Poverty Law Connects Theory and Practice
by
William F. Maestri

A constant challenge for teacher and student is connecting theory with practice; head and heart; mind and emotions. Such a holistic approach seeks to avoid two classical extremes: an overly rationalistic perspective, which values logic to the exclusion of empathy, and the other extreme, emotionalism, which bases actions and decisions on feelings. The contemporary law school knows well this tension between theory and practice. It is often played out as the conflict between academic law and clinical practice. The challenge is to build a bridge between the two cultures. My course in poverty law attempts to provide such a bridge.

Poverty Law

The area of poverty law offers a splendid opportunity for integrating black letter law, social policy, and legal practice. My approach involves an academic component (a seminar) as well as a clinical placement. The academic-seminar component involves a collection of selected readings appropriate to various topics of poverty law: welfare reform, work, housing, and legal-policy perspectives for poverty law, to name but a few. The clinical setting provides the student an opportunity to experience the law made flesh. Various clinical settings and areas of interest include a faith-based organization concerned with immigration, a public defender's office, and a social services agency involving a child and family law practice.

The Poverty Law course aims at the following educational objectives:

• Integration: to connect theory with practice.
• Multiplicity: to develop both analytic and synthetic learning skills to effect a creative advance.
• Empirical: to gain experience, the fundamental source of our knowledge.
• Reflective: to enrich experience through reflection that is both personal and communal.
• Personalism: to recognize that the law in all its components is ultimately about the human person.

Integration Seminar

Each week the students, clinical instructors from the various placements, and a seminar facilitator meet to discuss assigned readings as well as relevant aspects of clinical practice. Throughout the seminar emphasis is placed on the ability to relate various aspects of the readings to particular experiences within the clinical setting. The seminar calls for an integrative, holistic approach to education.

The role of the seminar facilitator is crucial. The facilitator's role is to draw out various experiences from the students as well as invite them to relate their experiences within a larger context -- readings and the experience of others. Clinical instructors serve as resource persons. That is, as sources of experience as well as legal and theoretical knowledge.

Throughout the seminar the focus is on integrative learning, combining theory and practice. With an integrative approach to education both analytic and synthetic skills are valued. There is the need to understand complex issues and problems through precise analysis. Students need to understand various components of an issue. Yet the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Students must move beyond the particulars. In advancing beyond individual elements we are able to see new possibilities, the familiar with new eyes.

Students prepare a seminar paper to be handed in at the end of the semester. This paper draws on an aspect of their clinical experience within the context of the seminar readings as well as their additional research. A crucial component of the paper is a section in which the students write a reflection on how the total Poverty Law course affected their conception of the law and themselves as lawyers.

These educational objectives help the law student to avoid two dangers: One is viewing those in need and at risk as simply statistics. The other is a paternalism that views the poor as simply victims, powerless to change their situation. An integrative approach is a genuine humanism that values each unique person, challenges each person to achieve according to his or her abilities, and confronts those social structures that unjustly exploit the person.

Conclusion

It has been my experience that an integrative approach improves the quality of teaching as well as learning. Throughout the course I am constantly challenged to make those vital connections between the law and our complex world. The student is challenged to see the human face of law. An integrated course in Poverty Law helps to meet these challenges. Such an approach can serve as a model across the curriculum.