Law students from around the country have organized a boycott of the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. For what reason? Gibson Dunn gives new meaning to the term “heinous.” The LA-based law firm has spent years working in the interest of corporations that have a track record of human rights violations and environmental damage. Most notably, the firm spent 10 years defending Chevron in a lawsuit brought by Ecuadorian communities whose land was polluted by an oil spill. Gibson Dunn helped overturn the judgment, an award of $9.5 billion, and helped to prosecute Steven Donziger, a human rights attorney who worked for the Ecuadorian plaintiffs.
Last spring, 87 law student organizations from around the country called on the firm to commit to a higher standard with regards to its fossil fuel work. That call went unanswered and now the Law Students for Climate Accountability (LCSA) have implored law students across the country to refuse to work with Gibson Dunn.
“As law students, we fear that Gibson Dunn’s strategic lawsuits against public participation (‘SLAPP’ suits) will deter aspiring lawyers from helping clients redress harm by corporations that could similarly demonize, attack, and coerce opposing counsel,” said Haley Czarnek, a student at the University of Alabama School of Law and member of LSCA.
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CUNY law students are butting heads with their faculty over an anti-Israeli resolution passed by the student government in early December. The Law Student Government Association demanded that the school sever ties with Israel by ending student exchange programs and joining the Boycott Divest Sanctions movement.
“[CUNY is] directly complicit in the ongoing apartheid, genocide, and war crimes perpetrated by the State of Israel against the Palestinian people through its investments in and contracts with companies profiting off of Israeli war crimes,” the LSGA said in a statement.
Faculty members didn’t take too kindly to this and released a statement of their own, saying that the LSGA was trying to “stifle pro-Israel opinion and demonize Jewish students.”
“[It’s trying to] trash academic freedom by seeking to bar opinions contrary to its own from CUNY and its groups,” the faculty said.
These fights have been happening at CUNY for some time; in July, there was a mass exodus of professors from their faculty union after the union passed its own resolution that criticized Israeli policies.
“This debate has existed for decades here,” a faculty member said. “But it has never been this bitter, this angry. I’m not sure the administration knows what to do.”
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A former Emory Law student is suing the university for sexual discrimination. According to multiple outlets, in December she reported that she had been raped by another student in August 2018, and she accuses the school of compromising her education and mental health by providing resources to her assailant that were not made available to her.
For starters, she alleges that the school discouraged her from reporting the attack and refused her requests to allow either of them to attend classes virtually. Then, when she requested to take her exams in some alternate fashion, they told her no, while her alleged assailant was allowed to take off-campus exams. He then filed a countersuit once the initial report was filed, and ultimately went back to his home country after the police were notified.
The assailant was then able to finish his degree remotely, while “Jane Doe” had to leave the university and lose her scholarship.
The student’s attorney, Lisa Anderson, says that the point of the lawsuit is both financial compensation and to get Emory to change its ways.
“This will help Emory in the long run– no school is going to be at its best if there’s sexual violence and as a result amazing students have to leave,” Anderson said.
Anderson notes that at least two other plaintiffs with similar experiences—both with assault and with the school’s response—are planning to add themselves to the lawsuit.
Emory University has not commented on the lawsuit.
