Richard Frankel studies the intersection of civil rights, civil procedure and federal courts.

 

Under Professor Frankel’s direction, students in the clinic litigate appeals on behalf of indigent and other needy individuals in federal and state courts, in accordance with local student practice rules. Case areas that the Clinic has focused on include employment discrimination, immigration, prisoner civil rights, family law, and environmental protection. Representative decisions include Byrd v. Shannon, 715 F.3d 117 (3d Cir. 2013), Adkins v. VIM Recycling, Inc., 644 F.3d 483 (7th Cir. 2011), and Liggon-Redding v. Estate of Sugarman, 659 F.3d 258 (3d Cir. 2011).

 

Professor Frankel's publications include “The Arbitration Clause as Super Contract” in the Washington University Law Review, "The Disappearing Opt-Out Right in Punitive Damages Class Actions," in the Wisconsin Law Review, “Regulating Privatized Government through Section 1983,” University of Chicago Law Review, “The Failure of Analogy in Conceptualizing Private Entity Liability Under Section 1983,” in the University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review, and “Illegal Emigration: The Continuing Life of Invalid Deportation Orders,” in the SMU Law Review. Professor Frankel also is a co-author of the treatise, “Consumer Arbitration Agreements.”

 

Before joining the law school faculty, Professor Frankel served as a teaching fellow and supervising attorney for the Georgetown University Law Center’s Appellate Litigation Program. Before that, he was the Goldberg-Deitzler Fellow for Trial Lawyers for Public Justice in Washington, D.C., where he litigated class-action consumer protection and civil rights cases.

 

A graduate of Yale Law School, he was senior editor of the Yale Law Journal, articles editor of Yale Law & Policy Review and student director of the Community Legal Services Clinic. After law school, he clerked for Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and Judge William C. Canby Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.