Public Service
Click a faculty member's name to learn about his/her public interest activities.
Professor Susan Akram supervises law students in their representation of indigent clients in immigration and refugee cases as a clinical instructor for the Civil Litigation Program. Professor Akram previously served as Former Deputy Director and Interim Director of the American Council for Nationalities Service in Saudi Arabia. She also has served as Executive Director of the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation Project, as a staff attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services and as Directing Attorney of the Immigration Project in the office of Public Counsel in Los Angeles. She was awarded the Fulbright Senior Scholar Teaching and Research Award for the 1999/2000 academic year and used the grant to research and write recommendations for a durable solution for Palestinian refugees in light of the 1993 Oslo Talks, as well as to teach at the Palestine School of Law at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem.
Professor George Annas has done appellate work regarding such issues as the rights to abortion, the refusal of treatment and assisted suicide. He provided congressional testimony on new reproductive technologies and the procurement of organs for transplants. Professor Annas is the cofounder of Global Lawyers and Physicians, a transnational professional association of lawyers and physicians working together to promote human rights and health. He is the former director of the Center for Law and Health Sciences at BU School of Law and has taught graduate courses in the School of Public Health, the Medical School and the School of Law.
Professor Michael Baram devotes his time to various non-profit agencies, including the Conservation Law Foundation—the largest non-profit environmental advocacy organization in New England. He assists the foundation with issues pertaining to environmental law, including protecting water resources and promoting sustainable agriculture. Professor Baram also devotes his time to Belmont Citizen's Forum and Belmont Land Trust, which both focus on environmental and transportation issues in Belmont and neighboring towns.
Professor Robert Bone donated his time as a VISTA volunteer in the Public Interest Law Center in Philadelphia. He also worked pro bono while practicing at Hill & Barlow in Boston. Professor Bone was on the plaintiff’s legal team in MARC v. Dukakis, a successful lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the conditions at Massachusetts state schools for the mentally handicapped. He also presented written and oral testimony to the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules related to proposed amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Clinical Associate Professor David Breen supervises students in the Prosecutor Program in Quincy District Court and serves as a member of the board of directors of Fenway Community Health, a non-profit inner city health care organization. Before joining BU Law, he served as Assistant Corporation Counsel for the city of Boston’s Office of the Corporation Counsel, Assistant Attorney General for Massachusetts and Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan.
Clinical Professor Constance Browne supervises students who represent clients in special education, unemployment, divorce, disability and housing cases. Professor Browne also volunteers with Professors Robert Burdick, Judith Diamond and Lois Knight at St. Francis House through the Lawyers Committee on Affordable Housing of the Boston Bar Association. St. Francis House provides shelter and rehabilitative services for the poor and homeless in Boston.
Clinical Professor Robert Burdick volunteers with Professors Connie Browne, Judith Diamond and Lois Knight at St. Francis House through the Lawyers Committee on Affordable Housing of the Boston Bar Association. St. Francis House provides shelter and rehabilitative services for the poor and homeless in Boston.
Clinical Professor Judith Diamond volunteers with Professors Connie Browne, Robert Burdick and Lois Knight at St. Francis House through the Lawyers Committee on Affordable Housing of the Boston Bar Association. St. Francis House provides shelter and rehabilitative services for the poor and homeless in Boston. She teaches in the Civil Clinical Program supervising students as they represent clients in civil cases ranging from landlord/tenant matters to domestic relations and child custody cases.
Professor Stan Fisher is a founding member and participant in the New England Innocence Project, which examines cases in which criminal defendants may have been wrongfully convicted. He also supervises BU Law students involved in case screening at the Innocence Project. Professor Fisher's current scholarship has explored the rights of criminal defendants and of innocent persons who have been wrongfully convicted of crimes. In recognition of his contributions to improving the criminal justice system in Massachusetts, Professor Fisher was presented the 2003 Thurgood Marshall Award by the Committee for Public Counsel Services. Professor Fisher is the first recipient of the annual Boston University School of Law Faculty Public Service Award, which he received in April 2007.
Associate Dean for Graduate Programs and Director of the Graduate Tax Program Ernest Haddad serves as a board member for the Boston Bar Foundation and director of the New England Legal Foundation and the International Institute of Boston. He served as the first general counsel and secretary of Partners HealthCare System, Inc. in 1995, when MGH joined Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He also worked as secretary and general counsel of MGH, general counsel of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts and assistant secretary general counsel of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
Director of the Graduate Program in Banking and Financial Law, the Morin Center and Professor Cornelius Hurley serves as advisor to the student staff of the Review of Banking & Financial Law. He is a director of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston. He also serves as a director of the YMCA of Greater Boston and of the Oak Square YMCA (Brighton, MA). He is an active member of the Banking Committee of the American Bar Association and former chairman of the Lawyers Council of the Financial Services Roundtable, Washington, D.C. He is the founder and a faculty member of Investment Management Basics and a faculty member of Banking Law Basics, both joint institutes between the law school’s Morin Center and the ABA. Previously, he held executive positions with Shawmut National Corporation (bank holding company) and was Assistant General Counsel to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Washington, D.C.
Visiting Professor Ilana Hurwitz has handled many political asylum cases in the United States, in addition to her past service as director of the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation Project, commissioner of the Newton Human Rights Commission and chair of the Schools/Education Subcommittee and Newton Explores Diversity initiative. She also volunteered in the Legal Clinic division of the Common Ground Collective Relief Organization in New Orleans. She was formerly a fellow at the Legal Resources Centre in Johannesburg, the only independent public interest law facility in South Africa at the time. She trained paralegals to provide legal advice to people living in Soweto and other black townships in the Johannesburg area and handled legal cases regarding black housing matters, labor, consumer and resettlement issues.
Clinical Associate Professor Wendy Kaplan supervises students doing criminal defense work in the Boston Municipal and Boston Juvenile courts. She also serves as a member of the board of delegates of the Massachusetts Bar Association; the board of directors of Suffolk Lawyers for Justice, Inc., a non-profit organization providing legal services to indigent criminal defendants; and the board of directors of Children’s Legal Services, Inc. She also devotes her time to the Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education and the Committee for Public Counsel Services’ zealous advocacy training program. Before joining the faculty of BU Law, she worked as an attorney for the Massachusetts Defenders Committee, performing criminal litigation in the state’s public defender organization.
Director of the Clinical and Trial Advocacy Programs and Clinical Professor Lois Knight is a former VISTA volunteer and staff attorney for Legal Services for Cape Cod and the Islands. She is a current member of the Clinic Oversight Committee composed of repressentatives of the various Boston law firms who take cases pro bono. She also volunteers with Professors Connie Browne, Robert Burdick and Judith Diamond at St. Francis House through the Lawyers Committee on Affordable Housing of the Boston Bar Association. St. Francis House provides shelter and rehabilitative services for the poor and homeless in Boston.
Professor David Lyons’ latest scholarship focuses on a monetary reparations claim made on behalf of African Americans. His paper sketches a National Rectification Project comprising a comprehensive set of public programs attacking the persisting legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Professor Tracey Maclin has written numerous amicus curiae briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court on issues related to the constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, including cases before the Supreme Court. He also serves as President of the Board of Directors of the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.
Professor Wendy Mariner is the legal director of the BU School of Public Health project on Health Reform Legislation in the Russian Federation, which is funded by USAID. She has also served on numerous national and international committees, including the WHO/CIOMS Steering Committee on International Ethical Guidelines for Research Involving Human Subjects, the National Institute of Health’s AIDS Program Advisory Committee and the Executive Board of the American Public Health Association.
Professor Nancy Moore is working with the American Civil Liberties Union on her proposed testimony before the Rhode Island Legislature in support of a bill allowing lawyers to share fee awards with non-profit organizations. She is a member of the ABA Joint Committee on Lawyer Regulation and advises states considering whether to adopt the ABA's proposed amendments to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which deals with the ethical obligations of lawyers.
Clinical Associate Professor Eva Nilsen supervises 3L’s as they defend indigent clients in felony and misdemeanor cases. She is also a member of the board of directors of the Suffolk County Lawyers for Justice. As an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow, she tried criminal cases and supervised law students who represented indigent criminal defendants at Georgetown University.
Professor William Park serves as an arbitrator on the Appeals Tribunal of the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (the Eagleburger Commission), established in London to adjudicate disputes over life insurance policies owned by victims of Nazi persecution. He is also a member of the NAFTA Chapter 14 Financial Services Roster, which hears controversies that might affect the soundness and integrity of financial markets in Canada, Mexico and the United States.
Professor Daniel Partan works to settle disputes under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has served on bi-national appeals panels regarding NAFTA disputes and has appointed BU Law students to serve as his law clerks. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute and formerly served as a consultant to the ABA, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the U.S. State Department, the U.N. Development Programme and the U.N. Fund for Population Activities.
Visiting Professor Andrew Perlman is currently working with a small team of lawyers who are representing a death row inmate in federal post-conviction proceedings in Alabama. He is also serving as the chair of the Jury Access Sub-Committee of the Judicial Administration Section Council of the Massachusetts Bar Association. He coordinates an effort to seek clarification or modification of Rule 3.5, which governs attorney contact with jurors after trial. He also examined whether there is a need to revise the Massachusetts Rule of Professional Conduct 3.5 while serving as a member of the Massachusetts Jury Communications. He offered pro bono assistance while at Chicago firm Schiff Hardin & Waite and served as an investigator for the Public Defender Service of Washington, D.C.
Visiting Professor Arnold Rosenfeld is currently a member of the board of the Committee for Public Counsel Services and was formerly a member of the Supreme Judicial Court Standing Advisory Committee on the Rules of Professional Conduct. He administered a disciplinary system for lawyers in Massachusetts as chief bar counsel on the Board of Bar Overseers of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. He also served as chief counsel for the Committee for Public Counsel Services, a state agency that oversees all public defender services in cases involving civil matters in which there is a question of child custody and mental health commitment.
Professor David Rossman is a reporter to the advisory committee to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on the rules of criminal procedure. He also works with the Innocence Project, which examines cases of persons who may have been wrongfully convicted of crimes. He has served as Director of the Criminal Law Clinical Programs since 1978.
Adjunct Professor Ann Seidman’s distinguished public service extends to the international domain. She served as a co-consultant for the Iraqi constitution, a project to strengthen the legislative drafting capacity in Afghanistan, a Kyrgystan workshop on drafting defensively against corruption, a Vietnam workshop to strengthen legislative drafting capacity and a United Nations mission to Kazakhstan to help develop a program to strengthen the capacity of the Parliament. She is also the co-president, along with Professor Robert Seidman, of the International Consortium for Law and Development. In another collaborative effort with Professor Robert Seidman, she served as the co-director of the BU Law program on Legislative Drafting for Democratic Social Change.
Professor Robert Seidman’s extensive experience in the field of law and development, with a focus on international law, is reflected in his record of public service. He co-directed a program, along with Adjunct Professor Ann Seidman, for training drafters from SADCC countries. Seidman served as a consultant for the Zimbabwe Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rural Development and Ministry of Home Affairs. He was the consultant and principal drafter at the SWAPO conference on a proposed constitution for Namibia.
Professor Katharine Silbaugh wrote an amicus curiae brief, in consultation with the Gay and Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, for a case before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court dealing with the right of persons of the same sex to marry in Massachusetts.
Professor Robert D. Sloane serves as chairman of the Board of Directors of Tibet Justice Center, a non-governmental organization devoted to legal advocacy on behalf of Tibet and the promotion of human rights and self-determination for the Tibetan people. In this capacity, he carries out and supervises human rights fact-finding missions to Nepal and India; furnishes expert affidavits, testimony and other assistance to Tibetans seeking asylum in the United States; and prepares submissions for U.N. human rights institutions and treaty bodies. He has also served as a consultant to Human Rights Watch; participated in human rights litigation brought under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victims Protection Act; and, as an associate at Debevoise & Plimpton, helped to litigate a pro bono case on behalf of Mexico before the International Court of Justice, challenging the convictions and sentences of more than fifty Mexican nationals on death row on the ground that the U.S. had failed to comply with the consular notification provisions of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Recently, he coauthored a commissioned study for the government of Puerto Rico, appraising its continuing right to self-determination under both international and constitutional law and examining its prospects for enhanced political and legal autonomy.
Professor Jay Wexler has served on the Public Service Subcommittee of the Career, Planning, Placement and Clerkships Committee at BU Law since September of 2005. Before joining the faculty of BU Law, he served as an Attorney-Advisor for the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he reviewed pending legislation for constitutionality, advised justice department components and executive agencies on constitutional and statutory matters, wrote legal opinions on issues of administrative and constitutional law and reviewed attorney general and executive orders for form and legality.
Professor Larry Yackle volunteers his expertise doing pro bono work for the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. Yackle also has written more than two-dozen amicus curiae briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the ACLU, NAACP and other advocacy groups.