Table of Contents

Our Program Faculty and Staff Teaching Fellowships Student Application Process

History

     The Juvenile Justice Clinic was founded in 1973, a mere six years after the Supreme Court's landmark decision in In re Gault . In that case, the Supreme Court guaranteed children a constitutional right to counsel and to procedural due process. One of the first law school-based legal clinics specializing in children's issues, the Juvenile Justice Clinic and its staff seeks to fulfill the mandates of the Gault decision, to expand the legal rights of children, and to insure that children are protected from maltreatment by their parents or by the government.

     In its early years, the clinic was a full service children's rights center as well as a teaching program operating within the Law Center community. As such, the clinic staff provided legal assistance in every type of case concerning children. We also assisted in the formulation of policy at both the local and federal level and trained a cadre of young lawyers to continue the work they began as students in law school.

     Since that time, the Juvenile Justice Clinic's mission and its methods have evolved. So too has the law's response to children's issues. The legal rights and entitlements possessed by children, while difficult at times to describe with certainty, have expanded. Moreover, the legal system has become more sophisticated in its understanding of children and their needs. The procedures now used by the courts in all types of cases insure that at least in some measure, children's voices are heard when the legal system impacts on their lives.

     Recognizing the evolving complexity of children's rights laws and conscious of the limited amount of time available to teach this complex law in a clinical education course, we have limited the scope of the clinic's work. We now focus on delinquency cases, addressing other issues (e.g., education, child neglect and abuse, etc.) as they arise within the delinquency context. While clinic faculty still engage in research across a broad range of issues affecting children and participate in both national and local debates concerning governmental policies relating to adolescent crime, the law students in the clinic are permitted to represent only those children who are accused of a crime.

Why We Represent Children Accused Of Crime

     A child in trouble is a crisis and a challenge. But above all, a child in trouble remains a child. As life for many children in America gets harder, as the streets they live on become more violent, as the schools they attend become more crowded, as their health becomes impaired and their very lives threatened, and while their current need for the special care long promised by juvenile courts is as great or greater than ever, many states and the federal government are giving up on their juvenile courts and on America's children. Children are being imprisoned in greater numbers and for longer periods of time than at any time in recent history. Demagogues from both political parties have declared war on children, making them the scapegoats for the failures of adult-made policy. American citizens are paying the price now for society's decades of neglect of the nation's children. Students and staff at the clinic witness this neglect everyday; but once they have seen a child's face through the bars of a jail cell, they will never think about childhood -- or the practice of law -- in the same way again.

     Clinic staff, students and alumni know that if the lives of children are not improved, society will pay an even greater price for this neglect in the future. Thus we fight to remove them from jail and enroll them in school. We fight to obtain the support they need to stay free, safe, and together with their families. We fight for better educational opportunities. We fight to preserve the liberties embodied in the Bill of Rights, even though those liberties are not always accorded to children. No matter how loud politicians may shout for harsher and longer punishment, children cannot be silenced as long as someone is willing to stand with them, listen to them, and speak for them. For the children of the District of Columbia, the Juvenile Justice Clinic is there, ready to listen, ready to fight.

Faculty and Staff

Wallace J. Mlyniec, Lupo-Ricci Professor of Clinical Legal Studies; Director, Juvenile Justice Clinic

B.S., Northwestern; J.D., Georgetown
Professor Mlyniec is the former Associate Dean for Georgetown's clinical programs and Director of the Law Center's Juvenile Justice Clinic, teaches courses in Wrongful Convictions and children's rights, and assists with the training of fellows in the Prettyman Legal Internship Program. He is the author of numerous books and articles concerning criminal law and the law relating to children and families. He was the director of the Judicial Conference Study on ABA Criminal Justice Standards, and the administrator of the Emergency Bail Fund. Dean Mlyniec also has served as a consultant to the San Jose State University and University of Maryland Schools of Social Work, the ABA's National Resource Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, several law schools, and the California Bar Examiners. He is the former chair of the A.B.A. Committee on Juvneile Justice and a member of the Board of the National Juvenile Defender Assoication.  He is a recipient of a Bicentennial Fellowship from the Swedish government to study their child welfare system, the Stuart Stiller Award for public service, the William Pincus award for contributions to clinical education, and the Robert F. Drinan Award for contributions to public interest law.

Kristin Henning, Professor of Law, Deputy Director, Juvenile Justice Clinic

B.A., Duke University; J.D., Yale Law School; LL.M., Georgetown
Following her graduation from Yale Law School, Professor Henning came to the Georgetown Law Center in 1995 as a Stewart-Stiller Fellow in the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Clinics. As a Fellow she represented adults and children in the D.C. Superior Court, while supervising law students in the Juvenile Justice Clinic. After her fellowship, Professor Henning returned to the Clinic as an Adjunct Professor from 1999 to 2001. In 1997, Professor Henning also joined the staff of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia where she continued to represent clients and helped to organize a Juvenile Unit designed to meet the multi-disciplinary needs of children in the juvenile justice system. Professor Henning served as Lead Attorney for the Juvenile Unit from 1998 until she left the Public Defender Service to return to the Law Center in 2001. Professor Henning has been active in local, regional and national juvenile justice reform, serving on the Mid-Atlantic Advisory Board to the National Juvenile Defender Training, Technical Assistance and Resource Center as well as on local Superior court committees such as the Delinquency Working Group and the Family Court Training Comittee

Eric Klein , Visiting Professor

B.A., Dartmouth College; J.D., Georgetown University Law Center                                                                                 Visiting Associate Professor Eric Klein is a staff attorney at the Felony I level of the Trial Division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia where he has worked since 2002.  Mr. Klein has tried many serious cases, including homicide, armed carjacking, and sex cases.  Mr. Klein has also served as an appellate lawyer at PDS where he argued six cases before the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.  Prior to joining the Public Defender Service, Mr. Klein was an E. Barrett Prettyman fellow at the Law Center from 2000 to 2002.  As a Fellow, he represented indigent adults in D.C. Superior Court and supervised students in the Criminal Justice Clinic.  As a student at the Law Center, Mr. Klein was himself a student in the Criminal Justice Clinic.  He received his J.D. magna cum laude from Georgetown in 1998 and then clerked for the Honorable Jose A. Gonzalez, Jr. in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. 

JiSeon Song, E. Barrett Prettyman, Juvenile Justice Fellow, 2006-2008

Ji Seon graduated from Columbia College, Columbia University in 1999 with degrees in Music and East Asian Studies, and received her J.D. from Columbia Law School in 2004. Before she went to law school, Ji Seon worked as a paralegal at the Federal Defenders of New York. During law school, Ji Seon interned at the Immigration Unit of the Legal Aid Society, Sanctuary for Families, Beldock, Levine & Hoffman LLC, and the National Office of the ACLU. Also during law school, Ji Seon represented clients through Columbia’s Criminal Practice Clinic and the Prisoners and Families Clinic. Ji Seon spent her law school summers working for a legal aid organization in Kenya, the Unrepresented Condemned Inmate Project at the California Appellate Project, and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. Before coming to Georgetown, Ji Seon was a law clerk to the Honorable Deborah A. Batts, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Stephanie Snyder , E. Barrett Prettyman, Juvenile Justice Fellow, 2007-2009

Stephanie graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1999 and received her J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center in 2006.  Prior to law school, Stephanie worked at a daytime drop-in center for people with HIV/AIDS and as a benefits advocate at a legal aid organization specifically geared towards working with homeless people with mental health issues.  During law school, Stephanie participated in the Family Advocacy Clinic and the Criminal Justice Clinic, and also interned at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, the Alexandria Public Defender's Office, and in both the trial and mental health divisions of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia.  Prior to returning to Georgetown, Stephanie clerked for the Honorable J. Michael Ryan on the D.C. Superior Court.

Wanda D. Duarte, Executive Assistant, Juvenile Justice Clinic

Ms. Duarte manages the Juvenile Justice Clinic office. She has been with Georgetown Law Center since 1983 and has been with the Juvenile Justice Clinic since 1984.

Graduate Fellowships

     The Juvenile Justice Clinic offers a graduate two-year fellowship each year. The fellow is selected through the E. Barrett Prettyman/Stuart Stiller Fellowship Program at Georgetown. The goal of the fellowship is to provide quality representation to adults and adolescents accused of crimes and to provide to recent law school graduates a comprehensive education concerning trial advocacy, litigation and clinical teaching.

     Fellows spend two years in the program, after which they are awarded a Masters Degree in Advocacy. During the first year, fellows try cases and develop their skills as clinical teachers. In the second year, they continue to represent clients and supervise third year law students in the Juvenile Justice Clinic.

     Graduate Fellowship Program general information

Student Application Process

    The Juvenile Justice Clinic is open to Georgetown law students who meet the requirement of the D.C. Student Practice Rule. Students apply for membership in the clinic in the Spring during the Law Center's Clinic registration period. The course may be taken either for the Fall semester only or for the entire year.

Revised December 13, 2007 (MA)