Finding community at law school is vital, particularly while navigating the rigors of legal study. At Stanford Law, a new fellowship is offering both community and exciting scholarly opportunities. The fellowship program brings together a tightly knit cohort of a dozen second and third-year law ...students to spend one or two academic years working on the Rhode Center for the Legal Profession’s core research and policy-making projects. Professors David Freeman Engstrom and Nora Freeman Engstrom have co-directed the Rhode Center since 2021 and created the Civil Justice Fellows program in 2022. “It’s the Center’s jewel in the crown,” David says. “We are creating and nurturing a pipeline of talented young lawyers who care about these important issues.” An overarching goal of the Fellows’ program, says Nora Freeman Engstrom, Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law, is to foster a sense of collaboration and community among the participating students, while encouraging the students’ long-term commitment to ensuring the legal profession lives up to its highest ideals. Read more here: https://stanford.io/4dks9ef

“There are so many reasons to look forward to joining the SLS community, and the top of that list includes the student body,” said Stanford Law School's newest faculty member E. Tendayi Achiume, an international human rights and migration scholar. We are so excited to welcome her to ...SLS!

https://stanford.io/46p5J9C

Nature-based solutions can play a significant role in combating climate change by removing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; yet, investments in reforestation and other nature-based projects are lagging due, in large part, to inadequate quantification and confirmation of carbon removals ...and other ecosystem benefits that typically flow from nature-based investments—including increased resilience to climate impacts, according to a new report from Stanford Law School’s Law and Policy Lab, the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, and the Bezos Earth Fund. SLS Professor and report faculty lead David J. Hayes commented, “Policymakers and investors are looking for proof that nature-based solutions can deliver measurable and verifiable carbon emissions reductions and removals—and they are not getting it...". The “Investing in Nature to Fight Climate Change and Help Communities Thrive” report lays out a game plan for fixing current measurement and monitoring deficiencies for nature-based solutions, building on the White House’s release of its National Strategy to Advance an Integrated U.S. Greenhouse Gas Measurement, Monitoring & Information System. Read more here: https://stanford.io/46qP0CM

Shirin Sinnar, the William W. and Gertrude H. Saunders Professor of Law, went on KQED to discuss political rhetoric after Trump's attempted assassination at a rally in Pennsylvania. Listen to the episode on See It & Hear It at the link below.

https://stanford.io/3SluTQG

Watch our short video on The Rhode Center’s groundbreaking effort to make the justice system more accessible, transparent, and equitable! This Transparency Project, a collaboration between Professors Nora and David Freeman Engstrom and Stanford Law students, uses large language models and ...extensive research on protective orders, secret settlements, and NDAs to shine a light on the critical debate around litigation transparency and access to justice.

It's one of those “only at Stanford” projects where we can make a real difference in making the civil litigation system more open, transparent, and fair.

View it here: https://stanford.io/4d8FxSs

In a companion piece to the Florida education censorship report developed with SLS's Rule of Law Impact Lab, Human Rights Watch published "How They Defend the Freedom to Learn" covering stories of Florida activists fighting back against censorship efforts in schools.

..."Over the past few years, new policies and laws in Florida have stopped teachers from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity, while also repressing any honest efforts to grapple with systemic racism and slavery," reports HRW. Check it out: https://stanford.io/4fh3Y2i

Arjun Ayyappan, a recent Cypress College graduate, participated in the 2024 Stanford Law Scholars Institute and will be transferring to Stanford as an undergraduate student in the fall. Through SLSI, Ayyappan spent the last week of June on the SLS campus at a residential and learning experience led... by esteemed SLS faculty. The group of 20 scholars participated in a variety of activities, workshops, networking events, and more to help them prepare for academic life at a law school. Read more about Ayyappan's SLSI experience through the link below: https://stanford.io/4d55Xog

"It's a really extraordinary decision that reverses what has been viewed as obvious and commonsensical by courts and lawyers for five decades," said David Sklansky, the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law, about Judge Cannon dropping the classified documents case for a recent Stanford ...Legal episode. Listen in at the link below.

https://stanford.io/3Lw9Ery

SLS Professor Robert Weisberg discusses New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez's bribery, fraud, and extortion conviction charges in a recent SLS Legal Aggregate Q&A.

"Menendez and his wife received things of great value in exchange for him engaging in actions which lay within ...his power... Very serious felonies. Prison aside, they will likely quickly lead to his removal from the Senate, by resignation or force," said Professor Weisberg. Learn more about the case at the link below.

https://stanford.io/4f5j1fb

"To reverse Chevron is to put Congress back in the driver's seat and to say, things are not going to happen unless you make them happen. And maybe that is the message that Congress needs," said Michael McConnell, the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law at SLS, for What ...Happens Next in 6 Minutes with Larry Bernstein in "The Courts Strike Back Against the Bureaucracy." Listen to the episode at the link below.

https://stanford.io/4f1tw38

Allen Weiner, SLS Senior Lecturer in Law, and Bailey Ulbricht (JD '22), Executive Director at the Stanford Humanitarian Project, wrote an article "Humanitarian Notification in Gaza is Broken: How to Document and Respond When Things Go Wrong" for Just Security.

"More ...needs to be done to address these deficiencies that leave humanitarians vulnerable. A centralized incident report portal should be launched by an intergovernmental entity for all notifying humanitarians to formally report when they are struck in any conflict. This could help track incidents and elucidate where things are going wrong," said Ulbricht and Weiner in their paper.

https://stanford.io/4cQZaz3