Sponsored by the AALS Section’s on: Associate Deans for Academic Affairs and Reasearch, Critical Theories, Leadership, New Law Professors, Pro Bono & Access to Justice, Professional Responsibility, and Women in Legal Education
Perhaps nowhere is the American identity more challenged than with the Trump Administration’s racist mass deportation policy. We are a nation of immigrants. In this workshop, immigration law teachers and scholars discuss the various cases challenging current policy and how they teach about legal professional identity. What does it mean to be a lawyer in these times? What special obligations do we have to our clients and society? To the American dream of multiracial democracy? Given the most diverse cohort ever to enter law school, how do we translate our commitment to cross-cultural competency, equal access, and to eliminating bias, discrimination and racism in these times? How can we draw on their experiences to inform law and lawyering? What legal, political, and social future, ultimately, are we advocating for?
Eduardo R.C. Capulong, Professor of Law and Director of Experiential Learning, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa William S. Richardson School of Law
Professor Capulong directs the experiential learning program, which consists of in-house clinics, externships, and simulation courses. Prior to joining Richardson Law, he was a professor, lawyering program director, and interim dean at the City University of New York School of Law; professor and associate dean for clinical and experiential education at the University of Montana Alexander Blewett III School of Law; lawyering professor at the New York University School of Law; and public interest and public policy programs director and lecturer in law and urban studies at Stanford Law School. Professor Capulong was also a visiting professor at the University of the Philippines College of Law; China Youth University for Political Studies; and Universidad de Granada Facultad de Derecho, where he helped launch the school’s first clinical course. His current scholarly interests include legal education, lawyering, professional identity formation, law and social justice, race and racism, and dispute resolution.
Before joining the academy, Professor Capulong was a litigator, policy analyst, and community organizer for various nonprofits, including the Center for Constitutional Rights, Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association, Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence, Community Service Society, Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights, Philippine Center for Immigrant Rights, and Public Interest Law Center (Manila). A former Karpatkin Fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union and pro se law clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Professor Capulong received his BA from NYU and JD from CUNY as a Patricia Roberts Harris Scholar and Davis-Putter Fellow.
Professor Capulong is the former co-chair of the American Association of Law Schools Section on Clinical Legal Education and has served on the boards of the Montana ACLU, Society of American Law Teachers, National Lawyers Guild (San Francisco), International Endowment for Democracy, Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, and Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Annie Lai, Clinical Professor of Law, Co-Associate Dean for Experiential Education and Director of Immigrant Rights Clinic, University of California, Irvine School of Law
Professor Lai teaches, researches and practices at the intersection of immigrants’ rights, civil rights, immigrant workers’ rights, and criminal law and procedure. Her scholarship has appeared in journals such as the Boston College Law Review, Santa Clara Law Review and Denver Law Review. She is a frequent author of amicus briefs and a regular commentator on immigrants’ rights issues, including state and local immigration policy.
Professor Lai believes that law school clinics have a unique role to play in advancing individual and collective demands for dignity and equality by immigrants, communities of color and youth. She aims to help students develop the strategic vision, knowledge and practical skills necessary to be excellent advocates for these communities.
Prior to joining UCI in 2013, Professor Lai served as a Clinical Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School. She also practiced as a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arizona, where she litigated cases concerning local policing, religious freedom, prisoners’ rights, and other issues, and with the Urban Justice Center Community Development Project in New York, representing immigrant workers on consumer, health and employment matters.
Professor Lai received her J.D. from the New York University School of Law, where she was a Root Tilden Kern Public Interest Scholar.
Jessica Rofé, Director of the Constitutional Rights Clinic and Assistant Professor of Law, Rutgers Law School
Jessica Rofé is Assistant Professor of Law and Director of the Constitutional Rights Clinic at Rutgers Law School. Her litigation, research, and teaching focus on the intersection of criminal and immigration law, deportation, detention, and the rights of individuals incarcerated across systems. Jessica’s recent article, titled Peripheral Detention, Transfer, and Access to the Courts (2024), was published in the Michigan Law Review.
Prior to joining Rutgers Law School, Jessica was Deputy Director and Supervising Attorney at the NYU School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic, where she and students represented immigrants and community organizations in litigation at the agency, federal court, and Supreme Court level, and supported immigrant rights campaigns locally and nationally. Jessica was also an Immigrant Justice Corps Fellow at Brooklyn Defender Services (2014-2016) and an associate at Cleary Gottlieb in the firm’s Latin America practice (2016-2017).
Jessica received her J.D. from NYU School of Law, where she was an Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Fellow.
Prior to her law career, Jessica taught high school social studies in New York City public schools and received a master’s in teaching from Fordham University.
Esther Sungeun Yoo, Assistant Professor of Law and Director of the Refugee and Immigration Law Clinic, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa William S. Richardson School of Law
Esther Sungeun Yoo is an Assistant Professor at the William S. Richardson School of Law and Director of the Refugee and Immigration Law Clinic. At Richardson, she teaches the Immigration Law and Immigration Clinic courses. Her research focuses on the immigration courts and the immigration bureaucracy, in particular the challenges that practicing lawyers face helping clients navigate these complex institutions.
Prior to joining the law school, she was the founding attorney at The Legal Clinic, a Honolulu-based nonprofit organization, where she counseled and represented hundreds of low-income Hawai‘i immigrants in matters before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Executive Office of Immigration Review, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Before entering public interest law, Professor Yoo served as Director of Academic Success at the University of Maine School of Law. She also worked for several years as a litigator in private practice, where she maintained an active pro bono immigration asylum practice.
Professor Yoo graduated Order of the Coif from the UCLA School of Law, where she served as an editor of the UCLA Law Review and was a member of the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy. She began her legal career as an associate at O’Melveny & Myers LLP and served as a law clerk to the Honorable Dolly M. Gee of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
