Alistair E. Newbern
Assistant Clinical Professor of Law
Voice: 615-322-4964
Fax: 615-322-6562
Email: alistair.e.newbern@vanderbilt.edu
Office: Room 117
View curriculum vitae (.pdf)
Links
- Social Justice Program
- Criminal Justice Program
- Cecil D. Branstetter Litigation & Dispute Resolution Program
Research Interest(s)
Appellate procedure, poverty law, advocacy
Education
LL.M. Georgetown University Law Center (Advocacy)
J.D. University of California at Berkeley
A.B. Brown University
Biography
Alistair Newbern runs the Vanderbilt Law School Appellate Litigation Clinic, in which third-year law students practice before appellate courts on behalf of clients who could not otherwise afford representation. Professor Newbern’s research focuses on access to the courts for underrepresented litigants. After earning her J.D. at the University of California at Berkeley, where she served as Senior Notes and Comments Editor of the California Law Review, Professor Newbern clerked for Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and for Judge Aleta A. Trauger of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. In 2001, she won the American Bar Association’s Ross Award for best published comment. Before joining Vanderbilt, Professor Newbern taught at the University of North Carolina School of Law, where she directed the school’s Civil Legal Assistance Clinic. She also held a teaching fellowship in Georgetown University Law Center’s Appellate Litigation Program and practiced in the Nashville, Tennessee, office of Lieff Cabraser Heimann and Bernstein.
Representative Cases
Jones v. United States, No. 10-5105, 2012 WL 3089348 (6th Cir., July 31, 2012) (establishing retroactivity of Begay v. United States in Sixth Circuit, determining that petitioner had not committed a violent felony within the meaning of the Armed Career Criminal Act, and finding that circumstances of his incarceration warranted equitable tolling of one-year filing period for relief under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act)
McPhearson v. United States, 675 F.3d 553 (6th Cir., 2012) (reversing denial of ineffective assistance of counsel claim where petitioner’s counsel failed to raise argument at sentencing that some quantity of drugs attributed to McPhearson were for personal use)
In re P-M-O-O- (Board of Immigration Appeals, May 17, 2012) (unpublished decision) (affirming grant of withholding of removal for petitioner who had been victim of violent abuse by police in his native Kenya because of his sexual orientation)
In re P-N- (Board of Immigration Appeals, April 9, 2010) (unpublished decision) (affirming grant of withholding of removal for petitioner who, with his politically prominent family, had been a victim of ongoing ethnic violence in Burundi)
Representative Publications
Articles
Comment: "Good Cop, Bad Cop: Federal Prosecution of State-Legalized Medical Marijuana Use after United States v. Lopez," 88 California Law Review 1575 (2000)
Presentations
"Access to Courts: Non-Citizens," Law and Society Association, Summer 2008
"Words and Reasons: Jurisdiction Stripping and the Federal Tort Claims Act," Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS), New Scholars Workshop, Summer 2008
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