At the Stanford Community Law Clinic law students provide legal counsel and advocacy for low-income residents of East Palo Alto (EPA) and surrounding communities. They learn skills essential to just about any area of legal practice while also learning to think critically about the role of lawyers and lawyering in solving the problems of America’s poor.
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85
International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution
It’s safe to say that the “global village” envisioned by Marshall McLuhan a half century ago is here—with instantaneous electronic connections between nations, businesses, and individuals readily available at the click of a mouse or touch of a cell phone keypad. As communication between nations has developed, so too has awareness of shared experiences, differences, and human rights.
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84
Preparing for Legal Practice: Youth and Education Law Project
Since its founding, the Youth and Education Law Project (YELP) has worked with disadvantaged youth and their communities to ensure that they have access to equal and excellent educational opportunities. In this report, YELP Director Bill Koski and several clinic students share their experiences representing clients and working on policy issues during this year’s clinic.
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83
Understanding the Power of Prosecution
Michael A. Hestrin remembers vividly his first day in court. It was 1996, and he was part of the first group of students to take the Criminal Prosecution Clinic. He was assigned an evidence hearing and spent hours researching—then the moment he’d been anticipating came. “I stood up and addressed the judge, and I just knew. It felt absolutely right. It was transformational for me,” says Hestrin ’97 (MA ’97).
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81
Three Strikes
Grasping the sheer enormity of the task that the Three Strikes Project has taken on is a challenge. Co-founded in 2006 by Lawrence C. Marshall and Michael Romano ’03 as the main focus of the Criminal Defense Clinic, the Three Strikes Project is the only legal organization in the country devoted primarily to representing individuals facing life imprisonment for nonviolent offenses under California’s “three strikes” law, a voter-approved initiative that was enacted in 1994.