This fall, Yale Law School’s new cohort of faculty includes two members of the Liman community, Marisol Orihuela, a 2008–2009 Liman Fellow, and Monica Bell, a 2010–2011 Liman Fellow.
Bell comes to the Law School as an Associate Professor of Law, focusing on criminal justice issues and civil rights. She is particularly interested in the intersection of police regulation and race, family, housing, and social services provision. More generally, her work investigates how institutions shape the lives of the socially marginal and how those institutions might be more effectively and justly designed. Bell spent her Liman Fellowship year at the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, where she coordinated the organization’s efforts to provide structural responses to poverty, with particular focus on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and other welfare programs. After her fellowship, Bell received her master’s degree in Sociology from Harvard, where she is a PhD candidate in Sociology and Social Policy. She was named a Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School in 2014 and is the author of articles on education, housing, poverty, and policing. Her article, “Police Reform & the Dismantling of Legal Estrangement,” appears in the May 2017 issue of the
Yale Law Journal and analyzes how families with limited resources relate to the police.
Orihuela, a Clinical Associate Professor of Law, spent her Liman Fellowship year with the ACLU of Southern California, where she represented detained immigrants and developed a media and litigation campaign to address barriers to adequate medical care and access to the courts for immigrants. After her fellowship year, Orihuela continued her work at the ACLU as a staff attorney. She then became a Deputy Federal Public Defender at the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Los Angeles, where she represented clients in felony cases and in removal proceedings. She came to the Law School as a Visiting Clinical Associate Professor of Law and Presidential Visiting Professor in 2016. Her research focuses on the intersection of criminal law, immigration, and mental health.
“As Liman Fellows, Monica and Marisol have already been my colleagues, so I know first-hand what a pleasure it is to work with them and to learn from them,” said Judith Resnik, Arthur Liman Professor of Law. Bell will be teaching Law and Sociology in the spring semester, and this fall, Orihuela will continue her work with the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic and the Advanced Sentencing Clinic.
