January 2018 Thurgood Marshall School of Law received a special gift during the holiday season. A TMSL alum from the class of 1989, kept the legacy of TMSL in his heart when he donated $100,000.00 in the spirit of making TMSL one of the top law schools in Texas. Our donor has earmarked his very generous gift to the Law School’s TMSL Bar Bridge Builder Fund and to support student scholarship for tuition. Our donor shared that he “wants everyone to pass the bar and help maintain student equality,” and he challenges other alumni to donate and secure the future of our Law School. The donor further states that “this is OUR school, we have to protect it. Those of us who can improve it should do so and pass it on to the next generation.” Our donor has over 29 years of experience in personal injury law. He extends an invitation to TMSL students and recent graduates who have an interest in PI law. Please contact Assistant Dean Prudence Smith in the Office of External Affairs, if you are interested in receiving more information. YOUR MONTHLY THURGOOD MARSHALL SCHOOL OF LAW ELECTRONIC NEWS & INFORMATION SOURCE FROM THE OFFICE OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS * ASSISTANT DEAN PRUDENCE SMITH * EMAIL: [email protected] (713) 313-1197 * 3100 Cleburne Street, Houston, Texas 77004 * FROM THE OFFICE OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS – (713) 313-1197 April—May 2017 2 of 28 TMSL launches new Barristers’ Brunch CLE Series Thurgood Marshall School of Law’s Center for Continuing Legal Education has teamed up with TMSL alums Umeka Lewis and Omar Vargas to launch a new Continuing Legal Education (CLE) concept designed to fit the needs of our busy alumni base. Since the majority of our alumni are in private practice, the Saturday brunch courses will provide a better time-slot for our alumni while providing not only courses designed to prepare our lawyers in various practice areas, but also taught by TMSL alums and other instructors who are considered some of the most talented and experienced in their practice areas. The premiere Barristers’ Brunch CLE was held on Saturday, January 27th at Ula’s on Washington Avenue in Houston, TX. This course, entitled Crossing Intersections between Civil Rights, Criminal Defense, Landlord Tenant Rights, and Personal Injury was taught by some of TMSL’s finest: Manik Wadhawan, Kevin Fulton, Jr.,Meka-Umeka Lewis-Piccolo, Christy Dockery, Lott Brooks, Kevin Murray, Randall Kallinen, Robert Whitley, Imrana Chowdgry Manzanares, and special guest speakers – Miram & Robbie Tolen. The course provided 4.50 MCLE hours and 1.0 ethics. The room was full to capacity and everyone who attended gave raving remarks. Many thanks to Umeka and Omar for their tireless efforts in putting this course together. Going forward, TMSL will continue to host the Barristers’ Brunch CLE series with each course accompanied by a featured chef for brunch offerings. Our next course will be held on Saturday, February 24th at Spring Street Beer & Wine Garden located on Houston St. from 10:00 am – 12:00 noon. The course title is Family Law: A Judicial Perspective and the dynamic course instructor is TMSL alum, the Honorable David Farr. The fea- tured chef is Chef Tim Warren specializing in fish and grits. We invite all to come out and attend this course and all of our future Barristers’ Bruch Series CLE courses. For more information go to the “Upcoming Contin- uing Legal Education Courses” section of this e-newsletter. Table of Contents TMSL receives donation cover Barrister’s Brunch series 2 Faculty Highlights 3 Staff Highlights 4 Earl Carl Institute 5 Experiential Learning 6 OCPD 8 Student News 10 Alumni Highlights 13 2 FACULTY HIGHLIGHTS Professor SpearIt has accepted Professor L. Darnell Weeden’ s an invitation to join the AALS Mi- article entitled, In Response to the nority Section Executive Commit- Call for Social Justice, Historically tee, a position that runs for three Black Law Schools Represent the years. He has also been invited to New Mission of Education Diversity present at the Black Islam in the in the Legal Profession, 14 J. Gender Americas conference at the Uni- Race & Just. 747, 747 (2011).was versity of Michigan, and has ac- recently cited by Professor Martina cepted an invitation to present at UCLA School of E. Cartwright and Professor Thelma L. Harmon in Law in Prof. Devon Carbado’s seminar, Critical their article entitled #Blacklawyersmatter: The Im- Race Theory, which is studying SpearIt’s work-in- portance Of Pro Bono Initiatives And Experiential progress, Firepower to the People!: Gun Rights and Opportunities At Historically Black College And Uni- the Law of Self-Defense to Curb Police Miscon- versity Law Schools In Preparing A New Generation duct, on March 14, 2018. SpearIt presented at the Of Social Engineers, 18 Fla. Coastal L. Rev. 315, 330 2018 AALS Annual Meeting on an Anthropology (2017). According to Cartwright and Harmon, and Law panel entitled, “Critical Interventions for Weeden contends, before “the 1950s, legal education Critical Times.” His work was recently cited in the for minorities was severely limited. HBCUs met the book, Finding Freedom in Confinement: The Role challenge of producing African-American attorneys of Religion in Prison Life (ABC-CLIO 2018), as and advocates of social change. Before the 1960s, well as Black Men, Religiosity and Desistance: Ex- twenty-four HBLSs educated the bulk of African- ploring Islam, Desistance and Identity, 17 Safer American lawyers.” Communities 47 (2018); Freedom of Religion or Be- Professor Deana Pollard- lief in Prison: A Critical Analysis of the European Sacks received SSRN’s “Top 10%” Court of Human Rights’ Jurisprudence, 6 Oxford J. L. distinction this month. Professor and Rel. 48 (2017); Carving Nature at Its Joints: The Pollard-Sacks is in the top 10% of all Entity Concept in an Entangled Society, 44 Account- authors on SSRN by new downloads ing Historians J. 125 (2017). Finally, SpearIt repub- within the last 12 months. SSRN’s lished an abridged version of his work, Legal Punish- eLibrary provides 727,610 research ment as Civil Ritual: Making Cultural Sense of Harsh papers from 335,938 researchers Punishment, 5 ECI Interdisciplinary J. for Legal & across 30 disciplines including, but Soc. Pol’y. 1 (2017), https://ecipublications.org/cgi/ not limited to, business, law, political science, and viewcontent.cgi?article=1031&context=ijlsp, and his humanities. With respect to SSRN’s author rankings work was cited in the online article Muslims in Amer- for “total new downloads,” this includes total SSRN ican Politics, https://muslimsamerica.wordpress.com/ downloads of all of an author’s publicly available tag/muslims/. scholarly full-text papers during the last 12 months. This provides a measure of the current interest in all of an author’s work, including older papers, which you can access at the following link:https:// www.ssrn.com/en/index.cfm/top-authors/. 3 FROM THE OFFICE OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS – (713) 313-1197 April—May 2017 2 of 28 STAFF HIGHLIGHTS TMSL WELCOMES BACK BRITTANI HALLIBURTON TMSL is excited to welcome back Brittani Halliburton. Many of you may remember Ms. Halliburton’s stellar work as an administrative assistant and a graduate assistant for the Office of External Affairs. During this time she aided in the growth of TMSL programs and events. Recently, the TMSL Alumni Board saw an immediate need for someone of Brittani’s caliber to assist the Alumni Board and the Office of External Affairs in a more prominent role. With the blessings of Dean Gary L. Bledsoe and the Alumni Board, Brittani Halliburton has re- turned as the Executive Assistant Director of External Affairs. In this role, Ms. Halliburton will serve as the ex- ecutive assistant to the Alumni Board; coordinate all Continuing Legal Education courses; develop, coordinate and implement regional alumni clubs, coordinate the TMSL volunteer network; and is solely responsible for maintaining the alumni and friends database. Ms. Halliburton will also play a special role in the engagement of our young alumni by directing the social media for the office of External Affairs and working with the Assistant Dean of External Affairs in the planning, coordinating, executing, and evaluating of all alumni events and other TMSL special events. Ms. Halliburton is a Houston native, she graduated from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette with her Bach- elor’s degree in Public Relations and later earned her Juris Doctorate from Texas Southern University, Thur- good Marshall School of Law. She is an active member of the State Bar of Texas and an active member of the Mu Kappa Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated. She is the creator of Sisters Applaud- ing Sisters Success Yass (S.A.S.S.Y.), a women’s empowerment organization in the greater Houston area de- signed to educate, empower and encourage women of all ages. She encourages individuals to first believe that they can and then accept that they will. Her message is simple: “Until one accepts that anything is possible, we will never share the same reality”. She embraces change, hopes to inspire, and works to improve. TMSL please join us in extending a heart filled and exuberant welcome back to Ms. Brittani Halliburton!! You may reach Ms. Halliburton at 713-313-1197 or [email protected]. 4 EARL CARL INSTITUTE NEWS ECI to Launch JLWOP Project In June 2012, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama that mandatory juvenile life sentenc- es without the possibility of parole (JLWOP) are unconstitutional for juvenile defendants (under 18). The Court found that a youth could not be sentenced to JLWOP without considering the individual characteristics of the youth to determine if the youth was a “rare juvenile offender” displaying “irreparable corruption.” Absent such a finding, the Court required imposition of a sentence that provided “meaningful opportunity” for review.