Attending the March ceremony at Singapore’s Asian Civilizations Museum, Singapore Minister for Finance and Minister for Education Tharman Shanmugaratnam lauded the program for its “unique content and multinational composition.” U.S. Ambassador to Singapore Patricia L. Herbold, Singapore’s Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong, and Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Law Chan Lai Fung also were guests.

One highlight was a speech by Wangui Kaniaru ’07 (LL.M. ’08) in which she quoted Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, a British colonial administrator credited with founding the port city of Singapore: “It would be difficult to name a place on the face of the globe with brighter prospects or more present satisfaction.”

“In a world-embracing city,” Kaniaru noted, “we have experienced a world-embracing program, and the challenge and opportunity we have been given is to be world-embracing lawyers.”

The program grew out of a conversation in 2002 between University Professor and Joseph Straus Professor of Law Joseph Weiler, then-director of NYU’s Hauser Global Law School Program, and NUS Dean Tan Cheng Han. Demand for the program has been strong, with about 200 applicants each year. More than 50 students from 24 countries are due to graduate next year.

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Returning to law school in the fall, Gandhi dived into tax, taking five tax courses in her third year. “[Associate Professor Lily] Batchelder looked at me like I was nuts,” she said. “It was a late-developing interest, but I love it and I’m glad I went with it.”

Gandhi found herself challenged in learning so much tax law in one year, but her enthusiasm didn’t flag. She took Professor Leo Schmolka’s demanding Corporate Tax class at the same time as the basic income tax course. On Acting Assistant Professor Joshua Blank’s Tax Procedure and Timing, she exclaimed: “He’s such a fantastic teacher that he even made tax procedure interesting, and that’s about filing forms!”

It was while taking Batchelder’s Tax and Social Policy seminar that Gandhi had the inspiration for an A-paper that proposed increasing college enrollment among low-income students by accelerating student loan subsidies.Gandhi identified inefficiencies in the government’s subsidy process, and felt that improving the system was crucial. “It’s just common sense,” she says. “In terms of equality of opportunity and creating a more democratic society, education is one of the pillars to get there. Forget about welfare. If you don’t give people hope and the chance to have an education, how are they supposed to climb the ladder?”

With Batchelder’s encouragement, Gandhi submitted a condensed version of the paper to the Brookings Institution, winning its inaugural Hamilton Project Economic Policy Innovation Prize for the most “innovative policy proposal” written by a graduate student; the selection committee included former Congressional Budget Office Director Alice Rivlin and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. In addition to a $15,000 award, Gandhi was invited to a writer’s conference to help her turn her plan into a discussion paper published by the Hamilton Project.

Now a tax associate at Simpson Thacher, Gandhi has not ruled out the possibility of working in the public sector someday. The beauty of tax law, she says, is that “it does blend a very real private-sector practice with the potential to go to D.C. It’s not a surprise, considering how strong a marriage there is between social policy and the practice of tax law.” This unique mix, says Gandhi, is why tax law is never boring. “It’s not just common law judicially dictated. It’s Congress, it’s politics, it’s lobbying, it’s budget constraints. So many factors go into it…. It’s an evolving beast.”

Having the chance to publish her tax paper profoundly affected Gandhi’s law school experience. “It showed me that there is a very real possibility that ideas can make a difference,” she says. “I find that incredibly rewarding.”

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As a 1L, Arora became aware of a similar group that had been started in Massachusetts, and decided to launch her own version in New York. Arora’s concerns with problematic courtroom procedures were broad: lack of proper translation services; t he need for information on basic rights to relief in the immigration system; mistreatment of and bias against defendants, and collusion bet ween government attorneys and judges.

Arora, who spent two years working on human rights issues in India, Thailand and South Africa before enrolling at NYU, developed a simple but apparently effective solution: Students would be assigned as observers in the courtrooms of the Immigration Court, where Department of Homeland Security attorneys bring cases against immigrant detainees. Arora described her initial impressions of Immigration Court in a speech in Washington, D.C. last October, when she received the LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell Exemplary Public Service Award from Equal Justice Works in recognition of her role in creating the DWG. “Immigrants were brought in wearing orange jumpsuits and shackles, treated like criminals for what is a civil violation,” she said. “Their lawyers came in mumbling and rambling, rarely having the adequate defenses, and the interpreters barely interpreted one-tenth of the proceeding, leaving most of the immigrants incredibly confused. I remember thinking, ‘Here their rights aren’t being protected, and these people are stripped of all the human dignity that they have.’”

Arora believes that the DWG’s work has made judges more conscientious and less arbitrary. David Stern, chief executive officer of Equal Justice Works, said, “The students help assert procedural due process rights—and keep our country’s promise of equal justice under law. We applaud Reena’s passion and commitment to public service.”

The hearings in the Immigration Court system, in which more than 50 courts nationwide are not subject to the same standards of due process required of regular courts, are only a small part of the immigrant detainees’ world. Detainees are often sent elsewhere to receive hearings by detention commissions; many removal proceedings take place in prisons and jails. But, in two tiny courtrooms in a nondescript building on Varick Street, Arora says law students are “trying to help restore due process in a small way.”

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Along with five other NYU Law students, I made this counterintuitive commute daily for a week in March to the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice (NJISJ) as part of the Alternative Spring Break (ASB) program of Law Students for Human Rights (LSHR)—a week of working, observing and learning.

Last spring, when the Public Interest Law Center first urged LSHR to consider Newark, I thought we might have trouble selling the city as an appealing spring break destination, even to the most public interest-minded law students—and then, in May, I saw Cory Booker speak at NYU Law’s convocation.

Booker related to the Class of 2007 how, as a young Yale Law graduate living in a violence-plagued Newark housing project, he learned from his neighbors to see beneath the troubled surface of the world around him. Tears streamed down my face. He impressed upon me the impact my classmates and I could make just by the way in which we live our lives. “Stand tall,” he said.

Less than a year later, I was standing before the mayor with my fellow spring breakers at a meeting arranged by NJISJ. Booker was every bit as inspiring in the intimate meeting as he had been on the stage of Madison Square Garden. He asked each of us in turn about our backgrounds, interests and ambitions, engaging us on topics ranging from high school nicknames to same-sex marriage. Although Newark is the largest city in New Jersey, Newark’s public interest lawyers and community organizers emphasize how small and close-knit their community feels to them.

During the week, the six ASB interns took turns working on behalf of Reentry Legal Services, one of NJISJ’s partners, calling ex-offenders to offer legal services. I spent hours on the phone on behalf of one man, recently released from prison, who suffered from short-term memory loss and cognition difficulties, helping him to navigate an expansive array of entities comprising the Motor Vehicles Commission and several municipal courts whose approval he needed to get his driver’s license restored. This was necessary for him to be eligible for most of the employment that was available to ex-offenders. Other students drafted petitions to expunge stale criminal records, including a petition on behalf of a 40-year-old client who had just been denied a job promotion because of a conviction for shoplifting when she was 17.

Our work with NJISJ also touched on New Jersey handgun regulation, an integral part of Booker’s public safet y platform, as well as collateral damage from aggressive law enforcement policies, such as a “juvenile waiver” rule that meant that young defendants accused of certain crimes were automatically tried as adults. Our accomplishments were modest, but had an impact nonetheless.

For me, the week was an opportunity to take a step back from school and draw encouragement from the inspiring people around me—from the Newarkers overcoming major obstacles every day just to survive to the attorneys advocating for the city and still making time to embrace us visitors with open arms, to our site leader, Dan Meyler ’09, who spent months learning about Newark, attending conferences, and making connections in order to present us with the array of hands-on opportunities that we enjoyed. I got to remove my law school blinders and see a troubled New Jersey city as something else—a testament to America’s urban plight, but also to its enduring spirit of revitalization, just five miles from Manhattan.

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During her convocation address, she recalled ribbing Law School friends for studying too hard for a criminal procedure exam; she took the course pass-fail because she was convinced that she would never practice criminal law. As it turned out, Milgram was the only one of her pals to pursue a criminal law career, starting out as a Manhattan assistant district attorney before eventually becoming the lead prosecutor for human trafficking crimes at the U.S. Department of Justice and then New Jersey’s top law enforcement officer at age 36.

“If I can be attorney general, you can, too,” Milgram said, adding later, “The sky is the limit for NYU Law grads.”

While extolling NYU Law’s first-rate education, Milgram offered this key advice: “If you make a choice that you don’t like, in your life or in your career, make another one. There is not one path.”

Gregory Scanlan, the J.D. student speaker, also spoke about paths, likening the law school experience to “the search for the medallion,” an annual tradition in his native St. Paul, Minnesota, where, during the winter carnival, town residents would follow clues to find a small white disk hidden in the snowfilled landscape. “NYU is a place where, no matter where you’re starting from or what you imagine your medallion looks like, you can choose a path that will lead you to it,” said Scanlan. His path will take him home to clerk for a judge on the Minnesota Court of Appeals, the same court where he successfully argued a Fourth Amendment case after his first year of law school.

Coralie Colson, the LL.M. student speaker, urged fellow graduates to follow in the footsteps of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom the LL.M. Class of 2008 is named. “His example of goodwill toward the opposition showed that difference does not always have to be adversarial,” she said. Born and raised in France, Colson has worked as a pro bono immigration attorney for individuals seeking refugee status in France. She plans to pursue a career in international arbitration.

Dean Richard Revesz praised the graduates and noted several initiatives that grew out of their “energy, creativity, enthusiasm and leadership.” For instance, the Leadership Program in Law and Business, a program that trains students in the intersection of law and business, was the brainchild of Andrew Klein ’08. The Alternative Spring Break Program, which funds student travel during spring break to perform law-related community service projects, was spearheaded by Mimi Franke ’08 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The 2008 class also contributed to the larger New York City community through the Rewarding Achievement Program, the Unemployment Action Center, the Battered Women’s Project and other programs. “You have managed to make a real difference while you’ve also developed important professional skills,” Revesz noted.

Continuing the tradition of giving a class gift for the fifth consecutive year, Alexis Hoag and Vincent Sieber presented a $131,000 gift from the Class of 2008 to Lester Pollack ’57, chair of the Law School’s Board of Trustees. The Law School also honored Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe and the Honorable Thomas Buergenthal ’60 of the International Court of Justice with honorary doctorate of law degrees at the all-university commencement ceremony at Yankee Stadium. Both made brief remarks, and University President John Sexton addressed the graduates at both ceremonies.

A highlight of the convocation was the hooding ceremony—the distinctive presentation and hooding of each degree candidate. Jordan and Trudy Linfield and trustees Jay Furman ’71, M. Carr Ferguson ’60, Norma Z. Paige ’46, Warren Sinsheimer (LL.M. ’57) and Welters hooded recipients of the scholarships they endow. Two graduates from the Class of 2008, Jessica Rosen and Kevin Neveloff, were hooded by relatives and became third-generation alumni.

Revesz reminded the 2008 graduates that they will always be part of the Law School. “This morning you entered this theater as students. This afternoon you leave as alumni,” he said. “You join a distinguished community that is eager to welcome you as you make this important transition.”

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