Frank Bloch

Professor of Law Emeritus

Frank Bloch is an internationally prominent expert in social security and other public benefit programs. He is also a leader in the international clinical education movement, most notably as one of the founding members of the Global Alliance for Justice Education (GAJE). He joined the Vanderbilt law faculty from the University of Chicago Law School in 1979 as director of clinical education, a position he held until 2001. He also served as the director of Vanderbilt's Social Justice Program from 2007 to 2010. He was a Fulbright Professor at Delhi University in India (1986-87) and a research fellow at the International Social Security Association in Geneva, Switzerland (1992-93). Over the course of his career, he served as vice-chair of an Institute of Medicine committee studying the Social Security disability decision-making process, as chair of the Income Security Committee of the American Bar Association's Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice, and as a consultant for the Administrative Conference of the United States, the Social Security Advisory Board, the International Labor Office, and the US Agency for International Development. Before he began his academic career, he worked as a legal aid lawyer with California Rural Legal Assistance. Professor Bloch retired from the Vanderbilt Law School faculty in 2011. While at Vanderbilt he taught courses on social security, poverty law, social justice, evidence, and civil procedure, as well as a live-client clinical course on civil practice.

Research Interests

Social Security and public welfare, clinical legal education

Representative Publications

• Cases and Materials on Social Security Law, Policy, and Practice (West Academic Publishing, 2016) (with Jon C. Dubin)
• Bloch on Social Security Disability (Thomson Reuter/West Publishing Co., 2016) (available only electronically on Westlaw, Social Security Excellence, and CD-ROM Library) (prior editions annually since 1995)
• Social Security Law and Practice: A Handbook for A Live-Client Clinical Course (West Academic Publishing, 2012)
• The Global Clinical Movement: Educating Lawyers For Social Justice (Oxford University Press, 2011) (editor). Spanish translation: El Movimiento Global De Clinicas Juridicas. Formando Juristas En La Justicas Social (Ed. Frank S. Bloch) (Tirant lo Blanch 2013)
• Clinical Anthology: Readings For Live-Client Clinics (2nd ed., LexisNexus, 2011) (co-editor, with Alex J. Hurder, Susan L. Brooks & Susan L. Kay)
• “Global Legal Education: The Role of Clinics in Legal Education Reform,” in Experimental Legal Education in a Globalized World: The Middle East and Beyond (Mutaz M. Qafisheh & Stephen A. Rosenbaum, eds., Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2016)
• "A Global Perspective on Clinical Legal Education," Revista De Educación Y Derecho (Education and Law Review), No. 4 at 1 (2011)
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• "Forward: International Clinics and the Global Clinical Movement," 26 Maryland Journal of International Law 1 (2011)
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• "Access to Justice and the Global Clinical Movement," 28 Washington University Journal of Law & Policy 111 (2008)
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• "Medical Proof, Social Policy, and Social Security’s Medically Centered Definition of Disability," 92 Cornell Law Review 189 (2007) (symposium)
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