Law students can’t resist a free lunch, especially one that’s accompanied by an interesting speaker. The final event in the Presidential Transition Lecture Series, featuring Professor Laura Little’s interview of EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum, promised both sandwiches and compelling conversation. Chai Feldblum became an EEOC Commissioner in April of 2010, a position she will retain until her term ends in July of 2018. During her tenure at the EEOC, she has focused on employment civil rights issues, including sexual orientation and transgender discrimination, pregnancy accommodation, and employment of people with disabilities. In short, she’s kind of a big deal. Commissioner Feldblum began the talk by laying out the processes and functions of the EEOC. She explained that the EEOC is a five-person, bipartisan agency whose members are appointed by the president and approved by Congress. I was heartened to learn that EEOC decisions are arrived at through a majority vote, rendering them more insulated from turnover than other agency guidance. While some agency action is revocable by the Cabinet Secretary—for instance, the Department of Education’s …

Leading through Law – Our Civic Duty in Today’s Society  Lawyers are leaders.  As citizens, we all have civic responsibilities to participate in our democratic institutions of governance.  As lawyers, these responsibilities are heightened as we have the knowledge to better navigate these systems and the collective impact of our work inevitably shapes our society.  Through its current Presidential Transition Lecture Series, Temple Law School is seeking to engage and motivate its future attorneys to have an informed awareness that promotes deliberate and strategic positive action.  Mr. David Thornburgh, President and CEO of the Committee of Seventy, presented the second lecture in this series, titled “Answering the Call for Political Renewal.” Mr. Thornburgh’s message was one of encouragement, challenging us as lawyers to utilize the current energy associated with the recent national election to create positive action that strengthens our democratic institutions both locally and nationally.  While I whole-heartedly agree with this directive, I was surprised to find myself at odds with his initial statements regarding his motivations in deciding not to attend law school.  …

Bill Marimow, the Editor and Executive Vice President of The Philadelphia Inquirer, spoke to Temple Law about the relationship between President Trump and the media, the post-election role of local papers, and a wide variety of related topics. His visit on Tuesday, January 17, was the first event in the Presidential Transition Lecture Series organized by Professor Laura Little, who conducted an engaging and wide-ranging interview with Marimow. “Read papers that don’t necessarily align with your politics and think critically about their editorials.” Professor Little asked Marimow about the “rules of engagement” between the Trump administration and the media, a relationship Marimow called “extremely antagonistic.” Marimow explained that while the president-press relationship constantly evolves from one president to the next, the relationship between Trump and the media is characterized by his fighting back when criticized and viewing issues in “black and white.” Marimow went on to explain that the President, while he needs a medium to communicate with the world, is less reliant on traditional media and more reliant on social media. He emphasized that …

All politics is local, someone once said. That person probably never witnessed 2016. Nevertheless, in the spirit of continuing to plod along on the innumerable issues still facing our country, our states, and our cities—most especially Philadelphia—I offer the following thoughts on Professor DeJarnatt’s recent piece in these pages. Professor DeJarnatt has been perhaps the fiercest and most effective critic of school reform efforts in Philadelphia. For example, in a recent law review article,[1] Professor DeJarnatt argued persuasively that “today’s education reformers[, by] treat[ing] public education as a private good,” impose significant costs on the communities in which school reform is taking place. Professor DeJarnatt identified three costs: First is the cost to community and the loss of voice of parents and taxpayers in the community for any say in their schools. Second is the economic cost of these reforms, in particular the costs imposed on the students who remain in traditional public schools. Third is the cost of lost opportunity—the opportunity to improve the system of public education while still considering it a public …

I knew attending the Locked Out of Learning: Educating Refugees in America’s Schools forum would ignite in me a deep reflection of my life—a life shaped both by and in the shadow of my family’s immigration to the United States. Born to “Vietnamese boat people,” members of a two-million-people diaspora fleeing communist Vietnam from 1975 to 1995, I immediately saw the similarities between my own refugee parents, the six named plaintiffs in Issa v. School District of Lancaster, and the Asian American students involved in the 2009 interracial-violence incident at South Philadelphia High School. They were all new Americans who left their native countries in pursuit of greater educational and economic opportunities in the United States. However, upon arrival they were faced with the often harsh reality of cross-cultural assimilation, a slow and difficult process of adjustment. Escaping persecution, violence, and war, my mother and father settled in the United States for a better future. Yet, despite their steadfast work ethic, our household was in a perpetual state of financial instability. Growing up in this manner, …