Originally published in Student Lawyer ,
December 2002 (Vol. 31, No. 4)
Domestic violence
issues can crop up in virtually any field of law. That’s why some law students
are urging their schools to offer courses and materials on the topic
by Cynthia
L. Cooper
When
she started law school at the University of Montana, Dixie Grossman knew little
about domestic violence. At the time, she seemed an unlikely candidate to take
a leading role in incorporating the topic into law curriculums. But a clinical
placement at a legal aid program brought Grossman, a 2001 graduate, face to
face with the effects of intimate brutality. She soon joined the ranks of law
students across the country who are changing the way law schools teach about,
and society treats, domestic violence.
“I had no idea how scared a woman could be,” Grossman says
of her interactions with clients. “I was never exposed to that level of
physical violence.”
Like many students, Grossman was unaware of the
pervasiveness of domestic violence, knew nothing about the sweeping
developments in the law, and had no concept of how the long tentacles of abuse
can slap their way into a huge array of legal concerns.
“There is hardly a field of law—and I really mean that—that
isn’t touched by domestic violence,” says Elizabeth Schneider, a professor at
Brooklyn Law School and the co-author of a new casebook on the subject. “It’s a
wide-ranging and cross-cutting topic that appears in trusts and estates, health
law, civil rights, family law, criminal law, even corporations. Lawyers need to
be able to identify these issues when they arise.”
The American Bar Association Commission on Domestic Violence
agrees. It wants the ABA to adopt a resolution that calls upon all law schools
to include domestic violence law within their course offerings and materials.
And it’s helping students like Grossman become aware of the issue and do
something about it using their legal training.
Grossman’s first encounters with the effects of domestic
violence came at Montana Legal Services, where a large percentage of the
caseload involved family law. The work suited her aspiration to help low-income
rural people like her mother, a one-time sugar beet truck driver in North
Dakota who struggled to navigate the legal system while her marriage was
ending.
As a student advocate, Grossman met another reality outside
her personal experience. One client arrived with a broken nose. The woman
explained tearfully that she was living in a pickup truck with her two children
as they tried to flee her violent husband. Another client produced a sheaf of
police reports and emergency room files, documenting prolonged spousal abuse.
This time, instead of attacking her, the batterer had attacked a son, kicking
him so hard that another child crawled under a table and called 911.
“I wasn’t prepared,” says Grossman, now a state judge’s
clerk in Nevada. “I knew domestic violence happened, but I didn’t know in how
many cases. I guess I just got angry.”
Grossman and several students from the Montana Women’s Law
Caucus helped the ABA Commission on Domestic Violence bring a regional law
school conference to the University of Montana. The conference included a panel
discussion on how students can be integral to implementing education about
domestic violence at law schools.
Domestic violence is commanding the attention of students
across the country, and law schools are responding. More than 70 law schools
now have specialized courses, clinics, student-run activities, or symposiums,
or they include domestic violence topics in existing classes. Even bar
examiners are picking up on the subject: One of six essay questions on a recent
Texas bar exam required a thorough analysis of options in a family violence
situation.
Nancy Doig, a third-year student at the University of
California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall), searched for a law school that taught
specifically about domestic violence law. For two years prior to attending law
school, she volunteered with “Take Back the Night” programs in her hometown of
Sacramento. Domestic abuse was a focus of the anti-violence rallies.
Doig, serving as a media contact, became all too familiar
with a menu of mind-boggling statistics: On an average day in the United
States, nearly 11,000 women are severely assaulted by their partners;
approximately 2 million women a year are the victims of severe assaults by
their male partners; and 25 percent of emergency room visits by women are due
to partner violence.
And then, Doig heard the stories. “At a community speak-out,
a girl, 12 or 14 years old, spoke,” she recalls. “Her mother had been a victim
of domestic violence, had escaped the situation, and was now divorced. But the
girl described how she was still expected to see her father, a violent man, and
how he scared the hell out of her. That made a big impression on me.”
The admissions officers at Boalt Hall arranged for Doig to
meet with adjunct professor Nancy Lemon. In 1988, the school had recruited
Lemon to teach the first law school class in the country on domestic violence,
a three-unit course. The reason: “Students initiated it,” Lemon says. Since
then, the class has been a staple in the curriculum, and Lemon also supervises
a clinical course. In 1996, she released a critical course book. “We’re
continually getting more sophisticated in terms of the content of what we are
teaching, more nuanced,” Lemon says.
While commonly thought of as physical battering, domestic
violence is defined by a range of behavior patterns in which one partner
attempts to control the behavior of the other partner through threats,
intimidation, and isolation. Men are not immune from becoming victims, but
women are more than six times more likely to be targets. It’s an issue, the ABA
commission reports, that cuts across socioeconomic status, neighborhood, and
job—whether CEO, entertainment figure, or even lawyer or judge. “Attorneys,”
says commission director Bette Garlow, “have as much of an incidence as any
other segment of society.”
The law on domestic violence has changed rapidly during the
last 30 years, especially with the growth in the numbers of female students and
lawyers. Many began to seek solutions to prevent harm. Police intervention and
criminal prosecutions of batterers, an early focus, evolved into analyses for
redress in civil law, as well, Garlow says.
Today, perplexing legal questions arise:
• Can a person who faces the threat of domestic
violence viably consent to a contract, will, mediation agreement, or sale of
business?
• What responsibility do employers have to
ensure that employees are protected from abusive partners?
• Should doctors be required to report
instances of physical violence to authorities?
• Can a housing complex with a zero-tolerance
policy toward violence evict the survivor of a domestic assault because, for
safety, she called the police?
• Can a victim of domestic violence make a tort
claim against police officers who fail to respond to calls for help?
• Are women who are imprisoned after striking
back at a batterer acting out of criminal intention—or self-defense?
Increasingly, courts are addressing these questions, and law
students are pressing their schools to include them in course studies.
Help has come from the ABA Commission on Domestic Violence,
which in the past three years has involved 50 schools in sharing curricular
ideas at five conferences like the one held at the University of Montana School
of Law. Students and professors have participated.
“The conferences do a lot to put into the marketplace all
these enlightened people, in the way that other successful movements in our
society—civil rights, diversity—have gotten a real injection of vigor from law
schools,” says New Orleans lawyer Judy Perry Martinez, past chair of the ABA
commission.
Sarah Buel, an adjunct professor of a domestic violence
course and clinic at the University of Texas, has spoken at every conference. A
1990 graduate of Harvard Law School, Buel was an early student proponent for
legal education on the topic.
“I certainly bothered enough professors about it,” Buel
says. “I kept saying, ‘Why aren’t we hearing about domestic violence in any of
our classes?’ It was just unheard of.”
Prior to law school, Buel had been a trainer and nonlawyer
advocate on family violence. While in school, she co-founded the Battered
Women’s Advocacy Project, still a
thriving law student organization that provides research and legal assistance
to abused women and their advocates.
As a professor, Buel attracts overenrolled classes,
two-thirds women and one-third men. Despite the difficulty, she begins every
course in the same way—by describing what it’s like for her to be a survivor of
domestic violence. “I talk about my being a survivor because I want to end the
stereotypes and take away the stigma,” Buel says. “Most days, I am so grateful
to be alive and that he did not kill me.”
Buel still remembers her first public disclosure of her own
abuse. It occurred when she was conducting a training session for police chiefs
in 1977. One chief said, “Well, a smart girl like you would never put up with
this.” Buel knew how women were commonly blamed for the violence of their
abusers. She decided she no longer could maintain silence.
“I explained that I had recently left a violent husband and
would be relying on police protection to keep me safe for the rest of my life,”
Buel recalls. “The stunned chief replied, ‘Well, I guess if it could happen to
you, it could happen to anyone.’” He quickly became an ally in training
officers, she adds.
The biggest myth Buel confronts is that a woman need only
leave the abuser to gain safety. But studies show that fleeing women are at the
highest risk for lethal attacks, she says, and victims also face other
imponderables: lack of housing, money, and child care, and constant fear. She
turned to teaching in hopes of remedying dismal real-world performances by
lawyers. “It’s a burgeoning area of jurisprudence,” Buel says. “It’s also a
liability issue, and a lack of knowledge will set students up for malpractice.”
More and more law schools are agreeing. About 40 have clinical
programs that address domestic violence as part of a general poverty law caseload
or in a specific domestic violence law clinic.
Tulane Law School in New Orleans debuted a domestic violence
clinic this fall after law student Jennifer Achilles, now in her third year,
began beating a drum to get one opened. Achilles was motivated by a
conversation with a former professor, who listened as Achilles described in
glowing terms the good deeds of the women’s law association in collecting
toiletries and other items for victims in a battered women’s shelter. “She told
me: ‘They don’t need your old clothes; they need your legal help,’” Achilles
says. “It was a real eye opener.”
Achilles contacted the dean and several professors,
beginning a conversation about forming a domestic violence clinic. She
researched programs at other schools and, using a model from Northeastern
University School of Law, prepared a proposal. Supportive faculty members
steered the idea through curriculum discussions, convincing professors of its
soundness as educational policy.
Opening in fall 2002, a multidisciplinary clinic enrolled 10
law students, along with students from the graduate school of social work. The
goal, according to Jane Johnson, director of the clinical program, is to
provide a range of services— “one-stop shopping,” as she calls it. Because
domestic violence victims often face a panoply of problems, they can end up
with a handful of specialty lawyers. In this clinic, one student lawyer handles
all of a client’s civil and criminal legal needs, while a social work student
helps the client locate support services and create a confidential safety plan.
Some law schools have clinics that focus more narrowly on
specific aspects of domestic violence cases. At the University of Minnesota,
for example, students work on prosecuting batterers. In addition to running a
domestic violence clinic representing victims at the University of Texas, Buel
oversees a program with the business school in which M.B.A. and J.D. students
combine to design entrepreneurial projects that can provide financial support
to a local battered women’s shelter. Recently, a law student with a penchant
for corporate practice researched licenses and regulations for a proposed
business plan, while business students helped revamp a thrift shop. “Once the
law school takes a leadership role, other schools become interested,” Buel
says.
Law schools across the country also offer specialty courses
or seminars on domestic violence law. Among the 30 doing so are Boston College
of Law, Loyola University Chicago School of Law, Texas Southern University
Thurgood Marshall School of Law, and the University of Wyoming. Some schools,
such as American University’s Washington College of Law, have sponsored special
symposiums on domestic violence, drawing together local and national leaders.
At many law schools, domestic violence issues are filtered
into existing courses. At the University of Montana, first-year torts professor
Bari Burke introduces questions of remedies for domestic violence, such as
whether a divorce action also can include a claim for civil remedies. To
inspire creative thinking, the ABA Commission on Domestic Violence publishes
hypothetical situations for 15 fields of law. An insurance hypothetical, for
example, asks students to analyze the public policy implications of
“exceptions” and “coverage” in domestic violence situations.
Student-run advocacy groups also have taken on domestic
violence. Doig is active with Stop DV, a group formed by law students at
Berkeley in her first year. Last year, the organization invited three law
professors to debate inclusion of domestic violence topics in core courses.
Since then, one has added them, Doig says. Next semester, Stop DV will open a
court watch program, training and coordinating community volunteers to report
on how battered women are treated in judicial proceedings.
At Brooklyn Law School, students participate in a Courtroom
Advocates Program (CAP), says Chelsea Chaffee, a third-year student who is one
of the coordinators. CAP schedules approximately 200 students from several New
York City law schools to attend family court and help abuse victims fill out
petitions for protection orders, Chaffee says. “It really makes a difference
for the women to know all their options and fill in the details before they
talk to a judge,” says Chaffee, who in summer law positions has aided abused
women and plans to continue when she graduates.
“Most difficult is the actual client interaction, and to hear
the women tell their stories,” she adds. “But this is real life. The law affects
normal people on a daily basis. As lawyers, we have a responsibility to victims
of domestic violence. The legal community can do a lot.”
Things Law Students Can Do
You can take concrete steps to build awareness of domestic
violence in your school, according to Laura Stein, senior vice president and
general counsel of H.J. Heinz Co. in Pittsburgh and chair of the ABA Commission
on Domestic Violence. Here are a few:
Download domestic violence
hypotheticals from the ABA web site (www.abanet.org/domviol)
and present them to professors.
Collect a list of legal
scholars on domestic violence and ask that they be
invited to a faculty colloquium.
Encourage your school
to develop externship opportunities at a community-based
shelter for battered women.
Offer screenings of
films and videos on domestic violence, followed by discussions.
(You can order a copy of the one-hour PBS documentary “Breaking the Silence:
Journeys of Hope” from the ABA by calling 800-285-2221 and asking for product
code 317-0320. The video and accompanying discussion guide costs $10 plus $3.95
shipping.)
Ask your law librarian about obtaining the major domestic violence casebooks (Balos
and Fellows; Dalton and Schneider; Greenberth, Minow and Roberts; Lemon) and
materials from the ABA Commission on Domestic Violence.
Initiate a “Battered
Women’s Advocacy Project,” in which law students help abuse
victims obtain protective orders.
Approach sympathetic
professors about developing a proposal for a domestic
violence clinic or seminar.
Invite social
workers, police, medical personnel, advocates, and lawyers
who deal directly with domestic violence issues to participate in classroom
discussions or before student organizations.