{"id":162204,"date":"2020-06-26T09:43:37","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T13:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?post_type=school-college-post&p=162204"},"modified":"2020-06-29T09:23:14","modified_gmt":"2020-06-29T13:23:14","slug":"new-book-describes-history-uconn-law-clinic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2020\/06\/new-book-describes-history-uconn-law-clinic\/","title":{"rendered":"New Book Describes History of UConn Law Clinics"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A newly published\u00a0history of the UConn School of Law focuses on the tumultuous birth of the\u00a0law school\u2019s\u00a0pioneering\u00a0clinical programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cBorn Fighting:\u00a0Clinical Education at the University of Connecticut School of Law<\/a>\u201d traces the\u00a0development\u00a0of the clinics from the creation of the Student Board of Public Defenders and Legal Assistants in 1964 through the establishment of a criminal clinic in 1969 to the vastly expanded clinical and experiential opportunities available at the law school today.<\/p>\n

The book, by Professor\u00a0Kent Newmyer<\/a>\u00a0and alumna Tatyana Marugg \u201919, is the third in a series of short histories of the law school. The first book, by Newmyer and research assistant John Khalil,\u00a0 is \u201cHard Times and Best of Times: The University of Connecticut at 39 Woodland Street<\/a>,\u201d a history of the law school from its founding in 1921 through 1964. The second, \u201cStill We Rise: African Americans at the University of Connecticut School of Law<\/a>\u201d by alumna Constance Belton Green, describes the struggles and triumphs of Black students and faculty at the law school.<\/p>\n

Clinical education at UConn Law began at a time of swift change and much\u00a0friction,\u00a0not just in legal education but in American society. Opposition to the Vietnam War was mounting and students were increasingly challenging the status quo. Law schools were beginning to add courses stressing practical skills and clinics that offered students a chance to practice law. It was\u00a0a controversial shift for faculties accustomed to a purely doctrinal curriculum.<\/p>\n

Dean\u00a0Howard Sacks, a pioneer in clinical education, and Joseph Harbaugh, first director of the criminal clinic, waded boldly into the midst of both controversies.\u00a0The\u00a0criminal clinic quickly became involved in the defense of Vietnam War protesters and began to draw the attention, and ire, of powerful political adversaries. The clinic survived not only because its students and faculty won important constitutional cases, but because the students found that the opportunity to practice law was a powerful and important part of their educational experience.<\/p>\n

More than 50 years after the criminal clinic began its work, the UConn School of Law offers several in-house clinics, including trial and appellate divisions of the original criminal clinic, a Tax Clinic, an Asylum and Human Rights Clinic, an Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship Clinic, a Mediation Clinic and an Animal Law Clinic. It also offers several partnership clinics, including the Center for Children\u2019s Advocacy and the Connecticut Urban Legal Initiative, as well as a wide array of field placements.<\/p>\n

\u201cUConn Law has been one of the nation\u2019s leaders in clinical education for over half a century,\u201d Dean Timothy Fisher said.\u00a0\u201cOur students, their clients, the courts and the system of laws itself have all been the beneficiaries of these great programs. We are grateful to Professor\u00a0Newmyer\u00a0and Ms.\u00a0Marugg\u00a0for\u00a0this compelling story of the origins and history of our program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newmyer, a professor of law and history at UConn School of Law since 1997, has written several books of legal history, including \u201cSupreme Court Justice Joseph Story: Statesman of the Old Republic\u00a0\u201c and\u00a0\u201cJohn Marshall and the Heroic Age of the Supreme Court.\u201d\u00a0Marugg\u00a0is an associate with\u00a0Proskauer\u00a0Rose LLP\u00a0in Boston.<\/p>\n

Although the coronavirus pandemic has interrupted distribution of printed copies\u00a0of \u201cBorn Fighting,\u201d it is available, along with the two earlier books,\u00a0online in PDF\u00a0format<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A newly published\u00a0history of the UConn School of Law focuses on the tumultuous birth of the\u00a0law school\u2019s\u00a0pioneering\u00a0clinical programs. \u201cBorn Fighting:\u00a0Clinical Education at the University of Connecticut School of Law\u201d traces the\u00a0development\u00a0of the clinics from the creation of the Student Board of Public Defenders and Legal Assistants in 1964 through the establishment of a criminal clinic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":162206,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1857],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1856],"class_list":["post-162204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-03 12:28:53","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/162206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162204"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=162204"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=162204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}