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The Institute for Public Representation (IPR) is a public interest law firm and student clinic founded in 1971. Students at IPR work on projects in one or more of the clinic’s three major areas: 1) First Amendment and media law, 2) environmental law, and 3) civil rights/general public interest law. The Institute offers a very high level of professional training and a variety of advocacy opportunities such as preparing comments and petitions for rulemaking to be filed with administrative agencies; drafting briefs and pleadings for use in court or in administrative agency proceedings; drafting testimony and comments on proposed legislation; participating in strategy sessions; presenting oral testimony before a variety of government bodies; and meeting with clients, other attorneys and government personnel.
Students benefit from regular participation in the process of decision making and the careful preparation of legal documents, under the day-to-day, hands-on supervision of the IPR faculty and staff attorneys. Those with an interest in public interest law as a career can obtain first-hand familiarity with the public interest law community and the kinds of clients, both individual and organizational, served by public interest lawyers. Those who might be considering other kinds of legal work will also profit from the insights the clinic provides into the litigation and administrative processes and from exposure to the world of complex law practice involving real cases and real clients. IPR students have an opportunity to obtain a greater understanding of their roles as attorneys and the responsibility of lawyers in our society through their work on projects, as well as through participation in weekly seminars and small group meetings.
In applying to the clinic, students indicate the areas in which they would like to work. Students accepted will be assigned to work within a particular area. The projects offered in each area vary depending on client need and other factors. The following list of projects recently undertaken in IPR illustrates the types of cases students may work on.
First Amendment and Media Law
Projects
- drafting comments opposing broadcast industry efforts to repeal ownership limits on the number of TV and radio stations that can be owned by the same company in the same community;
- filing petitions to prevent the renewal or transfer of broadcast station licenses held in violation of Federal Communications Commission rules prohibiting the common ownership of daily newspapers and television stations in the same city;
- developing proposals for promoting media ownership opportunities for minorities and women that can withstand expected constitutional challenges;
- filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging that the marketing of “education videos” for children aged two and under is deceptive and unfair;
- working with children’s advocacy groups to ensure that interactive advertising on television does not take unfair advantage of children.
Environmental
Projects
- working with a national organization to stop the construction of digital billboards on federal highways;
- challenging issuance of a federal permit for the construction of a reservoir that will impair a Virginia tribe’s treaty-protected fishing and hunting rights and flood important tribal cultural artifacts;
- protesting issuance of a state air permit for a coal-fired power plant in Old Town Alexandria;
- filing suit in federal district court on behalf of various environmental organizations alleging the Federal Highway Administration violated the Clean Air Act and the National Environmental Policy Act when it approved construction of a major new highway in the DC metropolitan area;
- assisting local riverkeepers concerned about the discharge of nutrients and cyanide into the Potomac River from a fish processing plant;
- representing the interests of various medical groups in an amicus brief before the 4th Circuit in a legal challenge brought by North Carolina against TVA for pollution from its coal-fired power plants.
Civil Rights/General
Public Interest Law Projects
- representing a major national environmental organization in litigation to force the government to release information about the extent of perchlorate contamination of drinking water;
- filing race discrimination in employment claims against a large federal agency on behalf of African-American workers who were unfairly denied promotions;
- representing human rights activists in cases seeking to get information from the CIA, the Department of Defense, and other agencies regarding the participation of psychologists and other medical personnel in the interrogation of terrorism suspects;
- filing an amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court on an important preemption case concerning dangerous drugs;
- representing civil rights organizations in the Mississippi Delta to challenge school board policies that disenfranchise minority parents;
- representing historians, archivists and legal scholars in an effort to unseal the grand jury records leading to the indictment of major Cold War figures.
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Hope Babcock,
Professor of Law, directs IPR’s Environmental Project. She joined IPR in the fall of 1991, after spending 11 years at the National Audubon Society, directing its Public Lands and Waters program and serving as Audubon’s General Counsel for five of those years. Professor Babcock graduated from Yale Law School in 1966, was in private practice here in Washington for many years, and also served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy and Minerals at the U.S. Department of Interior during the Carter Administration. In addition to her extensive litigation experience, Professor Babcock has taught environmental law at Penn, Yale, Pace, Catholic, and Antioch, and has written on topics concerning environmental, natural resources and public lands law as well as environmental justice and Indian law. She also teaches courses in environmental and natural resources law at GULC. She has served on the boards of several public interest environmental organizations, various National Academy of Sciences Committees, and on various governmental advisory committees and was Chair of the Natural Resources Section of the AALS.
Angela Campbell,
Professor of Law, has been teaching at IPR since 1988, and directs IPR’s First Amendment and Media Law Project. She graduated from UCLA School of Law in 1981 where she was editor-in-chief of the Federal Communications Law Journal. She spent two years as a Staff Attorney at IPR. After leaving IPR, she practiced law at the firm of Fisher, Wayland, Cooper & Leader, and at the Communications and Finance Section of the Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice. Professor Campbell’s work at IPR is in the areas of communications law and policy. She is particularly interested in the regulation of mass media and new technologies, such as the Internet. She has published articles on media self-regulation, advertising on the Internet, children’s television regulation, universal service, first amendment rights of telephone companies, and legal writing. She has also taught a seminar on comparative media law. Prof. Campbell will be on sabbatical during the Fall 2008 semester.
David Vladeck, Professor of Law, joined the Law Center faculty in 2002 after spending over 25 years at Public Citizen Litigation Group, a nationally prominent public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C., becoming its Director in 1992. He has handled a broad range of litigation, including First Amendment, health and safety, civil rights, class actions, national security and open government cases. He has argued a number of cases before the United States Supreme Court, state courts of last resort, and over 50 cases before the federal courts of appeal. He also testifies before Congress, writes on administrative law, preemption and First Amendment and serves as a Scholar with the Center for Progressive Reform. He was previously a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States. Professor Vladeck was a graduate teaching fellow in IPR, and he joined the adjunct faculty in 1987. He was a visiting professor at the Law Center from spring 1999 through spring 2000 teaching Civil Procedure and a seminar in first amendment litigation. He has also taught Federal Courts, Government Processes, and seminars on civil litigation.
Melanie Kleiss Boerger graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School with a joint M.S. degree in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy. During law school, Melanie worked as a research assistant for Professors Jim Chen and Jamie Grodsky, served on the Minnesota Law Review, won awards in the National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition, and studied comparative law for a semester in Berlin. Her work experience during law school included positions at the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, Earthjustice, and Faegre & Benson LLP as a Sierra Club fellow. After law school, Melanie clerked for the Honorable David S. Doty of the District of Minnesota and the Honorable Robert R. Beezer of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She also taught legal writing at the University of Minnesota. Melanie has published articles on the National Environmental Policy Act and salmon hatchery policy.
Jessica Gonzalez graduated from Southwestern Law School in 2007 and was recognized for academic excellence in Legal Research and Writing, Civil Procedure, and Interviewing, Counseling and Negotiation. In 2002 she obtained her undergraduate degree in Communication Studies and Spanish from Loyola Marymount University. While in law school, she researched for a Media and Telecommunications professor, and the director of the Legal Research and Writing program. She served as an editor for the Journal of International Media and Entertainment Law, and a staff member on the Journal of International Law and Trade in the Americas. At Southwestern, she was President of the Media Law Forum, and a member of the Curriculum Committee. In the summer of 2005, she studied International Media Law in London. The following summer she received a Telecommunications Fellowship to work for the Media Access Project. Before attending law school, she taught high school English and Spanish in Los Angeles, California.
Kathryn Sabbeth received her B.A. in Sociology, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Michigan in 1998, and graduated in 2003 from New York University School of Law, where she was an Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Fellow, an editor for the Review of Law and Social Change, and the recipient of the Arthur Jarecki Memorial Prize for outstanding work in NYU’s clinical program. During law school, Kathryn worked at civil rights organizations including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the New York Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Alabama, and the labor and employment firm of Vladeck, Waldman, Elias & Engelhard, P.C. After graduation, Kathryn spent two years as a staff attorney at South Brooklyn Legal Services, where she represented low-income tenants in housing litigation. Prior to joining IPR, Kathryn clerked for the Honorable Warren J. Ferguson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the Honorable James C. Francis IV, United States Magistrate Judge in the Southern District of New York.
In addition to the above staff members, we will have a visiting professor in Fall 2008 and two other newly hired staff attorneys.
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The work undertaken by students at IPR has a critical impact on the lives of our clients and on improving the laws affecting under-represented persons and groups. Moreover, students completing the required work at IPR receive twelve credits. To represent clients zealously and energetically, as well as to meet academic requirements, students who enroll in IPR must make a serious, ongoing commitment of time to their clinical work.
IPR expects that you will spend at least 32 hours each week during “normal business hours” in our offices, elsewhere at the Law Center (i.e., the Library or one of the Clinic Work Rooms), or at out-of the-office meetings or hearings working on your project(s). IPR conducts weekly two-hour seminars and holds rounds, which average between one and two hours, each week, as well. Accordingly, separate from, and in addition to, time spent on projects, we expect you to devote the time necessary to prepare for and attend seminars and rounds, which we estimate will take an additional 5 hours of work a week. Preparation for seminars and rounds does not need to take place in our offices or the Law Center. Students enrolled in IPR may not take more than four credits of other classes.
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