PISLAP -- Atlanta, Georgia 2004: Participants
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Gathering of the Project on Integrating Spirituality, Law, and Politics
Atlanta, Georgia 2004
Participants – Contact and Biographical Information
(alphabetical by last name)
Douglas B. Ammar
Executive Director
Georgia Justice Project
438 Edgewood Ave
Atlanta, GA 30312
Telephone: (404) 827-0027 (x28); Fax: (404) 827-0026
Web:
Email:
Raised in Charleston, West Virginia, Doug graduated from Washington & Lee University School of Law in 1989, and Davidson College in 1984. Throughout the years he volunteered at the Georgia Justice Project (GJP), described below, and in 1990 joined the staff as the second project attorney. Five years later he became the second Executive Director of the GJP.
Atlanta attorney John Pickens started the Georgia Justice Project in 1986. His purpose was to find a way to integrate his faith as a Christian with his practice as a lawyer. The GJP is an unlikely mix of lawyers, social workers and a landscaping company. They defend people charged with crimes, and, win or lose, they stand with their clients as they rebuild their lives. This, they feel, is the only way to break the cycle of crime and poverty. The GJP is an innovative nonprofit organization whose services include legal representation, prison visitation, GED classes, individual counseling and support groups, and monthly support dinners. GJP also operates a small business (New Horizon Landscaping) to employ its released clients.
Doug is married to Melissa Alves and has two sons (Conor, 5 years old, and Micah, 15 months).
Rhonda V. Magee Andrews
Professor of Law
University of San Francisco School of Law
2130 Fulton Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
Telephone: (415) 422-5055
Email:
I teach law from the perspective of a Black woman with the heart and soul of a native Southerner and the spirit of an adopted San Franciscan. I was born and raised in the South – North Carolina and Virginia – and attended the University of Virginia for degrees in Sociology (B.A. and M.A.) and law. I chose San Francisco as my home following my formal education, because of its famous openness and, it seemed to me, traditional countercultural stand in favor of human possibility.
Following a stint as a practitioner representing some of the country’s largest insurance companies in insurance contract disputes with some of the world’s biggest environmental polluters, I began teaching at the University of San Francisco, where I received tenure in 2003. I teach Torts; Insurance Law and Policy; and Race, Law and Policy, and write in these areas as well. In all of my teaching and writing I have been working toward the articulation of a jurisprudential perspective that I did not find as a law student – one oriented fundamentally around a deep appreciation of our common humanity and mindful of our perpetual personal struggles to fully actualize that common spirit in engaged community with others, notwithstanding the increasing alienation and perennial evil in the midst of our ordinary human lives. In this I have been profoundly inspired by the examples of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Cornel West, Mari Matsuda, Cecil Williams, and Peter Gabel.
This Fall I am Visiting Professor of Law at William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, one of the oldest multicultural communities in North America, where I am roaming the Virginia in which I came of age and finding new and old inspiration for my teaching and writing. I look forward to being with all of you in Atlanta.
Nora Kalb Bushfield
1756 Century Blvd., Suite B
Atlanta, Georgia 30345
Telephone: (o) (404) 248-1444; Fax: (404) 248-1464
Web:
Email:
Nora Kalb Bushfield is a sole practitioner in Atlanta, Georgia, and has specialized in the area of family law since 1986. A member of the Collaborative Law Institute of Georgia, Nora also serves on the steering committee for the Institute and has assisted with training for the Collaborative Law Institute. In addition to her law practice, she is a trained divorce and child custody mediator registered with the state ADR office and a member of the Georgia Association of Family Mediators. Bar memberships include the State Bar of Georgia, Family Law Section and Alternate Dispute Resolution Section; and the DeKalb and Atlanta Bar Associations. Relevant training includes Divorce & Child Custody Mediation and Collaborative Divorce.
Nora received her undergraduate degree from Georgia State University with a major in psychology; a Master of Social Work (M.S.W.) from Atlanta University, and her Juris Doctor from Antioch School of Law.
Prior to attending law school, Nora was a family and individual therapist at what is now know as Family’s First. While in Washington, D.C., Nora was National Project Director for several action, research, and demonstration programs in the area of juvenile justice, child welfare, and child abuse and neglect, as well as assisting in the writing of National Standards in Foster Care and Child Abuse and Neglect.
Nora is committed to the exclusive practice of Collaborative Law and to promoting the collaborative law process throughout Georgia. Nora is a member of the Steering Committee of the Collaborative Law Center of Georgia, the Board of Directors of the Collaborative Law Center of Atlanta, President of the International Alliance of Holistic Lawyers, and President of Collaborative Law Training Associates, Inc.
Kathleen Anne Clark
3 Royston Walk
Pleasant Hill, CA 94523
Telephone: (925) 280-7222; (925) 708-8227
Email:
I have practiced law since 1988 in the areas of civil litigation and dispute resolution. In 2000, I received a Master of Arts degree in business management/organizational development. Since receiving my MA, I’ve done consulting, coaching and writing on a broad range of OD topics, including Appreciative Inquiry. An article that I wrote on Appreciative Inquiry For Attorneys will be published this month in the ABA Law Practice Management on line magazine. I am working, with another California attorney, on MCLE programs to be offered through the State Bar of California in the area of Appreciative Inquiry for attorneys. I’m preparing for a trip to South Africa in November, 2004, with the Association for Conflict Resolution to discuss truth and reconciliation, mediation, and community building with like-minded people in South Africa. Finally, I’m preparing to go to Miami-Dade in November to be an election monitor and volunteering to work for the 9-11 Public Discourse Project.
Cheryl L. Conner, M.A., J.D.
New Prospects
334 Geary Road,
Lincoln, Vermont 05443
(802)453-8500
Email:
I am a lawyer and economist who has practiced law in the Boston area since graduation from Harvard in 1982. I was a litigator in the private sector, at Goodwin, Procter, and in the public sector, as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts and as an Assistant Attorney General for Massachusetts. My other public sector positions include Senate Counsel to the Massachusetts Legislature's Commerce and Labor Committee and Issues Director for a Democratic Gubernatorial Campaign. As an economist trained at the University of Michigan, I have done consulting and research in the regulated industries area at Charles River Associates and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
In my recent position teaching at Suffolk University Law School, in Boston, I was Director of the Clinical Internship Program. I coordinated a program in which 150-200 students per year provide pro bono legal work for organizations in New England under the supervision of 15 Suffolk Law School faculty. I taught seminars in which students reflect upon their field experience and attempt to integrate doctrine, skills, professional ethical sensibilities, and personal values. As an adjacent faculty member, I teach an unconventional course, "Reflective Lawyer: Peace-training for Lawyers", which guides students in how to integrate a contemplative approach with their field experience practicing law. Through teaching meditation and contemplative techniques and in spurring a non-judgmental discussion about integrating spiritual values and law practice, I have found that my students are fully engaged.
I speak widely about integrating spiritual values and perspectives within law practice, about holistic law and restorative justice. My perspective is informed by studies and practice under the guidance of His Eminence Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, a great master of Tibetan Buddhism. I founded a group of Lawyers with a Holistic Perspective in Boston, Massachusetts, and co-ordinate a Tibetan Buddhist meditation group called Sang Ngag Ling. My forthcoming book is entitled Going out of Our LEGAL Minds.
Clark Cunningham
W. Lee Burge Professor of Law & Ethics
Georgia State University College of Law
P.O. Box 4037
Atlanta, GA 30302-4037
Telephone: (404) 651-1242; Fax: (404) 651-2092
Home Page: law.wustl.edu/Academics/Faculty/Cunningham/cunningham.html
Email:
Upon graduation from college in 1975, Clark joined VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America, the domestic Peace Corps) and was assigned to work with a tenants advocacy organization in the inner city of Detroit. He organized the group into a nonprofit corporation, raised ongoing funding, and served as its first executive director before beginning law school in 1977. He continued to live in the same inner city neighborhood until 1987, during which time he completed law school, worked for a federal judge, was a legal aid lawyer, and a civil rights litigator for a private firm. He was also an active community organizer at the neighborhood, city and state level -- creating a nonprofit housing corporation that saved several apartment buildings from abandonment, working on a successful city-wide campaign to shift funding from downtown development to neighborhoods and nonprofit organizations, and serving as the first secretary of the Michigan Housing Trust Fund.
In 1987 Clark joined the faculty of the University of Michigan law school as an assistant clinical professor of law. In 1989 he was hired into a tenure-track position at Washington University in St. Louis where he directed the Urban Law Clinic (1989-94) and the Criminal Justice Clinic (1995-98). On June 1, 2002 he became the first holder of the W. Lee Burge Chair in Law and Ethics at Georgia State University in Atlanta, where his
first projects have been to develop materials for the state commission on indigent defense and to work on a proposal to develop a multi disciplinary law-and-medicine program to serve low-income children and their families through collaboration with a major hospital.
He has consulted around the world on reform in legal education and has been a visiting scholar at the Indian Law Institute, Sichuan University (China), the University of Sydney (Australia), University of Palermo (Argentina), and the National Law School of India. He directed a three-year Ford Foundation project to support the development of human rights clinics in Indian law schools and was one of two Americans to serve on the first steering
committee of the Global Alliance for Justice Education. He currently directs the Effective Lawyer-Client Communication Project, an international collaboration of law teachers, lawyers, and social scientists.
Margaret B. Drew
477 Washington Street
Norwood, MA 02062
Telephone: (781) 255-9595
Email:
Margaret has practiced law since 1980. Most of her professional career has been devoted to representing victims of domestic violence. She has represented clients in the family law and appellate courts of Massachusetts.
During the course of her practice, Margaret realized that the most important aspect of her work with victims was to incorporate spiritual healing into every aspect of her representation. After spending a year as a supervising attorney at Northeastern University School of Law’s domestic violence clinic, she is now an adjunct professor there, teaching courses related to domestic violence. Margaret Chairs the American Bar Association’s Commission on Domestic Violence. Margaret is a reiki master in the lineage of Jin Kei Do, which is the way of wisdom and compassion.
Daisy Hurst Floyd
Dean and Professor of Law
Walter F. George School of Law, Mercer University
1021 Georgia Ave.
Macon, GA 31207-0001
Telephone: (478) 301-2602
Email:
Daisy Hurst Floyd is Dean and Professor of Law at Mercer University’s Walter F. George School of Law. She received a B.A. and M.A. from Emory University and a J.D. from the University of Georgia School of Law. Daisy’s teaching and research interests include litigation-related topics, the development of professional identity, and legal education. She has participated in three projects of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, including two projects focused on the development of professional identity in American law students, and one related to the interdisciplinary study of professional education. She was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2001-2002. Daisy is a member of the State Bars of Georgia and Texas. She is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the Texas Bar Foundation.
Daisy is married to Tim Floyd. They have two children. Kate, 22, is a student at Candler School of Theology at Emory University, and Will, 18, is a freshman at Sarah Lawrence College.
Tim Floyd
Professor
Georgia State University College of Law
443 Urban Life Center
140 Decatur Street, SE
Atlanta, GA 30303
Telephone: (404) 651-1231
Email:
Tim Floyd is Visiting Professor of Law at Georgia State University College of Law in Atlanta, where he is teaching Criminal Procedure and Criminal Law during the 2004-05 school year. This fall, Tim is also working with Clark Cunningham and Doug Ammar in the newly established Georgia State College of Law Criminal Defense Clinic, which is conducted under the auspices and in conjunction with the Georgia Justice Project.
Tim and his wife Daisy moved to Georgia in the summer of 2004 after fifteen years together on the faculty at Texas Tech University School of Law. At Texas Tech, Tim was the J. Hadley Edgar Professor of Law and Co-Director of Clinical Programs. He established three clinical courses, including an innovative interdisciplinary Family Law Counseling Clinic conducted together with the Marriage and Family Therapy program at Texas Tech. Tim also taught criminal law courses, various lawyering skills courses, and seminars in legal ethics and law and literature.
One of Tim’s principal commitments and passion is in the defense of capital punishment cases. He recently spent eight years representing Louis Jones, Jr., the first person convicted under the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994. As of January 2005, Tim will be working part-time with the new Georgia Capital Defenders program, supervising law students and serving as a general resource person for the program.
Tim has a long-standing interest in spirituality and religious faith in the practice of law. He served as editor of the Faith and Law Symposium issue of the Texas Tech Law Review, a ground-breaking project that brought together 45 essays by lawyers from a wide range of spiritual traditions, all of whom discussed how their religious faith intersected with their work as lawyers. Tim has also spoken at several conferences on spirituality and the practice of law.
Among Tim’s other interests are access to justice issues: he served as an original member of the Texas Access to Justice Commission (on which he led an effort to establish a loan forgiveness program for new public interest lawyers); he was a long-term member of the Boards of Directors of the Texas Legal Services Center and of West Texas Legal Services; and he established a pro bono legal clinic through his church in Lubbock, Texas. Tim has also spent much time working on issues of lawyer discipline and regulation. He chaired the Supreme Court of Texas Lawyer Grievance Oversight Committee and was one of the principal drafters of the Texas Rules of Disciplinary Procedure.
Over the next year, Tim will be working on two major writing projects. He will be assisting Judge Phyllis Kravitch of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (and the third woman in history appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals) in writing her memoirs. Tim is also writing a book about his relationship with Louis Jones and the story of his execution.
Tim and Daisy live in Macon, Georgia. Daisy is the Dean of Walter F. George School of Law of Mercer University. Their daughter Kate plans to be a pastor and theologian and is a first-year student at Candler School of Theology of Emory University. Their son Will is a budding playwright and is a first-year student at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.
Zvi Gabbay
Doctoral student, Columbia University School of Law
792 Columbus Ave. #4-O
New York, NY 10025
Telephone: (212) 662-0950
Email:
Zvi Gabbay is a lawyer and mediator from Israel, who is currently conducting research in the area of restorative justice and alternatives to the criminal justice system in the Columbia University School of Law. He received his law degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and worked for the Tel Aviv District Attorney’s Office between 1998 and 2003 as a prosecutor. During his work at the DA’s office, Zvi began mediating civil cases, and teaching mediation courses.
Zvi’s work as prosecutor in criminal cases and mediator in civil cases challenged him to think of ways to combine the two worlds, and search for a more companionate and meaningful response to crime. Zvi dedicated his master’s degree from Columbia to the research of restorative justice practices in the United States, and will be continuing his studies towards a J.S.D. degree (the equivalent of a Ph.D. in law) in this interdisciplinary area of research.