Irene Scharf
Irene Scharf is a Professor of Law at the University of Massachusetts School of Law, where she founded and continues to direct the Law School’s Immigration Litigation Clinic, which is entering its 17th year. She began practicing law in a community-based law office in the then-sleepy neighborhood near the original Filenes Basement department store. It was there, while the office participated in a legal services pilot project, that she began practicing immigration law, which has fascinated her ever since.
In the course of her career, Irene has worked for both the City of Cambridge and the State Ethics Commission, as well as taught at both area law schools and in the Paris, France location of the University of San Diego School of Law’s Institute on International and Comparative Law. She has been involved in clinical legal education for decades and has also contributed significant scholarship in the areas of both immigration and tort law. One of her most influential scholarly works was published in 1988 by Duke Law Journal, What Process is Due? Unaccompanied Minors’ Rights to Deportation Hearings (co-authored). She has recently published on the U.S. government’s understanding of torture, Untorturing the Definition of Torture and Applying the Rule of Immigration Lenity, 66 Rutgers Law Review 1 (Fall 2013); her next work, Second-Class Citizenship: The Plight of Naturalized Special Immigrant Juveniles, will be published in December 2018 by the Cardozo Law Review.
As an Access to Justice Fellow, Irene will be working with the self-described “Odd Hoc” group of lawyers and non-lawyers in the South Coast area, in partnership with the University of Massachusetts Law School of Dartmouth. This group includes recently retired professionals, who have been identifying both the legal and non-legal needs of the many immigrants in their community in order to connect them with those who can help. The assistance is taking many forms, from lawyers working on small pieces of larger immigration cases, to lawyers with expertise in other fields assisting on issues such as name changes, acquisition of birth certificates, guardianships, and the like. Irene will help to create additional links between those needing assistance and those able to help them, concentrating on coordinating with area nonprofit organizations.