CULJP 2021 Award Recipients
2021 Winner of Teaching Innovation Award in Interdisciplinary Legal Studies Teaching
The recipient for the 2021 Teaching Innovation Award in Interdisciplinary Legal Studies is Professor Julie Furr Youngmann, who is Head of the new Law, Justice and Society Program; Assistant Professor of Business Administration; and Adjunct Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University. In 2020, Professor Youngman introduced significant programmatic and curricular development in the university’s new interdisciplinary program on Law, Justice, and Society. She teaches the introductory course, LJS 101: Introduction to Law, Justice & Society. One of the case studies in international law requires students to explore international treaties and conventions designed to protect nations’ cultural heritage by preventing unauthorized exportation and importation of cultural property. Professor Youngman has developed and implemented a mock argument regarding the disposition of a valuable cultural artifact that has been sold into the black market in violation of international conventions. Professor Youngman has taught this exercise twice, once with the students in her Intro to Law, Justice, and Society course, and once in collaboration with an Art History professor, combining the students in Law, Justice, and Society and the students in Arts of India. We appreciate Professor Youngman’s exercise in this core Law, Justice, and Society class because it provides an interdisciplinary and engaging way for students to actively apply sociolegal concepts to a real-life situation with important global consequences. We congratulate Professor Youngman for her innovative teaching.
The Honorable Mention for the 2021 Teaching Innovation Award in Interdisciplinary Legal Studies is Professor Irene Beatriz Pons, Associate Lecturer in the Department of Legal Studies at the University of Central Florida. Pons' interdisciplinary teaching innovation combines legal studies, social justice, immigration, and film to uncover and expose the real-world social injustices at the United States-Mexican border. In March 2020, Professor Pons led an alternative spring break trip that brought four students to the US-Mexico border to explore the humanitarian crisis, specifically the impact of U.S. immigration law policies on asylum seekers. Upon their return home, Professor Pons and the students produced docuseries, Break for Impact: Eyes of the Night, that earned several awards, including in December 2020, a regional Emmy in the area of public, current, or community affairs. They also created the student-focused and student-operated UCF Immigrant Justice Center, where Pons oversees the pro bono clinic and assists immigrants with their asylum petitions. We congratulate Professor Pons for her accomplishment.
The Honorable Mention for the 2021 Teaching Innovation Award in Interdisciplinary Legal Studies is Professor Irene Beatriz Pons, Associate Lecturer in the Department of Legal Studies at the University of Central Florida. Pons' interdisciplinary teaching innovation combines legal studies, social justice, immigration, and film to uncover and expose the real-world social injustices at the United States-Mexican border. In March 2020, Professor Pons led an alternative spring break trip that brought four students to the US-Mexico border to explore the humanitarian crisis, specifically the impact of U.S. immigration law policies on asylum seekers. Upon their return home, Professor Pons and the students produced docuseries, Break for Impact: Eyes of the Night, that earned several awards, including in December 2020, a regional Emmy in the area of public, current, or community affairs. They also created the student-focused and student-operated UCF Immigrant Justice Center, where Pons oversees the pro bono clinic and assists immigrants with their asylum petitions. We congratulate Professor Pons for her accomplishment.
2021 Winner of Best Undergraduate Student Paper Award in Interdisciplinary Legal Studies
The Consortium for Undergraduate Law & Justice Programs is thrilled to announce Raika Kim's (UC Berkeley) "The Ability to Work: Perspectives of Workers with Disabilities" as the recipient of the 2021 Best Undergraduate Student Paper Award in Interdisciplinary Legal Studies. The thesis, capaciously grounded in law and society scholarship on rights consciousness and rights mobilization and also in disability studies scholarship, explores how the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is practiced and lived in the workplace--often in different ways, Kim demonstrates, than how disability laws are written 'on the books.' Kim's methodology of in-depth interviews with workers in California forms the basis of a thorough analysis of workers' self-perception of disability, of the pathways and constituent elements of their rights consciousness, and of the factors that shape the ways they are and are not able to exercise legally codified rights in the workplace. The Awards Committee commends the paper for its sociolegal significance, excellent contextualization in relevant literatures, careful well-constructed methodology, fine-grained analysis of interview data, and lucid prose. Kim was advised on the project by Dr. Lauren Edelman, Agnes Roddy Robb Professor of Law and Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley.
The committee also wishes to recognize an honorable mention for Catherine Horwitz's (Kenyon College) "Right to Farm Law in Rural Central Ohio." The paper, based on a series of interviews with farmers and farming affiliates in a rural county in central Ohio, critically examines "Right to Farm" laws, questioning whether the laws substantively provide legal and economic support to farms, whether farmers are aware of such laws, and how the laws may provide protection to very large industrial farms without practically benefiting smaller farms. Horwitz's paper is methodologically strong and incisively analyzes the laws in question. Horwitz was advised by Dr. Jack Jin Gary Lee, Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology and Legal Studies at Kenyon College.
The committee also wishes to recognize an honorable mention for Catherine Horwitz's (Kenyon College) "Right to Farm Law in Rural Central Ohio." The paper, based on a series of interviews with farmers and farming affiliates in a rural county in central Ohio, critically examines "Right to Farm" laws, questioning whether the laws substantively provide legal and economic support to farms, whether farmers are aware of such laws, and how the laws may provide protection to very large industrial farms without practically benefiting smaller farms. Horwitz's paper is methodologically strong and incisively analyzes the laws in question. Horwitz was advised by Dr. Jack Jin Gary Lee, Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology and Legal Studies at Kenyon College.