http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/female_first_chairs
Wow! I opened my March 2017 ABA Journal and told my wife, Cathy, “Hey, I know her. It’s Jaya!” Spectacular picture of a brilliant lawyer, teacher, clinician, advocate, humanitarian, role mode, and just all-around great human being!
For those of you who don’t know her, Jaya was a CALS Asylum Clinic Faculty Fellow working with Professors Andy Schoenholtz and Phil Schrag at Georgetown. Together, they wrote the “instant classic” Refugee Roulette, the seminal work on inconsistencies in U.S. asylum adjudication. And, according to the latest report about the Atlanta Immigration Court, that problem continues to fester.
Jaya and her CALS Clinic students also appeared before me at the Arlington Immigration Court (prior to my appointment as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown which required me to recuse myself from all CALS cases).
The ABA article involving Jaya is “Female First Chairs” by Stephanie Francis Ward. Here’s a quote from Jaya:
“Drawing such attention to the issue also may be helping improve those results. In November, Liebenberg was one of two women appointed as lead counsel in a multidistrict litigation antitrust matter involving the antibiotic doxycycline. Presiding over the case, U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania also appointed a woman as the defense’s lead counsel.
“We thought [multidistrict representation] was an important piece of the puzzle. These are high-profile cases. They bring in a lot of money and there’s very few women who get the appointments,” says Jaya Ramji-Nogales, a law professor at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law who is overseeing the MDL survey.
“Basically, these surveys document a phenomena that everyone knows is happening,” she says. “There are social norms that dictate how a woman can ask for things which don’t constrain men.”
There’s a hope that releasing more surveys as part of the ABF/ABA effort will keep attention on the issue of bias against women leading trials.”
Reads the full article at the top link. Congratulations Jaya! You are continuing to make a difference and are an inspiration to all of us!
PWS
03/04/17