Vanderbilt’s public interest curriculum addresses a wide range of public interest law topics, including equality, access to justice, and human rights. The George Barrett Social Justice Program and the Criminal Justice Program sponsor short-courses and events with guest speakers including prominent practitioners in a wide variety of public interest topics. The Legal Clinic provides students the opportunity to gain real-world legal experience through their legal clinics and externship program.
In addition to the first-year criminal law course, Vanderbilt's large criminal law faculty and adjunct faculty teaches over twenty courses in the second and third years that focus on criminal theory and practice, criminal procedure, juvenile justice, international criminal law, mental health law, and various other areas connected to criminal law.
The Legal Clinic allows students to learn both the theory and practice of law in context through dynamic legal clinics and open-ended externships. Legal clinics allow students to dive into various legal fields, representing real clients and arguing actual cases under expert guidance. The externship program offers students the opportunity to work alongside accomplished legal professionals and directly immerse themselves in the professional legal world. Clinics and externships provide students with the opportunity to develop critical lawyering skills such as client interviewing and counseling, legal writing, and advocacy in court.
Daniel Sharfstein’s scholarship focuses on the legal history of race and citizenship in the United States. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship to research his 2017 book on post-Reconstruction America, Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard and the Nez Perce War, which was a Montana Book Award Honor Book and Southern Book Award finalist.
Lauren Sudeall serves as director of the Vanderbilt Access to Justice Initiative. Her 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.
Terry Maroney investigates the intersection of law and emotion. She is a scholar of criminal law, with specializations in wrongful convictions and in juvenile justice. Her work illuminates how emotional experiences, dynamics, and their management interact with the constraints and demands of varied judicial roles, with deep implications for judges and the public they serve.