An initiative to reinvigorate civic education and democratize legal participation.
The Vanderbilt Access to Justice (AtJ) Initiative aims to expand and equalize access to knowledge and participation in the civil and criminal legal systems. It does so through an interdisciplinary and people-centered approach, grounded in the notion that every participant in the program serves as both teacher and student, drawing on their own experiences and learning from those of others.
Drawing from her extensive research, Professor Sudeall reveals the surprising realities of America’s court system: most cases unfold in local, informal settings with no lawyers present, leaving individuals to navigate overwhelming and often chaotic processes on their own. She challenges us to rethink what it means to participate meaningfully in democracy through the courts and what fairness, accountability, and self-determination should look like in practice.
Working in partnership with the Office of Public Interest and several Nashville-based legal service providers, this program and its related course(s) facilitate court observation by law students.
Students observing court will engage in related training and reflection opportunities, providing them with a richer understanding of how the courts operate in practice and how litigants in those courts experience the legal system.
The project aims to develop and house versatile module-based access to justice curricula that can be used not only in law schools, but also in secondary, undergraduate, and graduate education and community-based settings. Drawing from a broader literature on legal literacy and programs like Street Law, the Legal Education Project will engage students in working with people directly impacted by the legal system to develop a working curriculum that explores the litigant experience, the operation of state and municipal courts, court procedure, and basic elements of substantive law.
Lauren Sudeall
David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair of Law
Lauren Sudeall research focuses on access to the courts, both civil and criminal, and how lower-income individuals engage with the legal system, either with a lawyer or on their own. Her earlier work has also included the relationship between rights and identity and the intersection of constitutional law and criminal procedure.
Before joining the academy, Sudeall clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court of the United States. She then worked at the Southern Center for Human Rights--first as a Soros Justice Fellow and later as a staff attorney--where she represented indigent capital clients in Alabama and Georgia and litigated civil claims regarding the right to counsel.