In his acceptance speech, Meron heralded France’s contributions to international law and justice—from the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen to creating the modern system of civil law—but noted the nation’s greatest achievement is far more personal. “It is a country which has a special place in my heart,” he added, “because, as you know, my wife is French.”

Interning with the Minnesota State Appellate Public Defender’s Office between his first and second years, Greg Scanlan ’08 was assigned to this “really juicy Fourth Amendment case.” He was thrilled. Did the two officers have probable cause? If there was no evidence of a crime, could they leave and return? Is it considered seizure to take photos of property? “You’d be lucky to get a case that has one point of law to be settled,” Scanlan said. “This one had three.”

Scanlan raised these questions in his brief and requested oral argument before the Minnesota Court of Appeals. He specifically wanted to address something avoided in a prior Minnesota Supreme Court case, State v. Fulford, that police must have probable cause to photograph property during a search. “Just because officers are in your house, albeit for a legitimate reason, doesn’t mean they get to take pictures of the opened mail that’s on your desk or the artwork on your walls,” Scanlan said.

To prepare himself, Scanlan consulted with Professor of Law Amy Adler, an expert in art law, and Professor of Clinical Law Randy Hertz, who demystified the courtroom procedures he would soon face. Scanlan also drew upon his first-year course work. “I did oral arguments for my Lawyering class, and a year later I’m doing it for real,” he said. “Only now it has consequences for someone’s life, and for the law.”

This June, the court unanimously ruled in favor of Scanlan’s client, declaring that the photographs taken during the warrantless search of the house were unjustified and inadmissible at trial since the officers lacked probable cause.

“Greg successfully anticipated the mindset of the appellate judges, particularly the concerns they were likely to have about the precedential effects of a ruling in his client’s favor,” Hertz said. “He crafted a narrative that caused the judges to conclude that not only was the law on Greg’s side, but so was a broader policy interest in deterring police abuses in the future.”

The city signed $9.4 million in contracts with Manhattan’s Center for Family Representation (CFR), the Bronx Defenders and Brooklyn’s Legal Services for New York City to collectively handle an estimated 2,595 cases over 26 months. This move will shift representation of about 40 percent of indigent parents in the three boroughs from $75-an-hour city-certified attorneys who have been their sole source of parent representation until now, to the three nonprofit organizations.

“Before this change, the city was shortchanging the parents’ representatives,” says Guggenheim, a long-time proponent of advocating to rehabilitate entire families, instead of focusing exclusively on children’s legal rights during court proceedings (see “Caught by Good Intentions”). “It’s the first time that the city has seen fit to try to level the playing field by providing equal resources to all parties in child-welfare cases.”

Students in Guggenheim’s Family Defense Clinic will work on cases with Legal Services for New York City. The clinic partners students from NYU’s School of Social Work with law students to handle cases that usually concern parental abuse and neglect. Both CFR and the Bronx Defenders also employ parent advocates—usually social workers—a multidisciplinary approach developed by Guggenheim to address circumstances in which parents require guidance and assistance, but not necessarily legal advocacy, such as reporting on their progress in drug-rehabilitation or parenting programs.

“The city’s decision to create organizations to represent parents is nothing short of revolutionary. The support of interdisciplinary representation is a tribute to its recognition that families need strong legal representation and a wide array of services and support to strengthen them and make reunification possible,” says the Bronx Defenders’ Executive Director Robin Steinberg ’82. Her organization provides holistic, community- based legal and social services for defendants in the criminal-justice system.

Focusing on circumstances both inside and out of the courtroom will greatly improve legal service for families, says Guggenheim. “Our law school developed a model of how to represent parents effectively,” he says. “It is gratifying that New York City agrees that providing excellent representation requires working closely with parents outside of court.”

The purpose of the series, says Oxford Professor of Civil Procedure Adrian Zuckerman, the secretary to the Hart Lecture Committee, is to continue to contribute to the academic disciplines in which Hart played a crucial role, and to encourage the interest of Oxford’s jurisprudence and philosophy students in those areas. “Almost all the prominent legal and moral philosophers of this generation have delivered this seminal lecture,” says Zuckerman.

University Professor Jeremy Waldron, a foremost philosopher in his own right, described the Hart as “the leading public lecture on jurisprudence and legal theory at Oxford. It celebrates the founder of modern analytic jurisprudence; it is given at Oxford, the home of legal philosophy, and it has been delivered by some of the most distinguished theorists in the field.” Ronald Dworkin, Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law; Thomas Nagel, University Professor; and Richard Epstein, James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago and an annual visiting law professor at NYU, have also given the lecture. Justices William Brennan Jr. and Stephen Breyer are other past Hart Lecturers.

“Sam Issacharoff is one of the leading scholars of democracy in the modern legal academy,” says Waldron, “and his work on what law can do to strengthen fragile democracy in developing societies is immensely important. I think his Hart lecture will help to open up Oxford-style legal philosophy to richer and more robust engagement with political issues about governance, democracy and rule of law.”

A research team from the Carnegie Foundation visited NYU and 15 other law schools in the United States and Canada in the 1999-2000 academic year to produce its report, “Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law.” In it, NYU’s clinical pedagogy is examined in great detail and praised for how it combines analytical skills with practical training, client relations skills and real-life ethical considerations.

The report includes a profile of NYU’s mandatory first-year Lawyering Program and its focus on simulated tasks such as gathering facts or negotiating a transaction. Peggy Cooper Davis, John S. R. Shad Professor of Lawyering and Ethics and director of the Lawyering Program, said in the report: “It is important that students see expertise in a sense broader than the constant manipulation of a body of rules.”

Clinical legal education has not been the subject of an equally compelling national discussion since the MacCrate Report in 1992, says Randy Hertz, professor of clinical law and director of Clinical and Advocacy Programs for NYU. That study of lawyers’ educational and professional development needs advocated for practical legal-skills training as part of legal education. “The Carnegie Report will lead us to a greater consolidation of clinical methodology into traditional, nonclinical courses and a more conscious focus on helping students gain the skills and values needed for legal practice,” Hertz says. “I think NYU inevitably will play an important role in these developments.”

Just 36 years old, Milgram has impressive credentials. As special litigation counsel in the Criminal Section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, she successfully prosecuted U.S. v. Jimenez-Calderon, winning convictions against multiple defendants who forced young Mexican immigrants into prostitution. Milgram was also an assistant district attorney in the New York County District Attorney’s Office of Robert Morgenthau. “It was clear from our very first interview with her that she was smart, that she was a hard worker and that she had good judgment,” said Morgenthau to New Jersey’s Star-Ledger. “It was also clear that she was interested in public service.”

Larry Kramer, former Russell D. Niles Professor of Law at NYU, now the dean of Stanford Law School, is well acquainted with Milgram. “Anne was one of my all-time favorite students,” says Kramer. “She served as a research assistant— something I do rarely and only with students I really trust. Her work was great. Better still was her attitude: She projects a huge amount of positive energy. Combined with smarts, passion, commitment and a lot of sense, it’s no wonder she’s done so well at such a young age.”