Philip G. Schrag

Professor of Law; Director, Center for Applied Legal Studies.
A.B., Harvard; LL.B., Yale

     Professor Schrag teaches Civil Procedure and directs the Center for Applied Legal Studies, in which students represent refugees from persecution who are seeking asylum in the United States. He is also the Director of the Public Interest Law Scholars Program, through which selected law students who plan careers as public interest lawyers receive scholarship grants and special academic enrichment and guidance in that field. Before joining the Law Center faculty in 1981, he was assistant counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense Educational Fund, Consumer Advocate of the City of New York, a professor at Columbia University Law School, and Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, from which he received a Meritorious Honor Award in 1981. Professor Schrag has also had a distinguished and varied career in civic service, which has included positions as a delegate to the District of Columbia Statehood Constitutional Convention in 1982, an editor and consultant on consumer protection during the Carter-Mondale transition, a consultant to the New York State Consumer Protection Board, a consultant to the Governor's Advisory Council of Puerto Rico, and an Academic Specialist for the United States Information Agency in the Czech Republic and Hungary. In addition, he drafted New York City's Consumer Protection Act of 1969. He is also a prolific author, having written dozens of articles on consumer law, nuclear arms control, political asylum, and various other topics for both law journals and popular publications. He is the author of thirteen books, including Reflections on Clinical Legal Education (with Michael Meltsner, 1998), and Asylum Denied: A Refugee’s Struggle for Safety in America (with David Ngaruri Kenney, forthcoming 2008).

Publications

David A. Koplow

Professor of Law; Director, Center for Applied Legal Studies.
B.A., Harvard, Queen's College at Oxford; J.D., Yale

     After graduating from Yale Law School in 1978, Professor Koplow served first as an attorney-advisor, then as special assistant to the Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He has also served as secretary of the Lawyers Alliance for World Security and as a member of the Policy Board of Legal Counsel for the Elderly and the steering committee of Section 2 of the D.C. Bar. Professor Koplow teaches International Law I, seminars in Arms Control and National Security, Proliferation of Modern Weapons, and other topics, as well as a clinic, the Center for Applied Legal Studies. He has written in the areas of international law, U.S. foreign affairs law, and arms control, especially regarding verification of compliance with arms control treaties. He was a member of the Social Security Administration Commission on the Evaluation of Pain.

Publications

Susan Benesch, Fellow

     Susan Benesch earned a B.A. in history from Columbia College, winning high honors and the Henry Evans prize for scholarship in modern history. She received her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was a member of the Prison Clinic, and a Team Leader for the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic. Also during law school, Susan served as law clerk in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, split a summer between the Israeli Supreme Court and the Palestinian human rights group Mandela, and worked as a consultant to the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First).

    In 2000, Susan was awarded the Robert L. Bernstein fellowship in International Human Rights to work in the asylum program of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. She went on to Amnesty International USA, where she worked as Refugee Advocate and then directed the AIUSA Refugee Program, before coming to CALS.

    Between college and law school, Susan was a journalist abroad. She was chief staff writer in Haiti for the Miami Herald before, during and after the 1994 U.S. invasion, and has reported from countries including Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Cuba, Brazil, and Russia for other newspapers and magazines. She is fluent in Spanish and French.

    Her recent publications include “The Ever-Expanding Material Support Bar: An Unjust Obstacle for Refugees and Asylum. Seekers,” Interpreter Releases, Vol. 83, No. 11, at 466 (Mar. 13, 2006) (with Devon Chaffee); “Inciting Genocide, Pleading Free Speech” World Policy Journal, Summer 2004, at 62; “Friendly Settlement in Human Rights Cases,” in L.C. Vohrah et al (eds.) , Man’s Inhumanity to Man, Netherlands: Kluwer Law International, 2003 (with W. Michael Reisman); and “Effective Command,” Legal Affairs, Sept.-Oct. 2002.

Kate Aschenbrenner, Fellow    

      Kate Aschenbrenner earned a B.A. in integrated international studies from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, winning honors and the E. Inman Fox Prize (given each year to an outstanding graduate).  She received her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was a member of the Civil Legal Services clinic and Executive Editor of the Journal of International Law and Politics.  During law school, Kate also worked for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Geneva, Switzerland and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights in New York.  She clerked for Judge Jack B. Weinstein at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

     After clerking, Kate helped to start a new immigration program at Gulfcoast Legal Services in St. Petersburg, Florida.  She worked in that program providing direct legal services to indigent clients in immigration matters and conducting community education and outreach from 2003 to 2006.  She went on to work for St. Thomas University in Miami, Florida before coming to CALS.  At St. Thomas, she taught and supervised students in the Immigration Clinic and worked at the University’s Human Rights Institute representing low-income clients in immigration cases.