IMMIGRATION LAW TEACHERS WORKSHOP 2008

University of Miami
Coral Gables, Florida
Co-hosted by the University of Miami & St. Thomas University
in collaboration with
Florida International University

May 1-3, 2008

PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE

Thursday May 1

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER ONLINE!

7:00 p.m. Dinner (pay your own way) at
Scotty’s Landing,
3381 Pan American Drive, Coconut Grove, Miami FL 33133

7:00 p.m. Dinner (pay your own way) at Scotty’s Landing, 3381 Pan American Drive, Coconut Grove, Miami FL 33133

Friday May 2
8:00 – 8:45 a.m. Registration
Whitten University Center, University of Miami - Coral Gables 

Plenary Scholarship Panels

For the four plenary scholarship panels, we have chosen topics to cut across the traditional categories that have defined (and sometimes confined) our work-categories such as constitutional law, refugees and asylum, citizenship, and human rights, all of which are part of each of these four topics. We hope that this framing prompts discussion that cuts across traditional categories, and in turn opens up conversation not only amongst ourselves, but between us and other scholars and advocates.

In format, these panels will be constructed not around traditional papers, but
rather short pieces (about five pages) that panelists will submit by way of
commentary on an issue or recent development. The moderator will assume that
all attendees will have read the pieces (to be distributed before the meeting), so we
can devote the full session time to discussion.

8:45 - 10:00 a.m. - Plenary Scholarship Panel 1:

Deportation/Post-Deportation Law and Human Rights
 
This plenary will explore U.S. deportation law, post-deportation law, and rights
claims. Deportation is a major, rapidly expanding law enforcement system that
looms over the tens of millions of non-citizens who live in this country. It is, to
say the least, a system with many serious problems including inconsistent
adjudication, harsh effects on families, and limited judicial oversight. Postdeportation
law is largely an oxymoron. Many deportees have no legal path of
return. Others, including those who may have been wrongly deported, face an
arcane system governed by largely unreviewable discretion and an array of
formidable hurdles to judicial review of their cases. Panelists will examine legal
and normative questions that involve technical aspects of deportation law, deeper
understandings of the deportation system as a whole, and the relationships among
deportation, post-deportation law, and civil and human rights claims. 

Panelists:

Jennifer Chacon, University of California, Davis
Lucas Guttentag, ACLU (Univ. of California, Berkeley, and Stanford)
Stephen Legomsky, Washington University
Michael Wishnie, Yale Law School

Moderator:

Daniel Kanstroom, Boston College

10:15 - 11:30 a.m. Plenary Scholarship Panel 2:
Race, Immigration, and Integration

This plenary will focus on the role race plays in shaping the immigrant experience
in the United States. What role does race play in the processes of immigrant
integration? Does race shape the experiences of different immigrant groups and
their attitudes toward integration in distinct ways? How does race affect relations
between immigrants and existing minority groups, namely African Americans?
How should the dynamics of race affect the way we as a society understand
immigration and approach integration?

Panelists:

David Abraham, University of Miami
Susan Akram, Boston University
Jennifer Gordon, Fordham University
Robin Lenhardt, Fordham University

Moderator:

Cristina Rodriguez, New York University

11:45 a.m. - 1:00 Lunch & Speaker: A New Social Movement?
Grassroots Organizing of Immigrants in South Florida

A Conversation With:
Maria Rodriguez, Florida Immigrant Coalition, and
Lucas Benitez, Coalition of Immokalee Workers

Moderated by:

Rebecca Sharpless, Florida International University

1:00 - 2:15 p.m. Plenary Teaching Panel:

Integrating Doctrinal and Clinical Courses

The plenary teaching session will address current experiences and practices
regarding the integration of doctrinal and clinical immigration law courses. This is
a crucial aspect of immigration law teaching that needs to be further examined.
The starting point for the plenary session discussion will be the results of a short
survey administered this fall to immigration law professors. The panelists will then
discuss their own experiences in the integration of doctrinal and clinical immigration law courses and articulate methods and techniques to achieve specific
goals regarding skills and doctrinal pedagogy.

Panelists:

Evelyn Cruz, Arizona State University
Stephen Legomsky, Washington University
David Thronson, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Moderators:

Clare Huntington, University of Colorado
Maria Pabón López, Indiana University, Indianapolis

2:30 - 3:30 p.m. Teaching Breakout Sessions

1. Continuing the Conversation About Integration of Doctrinal and Clinical
Courses
Participants in this breakout session will engage in an informal discussion and
question and answer session with the speakers from the plenary session.

2. Workshop for Beginning Teachers
(Any self-identified “rookie” welcome)
Participants in this breakout session will engage in an informal discussion and
question and answer session session about devising and teaching immigrationrelated
courses.

Facilitators:

Jennifer Chacón, University of California, Davis
Clare Huntington, University of Colorado

3. Panel Discussion of Phil Schrag’s new book (with David Ngaruri
Kenney), Asylum Denied (Univ. of Calif. Press, 2008),
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/11079.html.
Participants in this breakout session will engage in a discussion about Asylum
Denied, including a conversation about using the book as supplemental teaching
material. Participants who register for the Workshop by April 1st will be mailed a
free copy of the book by mid-April. The discussion will assume participants have
read the book.

Facilitators:

Richard Boswell, University of California, Hastings
Michele Pistone, Villanova University
Philip Schrag, Georgetown University

3:30 - 4:30 p.m. Scholarship: Works-In-Progress: round 1

Simultaneous sessions to be coordinated after works-in-progress are received.

4:30 - 5:30 p.m. Scholarship: Works-In-Progress: round 2

Simultaneous sessions to be coordinated after works-in-progress are received.

The goal of these works-in-progress sessions is to provide authors with as much helpful feedback as possible in a one-hour in-depth discussion. Our plan is to assemble, from among the workshop registrants, a small discussion group (the author plus a commentator and perhaps six or seven other workshop attendees). We’ll take care to put together each group with a variety of folks at different seniority levels, with different degrees of expertise in the specific subject, etc., and we’ll distribute the papers in advance. It’s unavoidable that those in any given small group will miss other WIP discussions at the same time, but we believe that small parallel sessions will have benefits (for both authors and other participants) that will more than offset the FOMS syndrome (“fear of missing something”). We need to assemble the groups in advance to make this work for all of the authors. For this reason, please register as soon as you can, so we can put these groups together and distribute the papers.

If you would like to present a work-in-progress, please contact Hiroshi Motomura
at motomura@email.unc.edu by February 15.

7:00 p.m. — Dinner at Tu Tu Tango at CocoWalk in the Grove & Music-Making Thereafter

Saturday May 3

9:00 - 10:15 a.m. Plenary Scholarship Panel 3:

Comparative Immigration Studies
As our appreciation of migration as a global phenomenon grows, many scholars
increasingly are engaging in comparative analyses of U.S. immigration law. This
panel considers the field of inquiry, methodologies, and academic and practical
productivity and limitations of comparative approaches to immigration law and
policy. How is our understanding of immigration in the United States aided by
comparative analysis? How might such approaches reshape our scholarship or our
teaching? Can we identify a normative goal (or set of normative goals) for
comparative approaches? Panelists will consider these questions within the
context of specific comparative projects in which they are engaged.

Panelists:

Nora Demleitner, Hofstra University
Maryellen Fullerton, Brooklyn Law School
Lauren Gilbert, St. Thomas University
Ayelet Shachar, University of Toronto

Moderator:

Muneer Ahmad, American University

10:30 - 11:45 a.m. Plenary Scholarship Panel 4:

Immigration and Election 2008

The final session of the conference will focus on the politics of immigration
reform and the possibilities for reform in the near future. The questions to be
explored will include: What are the key immigration initiatives, if any, that a new
President and Congress should pursue? How should the campaigns shape the
immigration issue to build political will for meaningful reform? How is the politics
of immigration reform likely to take shape in the coming years?

Panelists:

Jeanne Butterfield, American Immigration Lawyers Association
David Martin, University of Virginia
Julia Preston, The New York Times
Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Stanford Law School

12:00 - 1:00 p.m. Concluding Lunch

Planning committee: local arrangements: David Abraham and Lauren Gilbert

teaching panels: Clare Huntington and Maria Pabón López

scholarship panels: Muneer Ahmad, Daniel Kanstroom, Cristina Rodriguez

works-in-progress coordinator & overall chair: Hiroshi Motomura

Local arrangements: David Abraham, Lauren Gilbert, Peter Kelly, Ediberto Roman, Rebecca
Sharpless, & Michael Vastine

Accommodations

Registration Questions
The St. Thomas University School of Law is responsible for the formal registration process
for the workshop. If you have questions about
registration, hotel accommodations, or events in Coconut Grove, please contact Professor Lauren Gilbert at (305) 623-2386 or lgilbert@stu.edu. If you have questions about facilities at the University of Miami, please contact Professor David Abraham at (305) 284-5535 or
dabraham@law.miami.edu.

A Brief History of Coconut Grove*

As far back as the 1830’s, the first settlers came to Coconut Grove. Horace P. Porter established the neighborhood’s first post office in 1873 and named the area Cocoanut Grove. A few years later, in the 1880’s, Bahamian pioneers settled along Charles Avenue. The area soon began to attract a number of intellectuals and nobility and many soon made their home in Coconut Grove. As the area began to gain recognition among the upper class, many Northerners built their winter residences there.

In 1891, pioneer Ralph Munroe built The Barnacle, his home overlooking Biscayne Bay. Today this building stands as the oldest residence in Miami/Dade County on its original site.Other historic landmarks include the Plymouth Congregational Church, with a 300 year-old door from a Spanish monastery, and the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church, one of the first Black churches in South Florida. Villa Vizcaya, now a decorative art museum set in the midst of magnificent formal gardens, was originally the home of International Harvester Vice President James Deering, who purchased the bayfront property in 1910. Deering traveled throughout Europe purchasing furniture and works of art for the house. Construction began in 1914 and a labor force of 1,000 craftsmen and artisans worked on the house for two years. The furnishings at Villa Vizcaya are shown today just as they were in Deering’s time.

In 1916, botanist Dr. David Fairchild purchased a seven acre property and called it The Kampong, meaning a cluster of houses in Malay. Now known as the Fairchild Gardens, Kampong was the site for visits of dignitaries such as Winston Churchill, Richard Leakey, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Dwight Eisenhower. Fairchild’s father-in-law was Alexander Graham Bell, who invented a device for extracting fresh water from sea water while staying there. Botanists and horticulturists still come to conduct research. Fairchild Gardens is a member of the National Tropical Botanical Gardens and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

In the 1950’s, Coconut Grove began to attract artists from the United States and Europe. The
Grove soon had an international reputation as an artists’ colony, and one would regularly see artists sitting at easels on the sidewalks and painting the local scene. By the 1960’s, many art galleries were located there, as well as Grove House, an artists’ co-op. In 1963, the Coconut Grove Arts Festival, now known as the #1 arts festival in the country, was established.

On January 3, 1956, The Coconut Grove Playhouse debuted its first production with the U.S.
premiere of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” starring Bert Lahr and Tom Ewell and directed by Alan Schneider. The Playhouse, itself housed in an historic building, is recognized as one of South Florida’s best venues for professional theater.

Another important date for Coconut Grove is 1960, when the Miami Museum of Science and
Planetarium opened just across the road from Villa Vizcaya Museum. The Museum is one of the city’s top attractions for tourists and local residents, including many school groups. In 1979, the Streets of Mayfair opened in Coconut Grove. This uniquely-designed urban shopping center spreads out over two blocks and provides 228,000 square feet of specialty shops, boutiques, restaurants, outdoor cafes, theaters, and nightclubs. In 1990, Cocowalk, a Mediterranean-style shopping open-air shopping ‘village,’ with many colorful shops and outdoor cafes, became the centerpiece of the Coconut Grove as we know it today. The bustling center of Cocowalk reflects the true spirit of the Grove, with a mix of young and old, singles and families, tourists and residents.

*Adapted from Chamber of Commerce brochure. For a map and additional information on Coconut
Grove, go to http://cgcc.coconutgrove.com/Coconut%20Grove%20Brochure.pdf.