Workshop on Clinical Legal Education
Expanding Visions of Scholarship*: Making It Happen

May 9–12, 2001

Law Clinic Directors' Workshop

Prof. Barry C. Scheck, Director, Clinical Programs, Cardozo Law School

1. What Are the Characteristics of Clinical Scholarship
   1. Depends on Your Conception of Clinics
      1. Cardozo Criminal Law Clinic
         1. Classic In-House Model, Bellow’s Lawyering Process as text supplemented with policy analysis of criminal justice system in New York
         2. Big cases and little cases
         3. Big cases were law reform efforts - nuclear power plants, battered women, political defendants, DNA.
         4. Innocence Project (IP) grew out of DNA litigation
            1. Forensic Science Commission in NY and DNA legislation arose contemporaneously with IP.
   2. Clinical Scholarship Ought to Be No Different Than Any Good Scholarship But Is Well Positioned to Emphasize
      1. Ethical Issues from Real Experience
      2. Interdisciplinary Perspective
      3. Empirical Research of Institutional Problems and Solutions
      4. Social Reform - Institutional, Legislative, or Test Case Litigation
      5. Client Centered Perspective
2. Innocence Project/Innocence Network
   1. More than 20 Law Schools and Journalism Schools Doing DNA and Non-DNA cases part of Innocence Network, Independent Non-Profit Entity Not Affiliated with Any One School
   2. 86 Post-Conviction DNA Exonerations Single Greatest Data Set In the History of American Criminal Justice
      1. Unprecedented Learning Moment - What’s Important is Not How They Got Out (DNA No Panacea) but Why They Were Convicted In the First Place
      2. Finding Solutions Mainstream Enterprise, Good Law Enforcement - Whenever Wrong Person Arrested, Convicted, Sentenced, Executed, Real Perpetrator At Large, Committing More Crimes
   3. Causes of Wrongful Convictions - Mistaken Identification, False Confessions/Admissions, Junk Forensic Science, Police/Prosecutorial Misconduct, Jailhouse Snitches, Bad Defense Lawyers, Race, Effect of the Death Penalty
   4. Actual Innocence (Scheck, Neufeld, Dwyer 2000) first cut at exploring causes using DNA exoneration data and presenting mainstream solutions.
3. Wrongful Convictions: Causes and Remedies Distance Learning Course
   1. TWEN site for readings and discussions
   2. Thirteen lectures (55 minutes) by leading experts on key causes and remedies, some teleconferencing, mostly CDs created from FTP download and played on TV in each school by professors.
      1. Can Seminar Portion of an IP or Stand Alone 2 Credit Course
      2. Academic Quality of Course Could Not Be Questioned By Any Faculty Committee Unless Professor Running Seminar Derelict
         1. Most Non-Clinical Faculty Should Audit or Teach Course Because Unfamiliar with the Social Science
   3. Interdisciplinary
   4. Plan to Formally Fund and Organize Empirical Research with graduate students in Psychology, Criminology, Sociology, Pathology, Journalism, etc.
   5. Interdisciplinary, Empirical Scholarship on Causes and Remedies Should Transform Understanding of Criminal Justice System and Way Law Schools Teach Subject.