Williams Institute researchers, with collaborators from Yale University, surveyed the mainland Chinese public about their familiarity with and acceptance of LGBTQ people. Researchers also asked participants about their attitudes toward policy issues such as discrimination at work, same-sex marriage, and same-sex couples raising children—areas where China does not currently recognize the legal rights of LGBTQ people. This webinar presents results from the survey and features a discussion on the meaning and implications of these findings to China’s LGBTQ population today.
RSVP here
Join OUTLaw and APILSA on Thursday, April 4th @ 3:15 p.m. in Law Room 1337 for a short film screening of Baby Gay and Fish, with a Q+A after with Baby Gay's film creators Melissa Peng and Arielle Frances Bagood afterward!
Baby GayStevie Lee (played by Valerie Yu) is desperate to finally prove her bisexuality, planning to bluff her way into a lesbian threesome thinking she'll "figure it out" when she gets there. She does not figure it out when she gets there. BabyGay is a short film written by Melissa Peng and directed by Arielle Frances Bagood.
Baby Gay was both an official selection and winner of the "Best LGBTQ Short" Award at the 2024 Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival and is an official selection at the 2024 Sonoma International Film Festival.
FishThough Tiger (played by Patrick Zhang) would never admit it, sometimes he regrets cutting off his mother after their falling out. Sometimes he wishes he had the courage to return her calls. But it's too late now. She's dead. However, on the day of her funeral, Tiger's mother returns to Earth... in the body of his goldfish. Her final wish? For Tiger to attend the mother-son dance with her. Now Tiger must help his (uh... fish? Mom?) Fish/Mom, all the while finding the strength within himself to fight for the second chance he's always wanted. Fish is a short film written by Jeremy Hsing and Patrick Zhang, and directed by Jeremy Hsing.
Fish was an official selection at the NewFilmmakers Los Angeles' May 2023 Film Festival InFocus: Asian Cinema, awarded Best Fantasy Short and awarded Honorable Mentions for Best Original Story and Best Actor at the 2023 Independent Shorts Awards, an official selection at the 2023 Hollywood Shorts Festival, 2023 Film Invasion Los Angeles (and winner of the 2023 Audience Award), 2023 Astoria Film Festival (and winner of the 2023 Grand Jury Prize), 46th Asian American International Film Festival (2023), and the 2023 Boston Asian American Film Festival.
After the Q+A, we will provide a more chill, relaxed social time for OUTLaw and APILSA members to hang out and vibe. 3
Please submit questions in the form below for the creators!
Food is provided when you RSVP: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13eARFnMIbfQj_Klk1ZBK7cv3DxLUcmiteexyWe15E6U/
The Williams Institute DC Spring Reception is hosted at the offices of King & Spalding in Washington, DC.
We invite you to join us to celebrate Williams Institute's research and accomplishments on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM.
For more information, please contact Williamsdev@law.ucla.edu.
Reserve a ticket at https://bit.ly/2024dcreception.
This year, the Annual Update Legacy Gala will bring together over 300 people, elected officials, judges, academics, celebrities, and others for a cocktail hour and formal seated dinner in honor of our founder Chuck Williams, who passed away in April 2023.
Outstanding new members boost law school faculty and administration in 2023–24.
New Tenure-Track Faculty
ARIELA GROSS
Distinguished Professor of Law
New Senior Leaders
TIMOTHY CASEY
Director of Curricular Administration and Professor from Practice
Tim Casey will teach Professional Responsibility and provide support for the non-senate law faculty. He started his teaching career at Columbia Law School, where he established a Criminal Practice Clinic and received the Presidential Award for teaching. He also held an appointment as a professor of law at Case Western Reserve University. And he received a Fulbright award for research and teaching in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Most recently, Casey served as the director of the STEPPS Program and professor in residence at California Western School of Law, where he oversaw an innovative program in legal ethics and lawyering skills. He also was a visiting professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. Before entering legal academia, he practiced law as a public defender in New York City.
Casey is an internationally recognized expert in experiential legal education. His research interests include legal ethics, surveillance and civil liberties, problem-solving courts and experiential pedagogy. He is a co-author of Legal Ethics in the Practice of Law (Carolina Academic Press, Fifth Edition, 2019), and his scholarship has appeared in law reviews including UC Davis Law Review and SMU Law Review. He serves as chair of the Legal Ethics Committee of the San Diego County Bar Association, a board member for local and international non-profit organizations, and a member of the editorial board for the peer-reviewed Clinical Law Review.
He received his B.A. from Boston College, J.D. from UC Law San Francisco and LL.M. from Columbia Law School.
HANNAH GARRY
Executive Director of the Promise Institute and Professor from Practice
Hannah Garry joins UCLA Law as executive director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights and professor from practice. Garry has devoted her legal career to seeking justice and accountability for human rights abuses and atrocity situations across the globe, while making the U.S. a destination for the study and practice of human rights law.
She joins UCLA Law from USC Gould School of Law, where she was clinical professor of law and founding director of the International Human Rights Clinic for 12 years. Her areas of teaching and scholarship include international criminal law, transitional justice, international human rights law and international refugee law. She has supervised student attorneys in the clinic on cases and projects nationally and internationally that address atrocity crimes, refugee rights, fair trial rights, gender justice, human trafficking and systemic racism.
Garry’s career as an international human rights advocate, scholar and teacher took root when she was a graduate student at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre. After graduation, she was hired by Oxford as a field researcher visiting refugee camps throughout Uganda and Kenya for two years where she witnessed and documented first-hand the abuses refugees endure in exile while under the protection of the international community.
Garry has held many other academic and expert legal advisor positions, including in international criminal courts and leading human rights organizations, and she has been quoted widely in major media outlets. Last year, she was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Oslo Law’s PluriCourts Centre in Norway.
Garry earned her J.D. from UC Berkeley and master’s in international affairs from Columbia University.
MELISSA GOODMAN
Executive Director of the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy
Melissa Goodman joins UCLA Law as the inaugural executive director of the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy after a five-year tenure as the legal and advocacy director for the ACLU of Southern California. There, Goodman led 60 attorneys across Southern California and oversaw the department’s visioning and strategy, strategic planning, intersectional issue and cross-team collaboration and resource allocation. In doing so, she helped lead statewide legislative, electoral and organizing strategy. She also co- chaired the national ACLU’s Gender Justice Task Force.
Goodman previously spent a decade as the ACLU SoCal’s Audrey Irmas Director of the LGBTQ Gender and Reproductive Justice Project, and as a senior litigation and policy counsel for reproductive and LGBTQ rights at the New York Civil Liberties Union. In those roles, she led and participated in reproductive justice, LGBTQ and gender equity litigation, as well as policy advocacy campaigns. Along the way, Goodman led or co-counseled an array of high-profile cases, including those involving pregnant unaccompanied immigrant minors; gay, bisexual and transgender prisoners; and same-gender couples.
Goodman clerked for Judge Frederic Block of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. She earned her B.A., magna cum laude, from New York University and her J.D. from NYU School of Law.
New Lecturers
EMILY CHURG
Lecturer in Law
Emily Churg teaches Legal Research and Writing. She previously practiced complex commercial litigation at WilmerHale and ran her own bar exam preparation company. She has also taught legal writing at USC Gould School of Law and undergraduate writing at Arizona State University.
She earned her B.A., with honors, from UC Santa Cruz; her Ph.D. in rhetoric, composition and linguistics from Arizona State; and her J.D., Order of the Coif, from UC Davis School of Law. After law school, she clerked for Judge S. James Otero of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
THOMAS WANEBO
Lecturer in Law
Thomas Wanebo teaches Legal Analysis, Writing, and Research for LL.M. students. He currently works as a trial attorney at Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County, defending low-income families against eviction. He began his career as a litigation associate at Irell & Manella in Los Angeles.
Wanebo earned his B.A. from Colorado State University and his J.D. from UCLA Law, where he was a senior editor of the UCLA Law Review. His publications include the article “Remote Killing and the Fourth Amendment: Updating Constitutional Law to Address Expanded Police Lethality in the Robotic Age,” which appeared in the UCLA Law Review.
New Fellows
MELODI DINCER
UCLA Institute for Technology, Law and Policy Fellow
Melodi Dincer will join UCLA Law in January 2024 as a fellow with the UCLA Institute for Technology, Law and Policy. Her work focuses on helping social movements fight algorithmic violence and build transformative futures.
She was previously an appellate advocacy fellow with the Electronic Privacy Information Center and has been a legal research fellow and clinical supervising attorney at NYU School of Law, where she earned her J.D. She earned her B.A. from Brown University.
RUTHIE LAZENBY
Shapiro Fellow in Environmental Law and Policy
As the Shapiro Fellow in Environmental Law and Policy for 2023–25, Ruthie Lazenby will be focusing on energy law and regulation. She was previously a staff attorney in the Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law School and a legal fellow in the environmental justice program at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest.
She earned her B.A. from Wesleyan University and her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Law and Political Economy Blog.
This year, the Supreme Court of the United States delivered major decisions on affirmative action, voting rights, free speech and Indigenous sovereignty, among other issues.
UCLA School of Law experts stepped in to break down the impact of the term in a variety of places: “Whither the Court: The Allan C. Lebow Annual Supreme Court Review” program, a webinar titled “From the Frontlines: The Supreme Court Rulings on Affirmative Action, LGBTQ Rights, and Student Debt,” public writings and even social media videos.
The Annual Update is the Williams Institute's signature event held each spring in Los Angeles, featuring a half-day conference, the final round of our moot court competition, and a reception.
The Golden State of LGBTQ Rights: California's Role in Advancing LGBTQ Policy
This year's Annual Update will focus on California as both a microcosm of issues playing out on the national level and a policy innovator in protecting LGBTQ+ rights. The conference will take place at UCLA School of Law, and the panels will be live-streamed via Zoom.
Register to attend in person or online.
Lunch will be provided for people who register to attend in person by Friday 3/29.
As the Supreme Court’s most recent term has now ended, observers are left to consider the many historic decisions that will have a lasting impact for years to come.
In a June 30 webinar titled “From the Frontlines: The Supreme Court Rulings on Affirmative Action, LGBTQ Rights, and Student Debt,” public writings and even social media videos, UCLA School of Law experts have stepped in to break down some of the most pivotal decisions.
Here is what they had to say.
Affirmative action