Dion Aroner
Dion Louise Aroner was elected in 1996 to represent District 14, bringing more than 20 years of hands-on legislative experience to the California Assembly. In September 2000, in recognition of her exceptional leadership in the Assembly, Speaker Robert M. Hertzberg selected Aroner as Democratic Caucus Chair. She continues in her fifth year as Chair of the Assembly Human Services Committee where she oversees state programs targeted to the most vulnerable populations, including foster care, CalWORKs, services for disabled Californians, and child care. Aroner also serves on the Appropriations, Budget, Revenue and Taxation, and Water, Parks and Wildlife committees.
After graduating from UC Berkeley in 1966, Aroner began her career as a social worker with the Alameda County Department of Social Services, assisting needy families and the elderly. In 1971, Dion Aroner served as the President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 535. She was the youngest person to serve as the union’s president, and was the first woman elected to that post. In 1976, Aroner became Chief of Staff to Assemblyman Tom Bates, a position she held for 20 years. In this role she prepared legislation in the areas of child care, disability rights, educational finance, long-term care, children’s mental health, GAIN (welfare to work training), adoptions, and foster care. Beginning in 1983, she also served as Staff Consultant to the Assembly Human Services Committee.
Edward Barnes
Edward Barnes is the Director of East Bay Community Law Center’s Income and Employment Support Unit. Mr. Barnes received his B. A. from Brown University , then served three years as a math teacher in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone , West Africa . He obtained his J. D. from New York University , after which he practiced law for five years at DNA Legal Services on the Navajo Reservation. For a subsequent six years he did statewide impact litigation on welfare issues at the Legal Aid Society of Alameda County in Oakland , California . At EBCLC for the last twelve years, he supervises law students who provide benefits representation and local welfare policy advocacy. He is the author of numerous welfare policy changes that are now in statute, ordinance, regulation, or case law.
Mary Belardo
Mary Belardo has been the Chairwoman of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla tribe for ten years. She also serves as the Chair of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Advisory Committee, Treasurer for the Tribal Alliance of Sovereign Indian Natives (TASIN), and as a member of the Department of Interior Trust Reform Committee. She is also a member of USEPA Regional Tribal Operation Committee and the Coachella Valley Unified School District Advisory Board. Under Ms. Belardo’s leadership the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians have developed their own welfare reform program.
Sujatha Branch
Sujatha Jagadeesh Branch is Senior Staff Attorney, Child Care Law Center , San Francisco . She specializes in child care subsidies in California and nationally, focusing on CalWORKs child care, due process issues, license-exempt child care, and immigrant access to child care. She has expertise in regulatory issues, serving as co-lead counsel in Rose v. Eastin , a San Francisco Superior Court Writ of Mandate that resulted in the California Department of Education’s issuance of regulations governing CalWORKs child care in accordance with the California Administrative Procedures Act.
Prior to joining the Child Care Law Center , Ms. Branch was a Staff Attorney at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, most recently in the government benefits unit. She was a Charles Evans Hughes Fellow at Columbia Law School and a summa cum laude graduate of The Ohio State University, where she double-majored in Sociology and English.
Karen Czapanskiy
Karen Czapanskiy is Professor of Law at the University of Maryland and currently is William J. Maier, Jr., Visiting Chair of Law at the West Virginia University College of Law. Professor Czapanskiy has been an attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, taught at the University of Hawaii Law School and the Washington College of Law, and clerked for the Honorable Rita C. Davidson, Court of Special Appeals of Maryland. Professor Czapanskiy has served as the reporter for the Maryland Joint Special Committee on Gender Bias in the Courts and as a member of the Governor’s Commission on Disruptive Youth. She was chair of the Section on Women in Legal Education of the AALS and organized the Maryland/DC/Virginia Women Law Teachers Group. Her teaching and research interests include poverty law, family law and the relationship of law to the lives of women, children and families.
Professor Czapanskiy’s publications include “Child Support, Visitation, Shared Custody and Split Custody,” Child Support Guidelines: The Next Generation 43, 44 (U.S. Department Health & Human Services, Office of Child Support Enforcement, 1994); “Anti-Harassment: Building Law School Policies,” 4 Md. J. Contemp. Legal Issues 163 (1993); and “Child Support and Visitation: Rethinking the Connection,” 20 Rut. Cam . L.J. 619 (1989).
Peter Edelman is a Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center . He has been on the faculty since 1982 and currently directs a clinic focusing on poverty policy in the District of Columbia . He took leave during President Clinton ‘s first term to serve as Counselor to HHS Secretary Donna Shalala and then as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.
Professor Edelman has been Associate Dean of the Law Center , Director of the New York State Division for Youth, and Vice President of the University of Massachusetts . He was a Legislative Assistant to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and was Issues Director for Senator Edward Kennedy’s Presidential campaign in 1980. Earlier, he was a Law Clerk to Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg and before that to Judge Henry J. Friendly on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He also worked in the U.S. Department of Justice as Special Assistant to Assistant Attorney General John Douglas.
Mr. Edelman’s book, Searching for America’s Heart; RFK and the Renewal of Hope , was published by Houghton-Mifflin in January 2001. He is the author of many articles on poverty, constitutional law, and issues about children and youth. His article in the Atlantic Monthly entitled “The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done” received the Harry Chapin Media Award.
Shawn Fremstad
Shawn Fremstad is a Senior Policy Analyst and attorney with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington , DC . He works on a range of welfare and related social policy issues. His current work focuses on welfare law reauthorization and issues related to immigrants, economic mobility and eligibility for public benefits. Prior to joining the Center, Mr. Fremstad worked on low-income policy and legal issues for several years as an attorney with legal services programs in Minnesota . He received his law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School.
Evelyn Nakano Glen
Shawn Fremstad is a Senior Policy Analyst and attorney with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington , DC . He works on a range of welfare and related social policy issues. His current work focuses on welfare law reauthorization and issues related to immigrants, economic mobility and eligibility for public benefits. Prior to joining the Center, Mr. Fremstad worked on low-income policy and legal issues for several years as an attorney with legal services programs in Minnesota . He received his law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School.
Kaaryn Gustafson
Kaaryn Gustafson earned her J. D. from Boalt Hall in 1997 and is a PhD candidate in UC Berkeley’s Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program. Her dissertation, a qualitative study of rule knowledge and rule compliance, is titled “The Morality and Rationality of Welfare.” Ms. Gustafson is currently a New Voices Fellow at the Women of Color Resource Center where she directs the Welfare Research, Education and Advocacy Program (WREAP). She also sits on the board of Low Income Families’ Empowerment Through Education (LIFETIME), a non-profit organization which advocates for poor families in welfare legislation and empowers low-income adults to achieve economic self-sufficiency through education.
Joel Handler
Joel Handler is Richard C. Maxwell Professor of Law and Professor of Policy Studies, UCLA. His principal field of research is poverty and social welfare. Recent publications include, We the Poor People: Work, Poverty and Welfare Reform (with Yekeskel Hassenfeld); Down From Bureaucracy: The Ambiguity of Privatization and Empowerment ; and The Poverty of Welfare Reform.
Angela Harris
Angela Harris is Professor of Law at the School of Law , University of California, Berkeley . Before joining the Boalt faculty in 1988, Professor Harris served as a law clerk to Judge Joel M. Flaum of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and as an attorney with the San Francisco firm of Morrison & Foerster. She was a visiting professor at Stanford Law School in 1991, at Yale Law School in 1997 and at Georgetown Law Center in 2000.
Professor Harris writes widely in the areas of feminist legal theory and critical race theory. Recent publications include Gender and Law: Theory, Doctrine, Commentary (with Katherine Bartlett) 1998 and Race and Races: Cases and Resources for a Diverse America (with Juan Perea, Richard Delgado and Stephanie Wildman) 2000.
Joan Heifetz Hollinger
Joan Heifetz Hollinger is a leading American scholar on adoption law and practice as well as on the psychosocial aspects of adoptive family relationships. She is centrally involved in efforts to overhaul parentage and adoption laws and policies in this and other countries and is an outspoken advocate in the courts and in the media on behalf of children’s rights. Professor Hollinger has been Reporter for the Proposed Uniform Adoption Act, a member of the federal task force on “Permanency for Dependent and Foster Care Children,” and active in efforts to implement the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption and to protect children against all kinds of discriminatory treatment. She is the principal author and editor of the three volume treatise, Adoption Law and Practice (Matthew Bender Co. 1988-2002) and the ABA Guide to the Multiethnic Placement Act (MEPA). She has published many articles in legal and other professional journals, including the Packard Foundation’s The Future of Children , the Family Law Quarterly , and the Univ. of Mich. Journal of Law Reform.
Professor Hollinger and her students have been amicus curiae in a number of precedent-setting adoption and custody cases, including second-parent adoption and third-party visitation cases in which they argue that children have constitutionally protected liberty interests in maintaining familial ties to the individuals who actually serve as their parents. She is currently engaged in a project to revise the Uniform Parentage Act to ensure the equal treatment of children regardless of the marital status of their parents.
Hilary W. Hoynes
Hilary W. Hoynes is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California , Davis , and is an authority on welfare policy, low-skill labor markets, demographics, and government transfer programs. Professor Hoynes is especially active in analyzing the incentive effects of welfare programs. Her ongoing work studies the effects of state and federal welfare reform on family and child well-being; examines the effect of the Earned Income Tax Credit on family labor supply, marriage, and household expenditures; and investigates the effects of business cycles on groups differentiated by race, gender, and skill level. She has also studied the effects of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
Professor Hoynes is a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economics, a research associate at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and a research affiliate at the Joint Center for Poverty Research and the Institute for Research on Poverty. She is an Advisory Council Member of the Public Policy Institute of California and a member of the CalWORKS advisory committee at RAND . She earned a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 1992 and B. A. in economics and mathematics from Colby College in 1983.
Jane Kelly
Jane Kelly is currently the Director of the California office for the nonprofit organization, Public Citizen. Public Citizen celebrated its 30th anniversary by establishing the California office to work on issues that include clean, safe, and affordable energy and water, sustainable food systems, just and democratic trade, and campaign finance reform. The office officially opened in September 2001. Ms. Kelly is an attorney and for seven years worked on staff for the Union of Concerned Scientists, where she led campaigns for renewable energy, against deregulation of the electric industry, and for clean and energy-efficient vehicles. As a consultant, she has worked with the Funders Agriculture Working Group to develop a sustainable agriculture agenda for the state. Past clients also include statewide coalitions on global warming. She received her J. D. from the University of Florida and her B.A. from Emory University. She is a member of the California and Florida bars.
Felicia Kornbluh
Felicia Kornbluh is a long-time scholar, writer and activist on women’s and social policy issues. She is currently an Assistant Professor of History at Duke University , where she teaches the history of social policy, women’s history, and the history of law and society. She is also a leading member of the Women’s Committee of 100, an organization of scholars and writers committed to the proposition that “a war against poor women is a war against all women.” During recent debates over TANF reauthorization, Kornbluh convened a group of Historians for Social Justice who lobbied members of both houses of Congress to support woman-friendly welfare reform.
Jane Mauldon
Jane Mauldon is Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include welfare, teenage pregnancy, sex education, reproductive health care, disabled children, lesbian and gay families, and in general, the health and well being of children and adolescents and their families. She is currently evaluating a statewide program in California serving teenage parents on welfare. She has taught courses on social welfare policy, policies affecting children and adolescents, poverty and race, program evaluation and quantitative methods. Before joining the Goldman School she worked at the RAND Corporation doing health services research, ran a shelter for battered women, did economic development on an Indian reservation in Nevada, and taught English in Laos.
Stephen Sugarman
Professor Sugarman joined the Boalt faculty in 1972. He regularly teaches Torts, and occasionally teaches Sports Law, Educational Policy and Law, and other courses in the social justice curriculum. Professor Sugarman has written four books with Boalt colleague John Coons: Private Wealth and Public Education (Harvard 1970); Education by Choice: The Case for Family Control ( California 1978); Scholarships for Children (IGS 1992); and, most recently, Making School Choice Work for All Families (PRI 1999). He and Coons also argued the landmark case Serrano v. Priest before the California Supreme Court. He has also written numerous law review articles on a range of subjects. Before coming to Boalt, Professor Sugarman served as acting director of the New York State Commission on the Cost, Quality and Financing of Education. Between 1967 and 1972 he was associated with the Los Angeles office of O’Melveny & Myers. At Boalt he served as associate dean from 1980 to 1982 and as director of the Earl Warren Legal Institute’s Family Law Program from 1988 to 1999. He received both his B. S. and J. D. degrees at Northwestern.
Clare Pastore
Clare Pastore is a Senior staff Attorney at the Western Center on Law and Poverty in Los Angeles. The Western Center works with local legal aid and community agencies throughout California to enforce the rights of low-income Californians in the areas of health, housing, and welfare through impact litigation, policy advocacy, and training. Ms. Pastore is a graduate of the Yale Law School and a former law clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel in San Francisco. She has specialized in welfare and food stamp issues since joining the Western Center in 1989. Ms. Pastore has litigated numerous class action lawsuits on behalf o welfare recipients, including Fry v. Saenz (2002) (terminating welfare benefits to disabled 18 years olds because they will not complete high school by age 19 violates the Americans with Disabilities Act), Beno Blanco v. Anderson (1994) (counties must accept applications for emergency assistance every weekday even if the welfare office is closed), and Miller v. Carlson (1991) (welfare recipients in community colleges entitled to child care).
Ms. Pastore does extensive training for advocates, lawyers, and paralegals and is the principal author and editor of Western Center’s comprehensive CalWorks manual. Since 1997, she has taught Poverty Law and Administrative Law at the University of Southern California Law School as an Adjunct Professor, and is spending 2002-03 as a visiting professor at USC, on leave from Western Center.
Sanford Schram
Sanford Schram teaches social theory and policy in the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research and is co-director of the Center on Ethnicities, Communities, and Social Policy at Bryn Mawr College. He is the author of a number of books including Praxis for the Poor: Piven and Cloward and the Future of Social Science in Social Welfare 2002, After Welfare: The Culture of Postindustrial Social Policy, 2002 and Words of Welfare: The Poverty of Social Science and the Social Science of Poverty 1995, which won the Michael Harrington Award from the American Political Science Association.
Lucie White
Lucie White is Louise A. Horvitz Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Prior to moving to Harvard Law School in 1993, Professor White taught at UCLA Law School, was an attorney and clinical supervisor of the University of North Carolina Civil Legal Assistance Clinic, served as a staff attorney for Legal Services of Southern Piedmont, N.C., and as a law clerk to U.S. District Judge James McMillan. She has taught classes in Poverty Law and Research: Child Care, Women’s Work, Gender, Work, Welfare and Citizenship; Social Welfare Policy and Practice, Community Based Advocacy, Housing Discrimination and Homelessness.
Professor White is co-author of Hard Labor: Women and Work in the Post-Welfare Era, (with J. Handler, ed.) 1999 and is author of “Democracy’ in Development Practice: Essays on a Fugitive Theme,” 64 University of Tennessee Law Review 1073 (1997): “The Transformative Potential of Clinical Legal Education, ” 35 Osgoode Hall Law Journal 603 (1997); and “On the Guarding of Borders,” 33 Harvard Civil-Rights Liberties Law Review 183 (1993).