Dean Johnson, Professors Jasmine Harris, Brian Soucek contributing to national book project

Professor Jasmine E. Harris, Dean Kevin R. Johnson and Professor Brian Soucek will contribute to a forthcoming book that will take a critical legal approach to the topics first-year law students encounter in their Civil Procedure class.

Harris’ contribution is titled “Crippling Class Actions: Applying a Critical Disability Lens as a Tool for Disability Rights,” Johnson’s essay is “Juries as a Bastion of American Democracy?,” and Soucek’s work is titled “Can a Gay Judge Judge a Gay Rights Case? Thoughts on Judicial Neutrality.”

Soucek will attend a workshop focused on the book project at Boston University this week. The workshop will bring together about 20 law professors, or about half of the professors contributing to the book.

Professor Jasmine Harris joined the King Hall faculty in 2015 to teach evidence and disability law. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Yale Law School and a former clerk for the Honorable Harold Baer, Jr. in the Southern District of New York. She has also worked at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr and with the Advancement Project, where she was as a staff attorney with the Schoolhouse to Jailhouse and Quality Education projects.

Kevin R. Johnson is the law school’s dean, Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law and professor of Chicana/o studies at UC Davis. He is an internationally recognized scholar in the fields of immigration law and policy, refugee law, and civil rights.

Professor Soucek’s primary teaching and research interests are antidiscrimination law, civil procedure, constitutional law, and refugee/asylum law. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Ph.D from Columbia University. He has clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Mark R. Kravitz in Connecticut, and Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.