:30pm: Break

3:30-4:30pm: Civil Gideon Pilot Projects
Clare Pastore presents her article on right to counsel pilot projects in California, Boston, and elsewhere.

4:30-5:30pm: Cocktail Reception

For more information, contact Megan Challender, Symposium Editor.