justice

The Real Reason to Become a Prosecutor

/ BC Law Impact Guest Posts / Leave a comment

This guest post was written by 3L Alyssa Hatfield.

“Alyssa Hatfield on behalf of the Commonwealth.” 

As introductions go, this one might be the most terrifying. What does it mean to represent the Commonwealth? To represent an entire group of people, the defendant included? It’s a heavy weight to bear, but it’s not meant to be borne alone. 

This semester, I joined the Prosecution Clinic. As a part of the clinic, you learn a few things really fast. One: court moves really quickly. Like, really quickly. Two: how to swap stories like old-timers, because people commit some pretty odd crimes in some pretty odd ways that are ripe for class discussion. And three: to “do justice” might be the hardest and most unattainable mission to live by.

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Law School in Action: Family Justice Clinic

/ Tess Halpern / Leave a comment

Boston College Law School gives its students a wide range of classes to take that are taught by some of the best scholars in the field. Yet, while learning about the law in a classroom is crucial to becoming a successful attorney, nothing prepares you for day-to-day practice more than getting hands-on experience before graduating. That’s where BC Law’s clinics come in.

Law students in their second and third years of study can apply for coveted spots in any of the school’s fifteen clinics. No matter what someone’s legal interest is, there’s a clinic for them! To help students better understand the opportunities available to them, the BC Law Impact Blog is highlighting each of these clinics this semester. Here is our interview with the director of the Family Justice Clinic (and BC Law alum) Claire Donohue, who also serves as the director of the school’s social service advocacy program.

Tell us about your clinic!

In the Family Justice Clinic, students advise and represent low-income clients in civil and administrative matters related to family law and child welfare. This means students are in probate and family courts to litigate traditional family law matters: divorce, custody, alimony, and child support. But, we also represent families who have been accused of abuse or neglect and are subject to surveillance and regulation by the state. We even represent kin who have been denied the opportunity to provide kinship foster placements to their grandchildren, nieces, nephews, cousins, etc.

Our students are court-certified as Student Attorneys and handle all phases of their clients’ cases, from client interviewing and case planning to fact investigation, discovery, client counseling, negotiation, and courtroom advocacy. We also work closely with masters of social work students to provide responsive, holistic representation to our clients.

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Law School in Action: Housing Justice Clinic

/ Tess Halpern / Leave a comment

Boston College Law School gives its students a wide range of classes to take that are taught by some of the best scholars in the field. Yet, while learning about the law in a classroom is crucial to becoming a successful attorney, nothing prepares you for day-to-day practice more than getting hands-on experience before graduating. That’s where BC Law’s clinics come in.

Law students in their second and third years of study can apply for coveted spots in any of the school’s fifteen clinics. No matter what someone’s legal interest is, there’s a clinic for them! To help students better understand the opportunities available to them, the BC Law Impact Blog is highlighting each of these clinics this semester. Here is our interview with the director of the Housing Justice Clinic, Alan Minuskin.

Tell us about your clinic!

The Civil Litigation Clinic: Housing Justice (Housing Justice Clinic) advises and represents tenants who can’t afford lawyers in several types of housing cases. Our primary focus is eviction defense, as we use our knowledge of the law and the courts to prevent tenants from being evicted when they have viable defenses and counterclaims to litigate. The clinic also represents clients contesting unlawful rejections or terminations from public housing, and sometimes brings affirmative lawsuits against landlords for inappropriate conduct and/or substandard living conditions. These are front-line litigation matters that move quickly from client interview to fact investigation, case assessment, client counseling, and resolution by negotiation (if possible) or adjudication at trial or via dispositive motion. Students in the clinic are certified to practice law in Massachusetts under close, supportive supervision, and they perform all lawyering activities needed for each case. Even though the focus of this clinic is on housing matters, the litigation skills and ethics considerations integral to our practice apply to all civil litigation matters!

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A Glimpse into the Human Side of Justice: Visiting District Court

/ Christopher Tan / Leave a comment

The sky wears a cloak of gray. Snow falls, then melts. Indoors, the instant coffee offers warm sips of solace. Heaters hum in a clunky staccato. It is winter in Boston, and the start of the spring semester. 

This week, on another familiarly cloudy day, my criminal justice class and I visited the Worcester District Court where we had the privilege to speak with a judge and observe her presiding over arraignments. The building’s drab architecture echoed the nature of its solemnity. Inside, people spoke in hushed tones, only interrupted by claps of footsteps on marble and the occasional beep of a metal detector. We sat in the back of courtroom 14. Here, the air felt thick, with a sense of gravity and respect.

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A Solution to the Housing Crisis is Within Reach

/ Jonathan Bertulis-Fernandes / Leave a comment

The United States is in the midst of an unparalleled affordable housing and homelessness crisis. The most conservative estimate puts the number of individuals forced to live unhoused each year at around 580,000 nationwide, while the episodic nature of homelessness means that this number is likely much higher and perhaps closer to 5 million. At the same time, there is a critical shortage of affordable housing in the United States and there are only thirty-six units of rental housing for every 100 households with extremely low incomes across the nation.

In response to this crisis, various jurisdictions across the United States have introduced some form of a right to shelter. For instance, a comprehensive right to shelter has existed in New York City since the 1970s, with some 75,540 people spending a night in a city-provided shelter during March 2023. Other more limited right to shelter legal regimes exist in Washington, DC, which provides shelter in severe weather conditions, or in Massachusetts, which provides shelter to eligible families. Similarly, the Ninth Circuit’s 2018 decision in Martin v. Boise upholding the constitutional rights of individuals experiencing homelessness provides the potential contours for a limited right to shelter built around Eighth Amendment jurisprudence.

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‘The sport of argument:’ Nathaniel DeMelis and a Commitment to Justice

/ BC Law Impact Guest Posts / Leave a comment

Over the 2022 holiday break, the BC Law Impact blog is running a series of some of the most powerful and fascinating admissions essays from first-year students. These personal statements, submitted as part of their admissions applications, tell a variety of compelling stories, but the thread connecting them all is an example of the kind of person who is attracted to a BC Law education: one who is driven to work collaboratively with others, achieve great things and make a real difference in the world.

We want to thank the Office of Admissions, and all of the student essay writers, for agreeing to share their stories with us. For more Admissions tips and other content, check out BC Law’s new TikTok channel.

Be it the penchant for holiday arguments, or the lessons of my late grandfather, my family has consistently shaped my growth and founded my interest in the law. 

In an Italian family that frequently exercises their freedom of speech in the sport of argument, it can be difficult to get a word in edgewise—especially around the holiday dinner table. There exists only a brief window of opportunity to make your point, and make it well, before you will either be refuted or simply shouted down.

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On Innocence, Factual and Moral

/ ianramseynorth / Leave a comment

One of the first lessons taught in the year-long Boston College Innocence Clinic concerns the concept of “factual innocence.” It is closely related to the concept of “actual innocence,” though different jurisdictions may refer to one or the other, and the substance and application of those terms can vary. Regardless of which term is deployed, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher when clinic students learn that the legal concept of “actual innocence” entails its own discrete body of thought and doctrine within criminal law. Doesn’t the determination of actual innocence suffuse the entire criminal-legal process?

It turns out it does not, and factual innocence is largely a claim raised in the post-conviction setting to overturn a wrongful conviction. That claim often finds little legal purchase. In Herrera v. Collins, for instance, the Supreme Court held that a claim of actual innocence does not entitle a person to federal habeas corpus relief under the 8th Amendment’s proscription of cruel and unusual punishment. Constitutionally and procedurally intact convictions can remain undisturbed by the truth. In Herrera’s case, a capital case, the Court ruled it was not cruel and unusual to execute an innocent man. That kind of antiseptic, procedural logic is one striking example of how the banality of evil manifests itself within the criminal legal system.

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She believed she could, and she did. Now we can: The Impact of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

/ Travis Salters / Leave a comment

On April 7, 2022, the United States Senate confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson as the next Justice of the Supreme Court, marking a historic step in the nation’s tortuous history with race and gender. For the first time, a Black woman will serve on the US Supreme Court.

Regardless of political affiliation, it is impossible to ignore the significance of this moment. While Justice Brown Jackson’s judicial impact remains an open question, her personal impact, particularly on Black women, is undeniable: a resounding affirmation and inspiration. Here are a few reflections from members of the Boston College Law School community.

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Why We Chose Environmental Law

/ Fiona Maguire / Leave a comment

The following post was written by 1L, Logan Hagerty. Logan is an avid member of the BC Environmental Law Society (ELS) and serves as a 1L Representative. ELS is the umbrella organization for the BC Land & Environmental Law program. We lead research, service, professional training, social events, and more. As President of ELS, it has been a pleasure working with the new students like Logan who share my commitment to environmental law. -Fiona Maguire

I read dozens of faculty bios and course listings when applying to law school. I keyword-searched more variations of “environmental law” than I thought was possible: “Land,” “energy,” “property,” “environmental justice,” and “natural resources,” just to name a few. You guessed it – I came to law school with an interest in environmental law. 

Professor Plater’s bio (and bow tie!) stood out on the BC Law website. I’d struck a gold mine. I explored the BC site some more, finding pictures from the Environmental Law Society (ELS) Barbeque and Winter Weekend events. I was hooked! (I also attended both of these events). Now I view the environmental law program as more than a “gold mine.” The program is an old-growth forest; it offers rich, deep-rooted connections, support, and development. 

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Reminding Ourselves Why We “Do” Law School

/ Ismail (Izzy) Ercan / Leave a comment

Writing an Impact post at the beginning of the semester is never easy. How to recapture the excitement for school after a month’s vacation and a return to campus in the middle of a Boston winter? 1L’s gearing up for round 2, 2L’s grinding away, and 3L’s wondering why we are still on campus. In addition, with the latest Covid surge, another round of “when will this all be over” doesn’t exactly help the cause. 

But in this case the answer of what to write about seemed clear to me: my experiences in the Innocence Clinic working for my client. While I am not able to disclose many of the details about his case, I can say that my client had a clean record both before and after the arson he was wrongfully convicted of, and that our clinic recently filed a motion for new trial looking to overturn his conviction using newly discovered evidence that demonstrates his innocence nearly twenty years later. 

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