Do law school clinics engage in 'progressive-left' advocacy? Congressional committee seeks information
Legal clinics at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law are being targeted by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and Workforce, which is requesting information about policies, funding sources and budgets. (Photo from Shutterstock)
Legal clinics at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law are being targeted by the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Education and Workforce, which is requesting information about policies, funding sources and budgets.
A March 27 letter seeking the information expressed concern about one clinic’s representation of organizers of “an anti-Israel blockade of highway traffic” in a civil lawsuit and the law school’s “Movement Lawyering” class.
Northwestern University’s law school is funding “left-wing advocacy with its institutional resources,” raising “significant concerns about the university’s role as a steward of taxpayer dollars,” the letter claims.
The Chicago Sun-Times, Fox 32 Chicago and the Daily Northwestern have coverage.
Deborah Epstein, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, told the Chicago Sun-Times that the committee chairs “know that these kinds of broad, sweeping demands for information implicate all kinds of rights—free speech, free association, academic freedom, employee privacy rights.”
Epstein views the letter as “a deeply cynical exercise of power, where the actual goal is to create an atmosphere of intimidation for law school clinics across the country.”
The letter expresses particular concern about the Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic’s representation of a blockade organizer said to be “a vocal antisemite and supporter of terrorism who has called for ‘many more Oct. 7ths until full liberation.’”
According to the letter, the clinic describes itself as working “in collaboration with social justice movements” to address issues such as “over-policing and mass imprisonment.”
The clinic is led by Sheila A. Bedi, a professor at the law school, who “uses Northwestern’s name and resources to engage in progressive-left political advocacy,” the letter alleges.
The letter demands hiring records and performance reviews for Bedi, written policies on what constitutes appropriate work and representation by the clinics, detailed budgets for more than 20 clinics and 12 centers within the Bluhm Legal Clinic, a list of funding sources for the clinics, and a list of payments to people or groups outside Northwestern University by the Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic.
Jon Yates, a Northwestern University spokesman, told the Chicago Sun-Times in a statement that the civil rights clinic “provides valuable learning experience for students and accepts cases ranging across the political and legal spectrum, including this case as well as representing Jan. 6 protesters. Cases that the clinic chooses to take on do not necessarily reflect the views of the university or its law school.”
The school is also collaborating with the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law “to fight antisemitism,” he said.
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