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S3E14: When Law School Meets Med School, with Kate Doyle RLAW'22, Paul Prendergast RLAW'19, and Professor of Law Ruth Anne Robbins RLAW'91
10 Plays2 years ago
Co-Dean Kimberly Mutcherson is joined by Kate Doyle RLAW'22, Paul Prendergast RLAW'19, and Professor of Law Ruth Anne Robbins RLAW'91, who discuss their work on the New Jersey law banning the practice of non-consensual invasive pelvic exams.
The Power of Attorney is produced by Rutgers Law School. With two locations minutes from Philadelphia and New York City, Rutgers Law offers the prestige and reputation of a large, nationally known university combined with a personal, small campus experience. Learn more by visiting law.rutgers.edu.
Production Manager: Margaret McCarthy
Series Producer: Nate Nakao
Editor: Nate Nakao
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rutgerslaw/messageRecommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:10
Speaker
My name is Kim Mutterson. I am the co-dean of Rutgers Law School on the Camden campus, and this is the power of attorney.
00:00:23
Speaker
So on this particular day, I'm lucky enough to actually have three people on the podcast with me to talk about their origin stories and then talk about some really great work that they did here in the state of New Jersey. And so the three folks I'm talking to are Kate Doyle, who will be graduating from the law school this spring. So early congratulations.
00:00:44
Speaker
on that Kate. Paul Prendigast who is a 2019 graduate of the law school. Thank you so much for being here Paul. And then Ruthanne Robbins who is also a graduate of the law school. Am I allowed to say the year Ruthanne? You are.
00:00:59
Speaker
Okay. A 1991 graduate of the law school. So we're excited to have all of them here and to talk about their journeys and to talk about some of the amazing things that they've been able to do here in New Jersey.
Guest Backgrounds and Law Motivation
00:01:12
Speaker
So I want to start the podcast the way I always start the podcast because it's always fun for me to hear these stories, which is
00:01:17
Speaker
to ask folks their origin story, right? You had all of these things that you could have done with your life. You're all smart people, obviously. And you decided that law school and being a lawyer was the direction that you wanted to go in. So actually, let me start with you, Ruth Ann, and then we'll work our way, work our way backwards. So, why law?
00:01:37
Speaker
I was actually on track to get a PhD in biology. I was a biology major in college. And then sometime around my junior year, I realized I actually really wanted to work with people a bit more than with the science. And I was one credit shy of a history major and I had lawyers in my life that I really liked speaking with. So they persuaded me that if I was changing course to head to law school, so that is what I did. And what did you imagine that you were going to do with your law degree?
00:02:05
Speaker
So I really actually thought I was going to do small law and be the general practitioner in the small town. I ended up going to a clerkship and then doing big law for a while, but I really always wanted to fulfill that desire to work with people. And I ended up in academe because when I was in law school, I was a teaching assistant and
00:02:28
Speaker
I really enjoyed it. I was given the opportunity to do some teaching while I was in practice, and it was what I really wanted to do. So I'm doing what I actually really wanted to do. Awesome. Sometimes life is good, right? Yep. All right, Paul, what about you? What's your origin story? How'd you end up in law? So in undergrad, I was a political science major, and I interned at a few political offices. So I kind of knew I wanted to go into a legislative work.
00:02:54
Speaker
But then after graduating, I had a tough time finding a job. And I had taken the LSAT because my sister and brother-in-law both went through law school. And I did well on that. So I figured I'll go to law school, maybe learn a few things. And then it'll probably be easier to get a job after that. Yep. Was it? I think so. I think it definitely helped.
Versatile Career Paths of Law Graduates
00:03:15
Speaker
It's easier understanding legislation and everything now with that background. Absolutely. And Kate, what about you? Why law school?
00:03:24
Speaker
So law school was not something that I'd ever anticipated for myself in a million years. I actually went to undergrad with a plan to pursue ultimately a PhD in children's literature. And as you can imagine, there aren't a ton of
00:03:41
Speaker
career opportunities for folks with doctorates in children's literature. So shortly after graduating with my undergrad, I was like, oh my God, what can I do with this in the middle of the country's biggest recession? I became a technical writer and did that for about a year and was like, wow, this is the loneliest, most isolated job ever.
00:04:09
Speaker
and really missed interacting with humans and just kind of accidentally got into like HR and administrative kind of work. And that led me to Planned Parenthood working at an affiliate in Virginia, which is where I'm from. And while I really liked working for Planned Parenthood, I didn't feel like I was directly contributing to the mission in that role.
00:04:37
Speaker
law was something that I'd always kind of passively been interested in. But didn't realize at that point in my life that you could be a lawyer and not directly represent clients. I just felt like lawyering meant like you were in court with a client beside you. And, you know, the tides kind of shifted when I realized, oh my gosh, you can be a lawyer who works on policy. And at that point, I was like, I need to do law school. And that's how I can
00:05:07
Speaker
work on reproductive justice. So here I am.
00:05:10
Speaker
Awesome. Well, it's been lovely to have you here. So thank you for choosing law school. So one of the things that I like is that we have three graduates of our law school here, all of whom are sort well, Kate's headed in a particular direction. But we've got somebody who's in the legislature as a legislative aide. So that's Paul, who's working for Assemblymember Moriarty. We've got Professor Robbins, who's been here at the law school and teaching in our clinics and then in our legal research and writing program.
00:05:39
Speaker
for quite some time. And then we have Kate who is going to graduate into a fellowship with if, when, how doing reproductive justice work. So it's a really nice display of the diversity of ways that people can use a law degree, which is great. But obviously one of the main ways that you can use a law degree is to advocate and to create policy and to create law.
00:06:05
Speaker
And that's what we're here to talk about today.
Course on Legislation Building at Rutgers
00:06:08
Speaker
So to get into that conversation, I actually want to start with you, Ruthanne, to talk about the course that you created here at the law school to give students an opportunity to really think about how do you build legislation? What does that look like? What's the process and what's behind it? So can you give the history of the course a little bit and then we'll sort of segue into where we ended up.
00:06:29
Speaker
I will. And what's fun about it is Paul's brother-in-law was a reason why the course exists, a main reason why the course exists. So in 2013, I had a trio of students in the Advanced Domestic Violence Clinic who really wanted to, who really have been very active in the law school in a variety of ways during a time of great change in the law school.
00:06:52
Speaker
And they really wanted to finish law school doing something big and they found a project for themselves writing an amicus brief on the issue of the right to counsel in domestic violence restraining order hearings, which did not fare successfully, but they wrote a really wonderful brief and I ended up writing an article about it. And a few years later, another trio of students who wanted to do something big came to me, they read the article and they came to me and said, can we try this with the legislature?
00:07:20
Speaker
And so we decided we would approach the legislature. And this went on for a number of years in a directed practicum kind of a way until you in your role at that time of academic dean told me no more of this, you will create a full-fledged course. And Paul, it was your brother-in-law who's on the original amicus brief. And so I created the full-fledged course, which Paul was an original member of. And the purpose of the course is to look at how the New Jersey legislature works
00:07:49
Speaker
and to look at how we can intersect with it as a law school with our research and writing expertise and take on certain issues and act as kind of an information and also advisory on certain issues that the legislature can't necessarily research but we at the law school have law students who can do all kinds of wonderful work and that's where we are and that's why this project existed.
00:08:13
Speaker
So let me ask you two follow-up questions.
Student Participation in Legislative Processes
00:08:15
Speaker
So one, for folks who may be sort of new to legal talk, tell them what an amicus brief is. Oh, thank you. And then the second thing that I would love to talk to you about a little bit more is the way in which the course is sort of student-directed, which I think actually makes it even more powerful. So one, amicus brief, and then two, basically how you choose what you all are going to work on in the course.
00:08:41
Speaker
So an amicus brief is different than when the people who are actually litigating right briefs. So an amicus brief is when an organization steps in and says we have an interest in this topic and we can provide research and policy-based arguments that you might not have thought about. And in the particular case, we ended up being amicus because there was somebody else
00:09:04
Speaker
doing the representation of the actual party at interest. And it's pretty novel for law students, I think, at least in our law school, to do amicus briefs. So it was pretty exciting for them.
00:09:15
Speaker
And so, as for the course, I've tried to select issues that I would call law student sized. So these are issues that no other major organization is taking up, not because they're not interested, but because they've got bigger fish to fry, I mean, or very large issues. And so I started out the course looking for issues that I thought law students could really be a benefit to the legislature with their research skills.
00:09:39
Speaker
and with their writing skills. And it's a whole different set of writing skills that the students are learning in this class, right? So in legal research and writing their first year, they're really working on litigation based, you know, how you go to court, how you represent a client. Here they're really working on how to write documents for legislators who may or may not have gone to law school. And so it's gotta be much shorter. It's gotta be much tighter. It's gotta have like great visuals and it's gotta get the point across in I think, you know, one page front and back.
00:10:08
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of the things, and this is sort of the fault of television and movies in some ways, right? That the way that people think about lawyers can
Legislative Efforts Against Non-Consensual Exams
00:10:19
Speaker
have a lot of blinders, right? There's like a particular way, there's one thing basically that lawyers do, which is like yell at each other in conference rooms and then yell at judges, right? And then tell their clients what to do or do exactly what their clients tell them to do no matter how awful it might be.
00:10:33
Speaker
And so one of the things that I think is really powerful about this course is that it is a reminder that the skills that you need as a lawyer are really broad, right? And that it's not just the sort of very narrow field, but if we're doing our job right, you're gonna graduate with a whole set of skills that hopefully are gonna be useful to you out in the world.
00:10:55
Speaker
Absolutely, and some of the projects other students have worked on included like an informational trifold on certain other laws that we want college students to know about, but aren't necessarily being broadcasted. That's what another team in Paul's year worked on, but I mean, so Paul, he can talk about it obviously, but I was making them use infographic software and like really thinking visually, which is not what a lot of the other law school classes really emphasized. Mm-hmm, absolutely.
00:11:24
Speaker
So let me do this. Actually, let me let me jump to Paul for a second and just talk a little bit about your experience in law school when you were in the course, Paul. And then I'll bring you back in to talk about the work that you've done now in the legislature. So my guess is that this this class felt really different from other classes that you took in the law school. And I'm curious about what was appealing to you about the idea of doing this kind of work.
00:11:49
Speaker
Sure. My whole time in law school, I kind of expected to go back towards legislation. So this is kind of a nice change of pace for me to focus specifically on policy drafting and legislative analysis. And so my class, we were kind of at first with this project. So we kind of spent time surveying the landscape nationally and how different states were tackling it. And then we kind of see what we thought was best and try to develop a recommendation.
00:12:19
Speaker
We had some infographics we developed showing how things have developed throughout the country and how many states have adopted policies to address the issue. And around the time I graduated, we were kind of preparing to bring that to different legislators and see if we can get something introduced.
00:12:35
Speaker
So let me jump to Kate. So Kate, can you talk a little bit about, help lay a foundation for the particular topic that then became a bill that then became an actual piece of legislation here in New Jersey, right? So what was the practice that we were concerned with that led to all of this work?
00:12:59
Speaker
So I think some folks may have a bit of knowledge about this because what the bill covered, or covers, I'm sorry, because this has become the law of the land in New Jersey, it's been covered in a variety of news outlets. So if you've heard in TikTok or seeing a news story about the practice of non-consensual invasive body exams,
00:13:27
Speaker
pelvic exams being performed on folks who are under anesthesia for a surgery. That's what this bill prohibits. And I first learned about this practice when I was working at a Planned Parenthood affiliate. I remember back in 2016, roughly, I was just like scrolling through Facebook and I saw a friend post an article from Slate on, you know, my timeline. And I was like, what?
00:13:53
Speaker
you know, just the title of the article caught my attention, I clicked on it, I read it, and my mind was blown, like, oh my gosh, how is this, how is this a thing? And I
Medical Students' Challenges in Advocacy
00:14:01
Speaker
remember asking one of the abortion providers at work the next day, like, oh my gosh, have you ever heard of this? Wow. And this is some, this abortion provider in particular, had gone to medical school in North Carolina. And she was like, you know, this is, this is a thing, this is common practice.
00:14:18
Speaker
And I remember going home that night and looking up the laws in Virginia, I was like, well, thank goodness, this does not happen here in Virginia. And this has been prohibited here since, I think, 2012. And fast forward to when I was taking this class with Professor Robbins. And on the first day of class, Professor Robbins laid out the bills that students my semester were able to pick and choose from.
00:14:47
Speaker
And New Jersey had been considering banning this practice of medical training. So medical students learning how to perform invasive body exams, specifically pelvic exams, prostate exams, and breast exams on unconscious patients without their informed consent banning that practice and had more or less been sitting on legislators desks for
00:15:14
Speaker
I don't know, Paul could tell you specifically, but for a very long time and it just not going up for a vote. And so that was kind of the substance of the bill.
00:15:22
Speaker
So let me take a step back a little bit because I think, you know, when people hear about this practice, there's a group of people who immediately, their response is, this is appalling, right? And why is this happening? And how has it been happening? And why hasn't anybody stopped it yet? But then I can imagine, right? The reason why it continued is because there has to be a group of people who were like,
00:15:46
Speaker
This is what you do in a teaching hospital, right? You teach people how to do particular things. And, you know, that's all this is. It's just another exam and it doesn't hurt people. And most people probably don't even know that it happened to them. Right. So, you know, why should we be worried about it if the outcome is ultimately that we get doctors who are better
00:16:09
Speaker
at performing these particular kinds of exams. And I'll leave that to anybody who wants to be responsive to it, but I do think that it's useful to sort of hear what the other side of it is, right? To try to understand why this was a practice that went on for so long and still goes on in a number of jurisdictions. So Ruth Ann, do you want to start?
00:16:27
Speaker
Sure. So the reactions that when I was floating this past people saying, do you know about this issue? What do you think about this issue was twofold. First was that's terrible. These people, these doctors should go to jail. And I would explain, well, it's not really handled criminally. It's handled through medical ethics.
00:16:45
Speaker
and professional responsibility. And then they would say, well, how do you even know it's happening? I don't believe it's happening. Can you prove that it's happening? Are there empirical studies? And that was really where we got stuck because there's really only one empirical study that's out there. It's from the Philadelphia area, but it's, it's pretty old. I mean, it's, it's 15 to 20 years old. I think this, you know, I think Kate and Paul can probably give you the exact year, but there was just the shock of how do we know what's happening and why should we pass a law if we're not convinced it's happening? And so,
00:17:15
Speaker
You know, that became part of the issue of how can we possibly prove it? And in Paul's year, I remember one of the team members, I said, well, I've got friends in medical school. I'm going to message them right now and got back. Oh, yeah, no, it's happening. No, I will not come out and say that publicly. And that was what we were facing. And what was the what was the reluctance to to come out and say it publicly? So these students who are being required to perform these exams for the purposes of their medical
00:17:44
Speaker
school of learning, think about the people who are requiring them to perform these exams. These are the residents and the doctors who are ultimately in control of these medical students' futures, right? So the implications of saying, no, I'm not going to perform this, or otherwise reporting, turning in the folks who are requiring you to perform these exams.
00:18:13
Speaker
the fear of retaliation, what's going to happen to my future as a, you know, aspiring doctor. That is causing a lot of folks to, you know, just stay silent on the matter. When I first inherited this project, I also reached out to a handful of folks that I know in medical school and I either did not receive responses or in one case,
00:18:41
Speaker
I did get someone who said, yeah, I'll talk to you about this. And then the next day just kind of fell off the radar and I kept poking and said like, hey, you know, when can we schedule a phone call? When can we schedule a phone call? And ultimately got back to me and said, you know what, nevermind. So I feel like this is, and folks have said, ultimately I'm uncomfortable talking about this because I fear for my future if I turn in the doctors and residents who are ordering me to learn this way.
00:19:11
Speaker
And it's interesting because there are multiple levels of power differential at play here, right? So one is between these medical students and the doctors and the residents, but one is also very much between the healthcare providers and the patients, right? And so you have to kind of figure out how do you break down that power differential so that you can actually get to action.
From Concern to Bill: Legislative Journey
00:19:35
Speaker
So I wonder if I can jump to you, Paul, because obviously you're in the legislature
00:19:40
Speaker
And this bill had been floating around, and here's this issue that you had already started working on in law school. So can you walk a little bit through, and this is also maybe a bit of a civics lesson, right? Which students don't get enough of anymore in elementary school and high school. So can you sort of walk through what that process looks like, right? When a legislator becomes interested in a particular topic, how do you go from here's this thing I heard about to here's a bill.
00:20:06
Speaker
I actually wasn't in Seligman Moriarty's office when the bill was introduced. That was my predecessor, Joe Miller, who's a current 2L at Rutgers Law School. So a constituent reached out about the issue and was like, this is very concerning, we should do something to address this. And so then Joe kind of spoke with her and fleshed out the issue.
00:20:23
Speaker
He would reach out to the Office of Legislative Services, which is a nonpartisan legislative research staff for the state of New Jersey, and they would help draft the bill with kind of Joe's input. Then, so someone more already would introduce the bill. Senator Madden, who were in the same legislative district, the fourth legislative district. So I'm not sure if Joe spoke to his aid or
00:20:44
Speaker
caught their attention or what exactly happened but Senator Madden introduced it in the Senate and so then it has to go through committee in each chamber. Unfortunately in the assembly it kind of got bogged down because there were doubts that this was happening in New Jersey. So then Sarah Valentine another former Rutgers grad was with Senator Madden's staff and they were able to get it moving through Senate committee and eventually kind of late in the game we were able to get it through assembly committee and to the floor for a full vote.
00:21:10
Speaker
And so what needed to happen in order to get, cause you know, the trick with legislation always, right? Is that you have to line up your votes, right? And so it sounds like one of the pieces of lining up the votes was, is it okay for me to call them whistleblowers, the medical students, right? Was, yeah, these medical students who are basically whistleblowers and who are willing to say, you know, this is a practice that is still going on. And so was that, was that what sort of, you know, broke the log jam so that the bill could actually move forward?
00:21:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think I think I definitely think so. These medical students reached out to our office one day. It was like four o'clock on a Friday afternoon.
00:21:45
Speaker
and I saw an unusual area code. And they reached out and they said that they've been asked to perform these exams without patient consent and their supervisors tell them it's okay because the patient consented to them being in the room, but it seems like an expansive view of consent in my opinion. And so we were able to tell the people who had reservations about the bill that like, hey, these students have contacted us, like it's happening. They have concerns about their careers and their prospects if they come forward, but they are concerned and they need our help.
00:22:11
Speaker
Was there any pushback from people in medical school, right? From the doctors who were like, this is how we train and it's necessary for us to be able to train this way?
00:22:23
Speaker
Yeah. So the one medical student, he kind of started educating his classmates about the need for consent. And so he would tell them like, Hey, make sure you get consent from the patient before you do these kinds of procedures. It seems kind of tricky to me though, because they had to anticipate they're going to be asked to do it and get consent beforehand. But he would tell his classmates and they all kind of started getting consent from the patients. But then there were a few doctors who said that you don't need to do that. They consented to you being there.
00:22:46
Speaker
just kind of go ahead and do what you're asked to do. But yeah, they all kind of stuck to their ground and decided that consent was absolutely
Testimony on Invasive Exam Bill
00:22:54
Speaker
necessary. And they're always helpful to our office whenever we have any questions about the process because we're law students, not medical students. So that's kind of a area of ignorance for us, but yeah, they're definitely helpful. That's good. I'm glad to hear that. And I'm glad that there were medical students who were sort of brave enough to speak up and then also medical students who were willing to,
00:23:14
Speaker
engage in a consent process with patients before they perform any of these kinds of exams. So it went through the assembly, got the votes that you needed there. And then what about through the Senate? Did it move smoothly through the Senate as well?
00:23:31
Speaker
Yeah, I moved past both chambers in a full vote on the same day, kind of like the last session of the term. Yeah, but I believe it was unanimous in both chambers is just kind of getting through the holdups and getting it a vote. Yeah. And then there was also they also heard testimony in the legislature. Right. Kate, do you want to talk about the testimony and why it was useful to the legislature to hear from folks?
00:23:57
Speaker
Yeah, and Professor Robbins was a real joy to work with. She helped me tremendously in preparing my testimony, so thank you both times. So the nature of my testimony changed. So initially, back before we kind of hit the log jam with the assembly, I was still more or less involved in the
00:24:21
Speaker
in the class when I testified before the Senate. And the nature of that in-person testimony was really just provide some additional education, some context for why, regardless of whether there was hard data about this happening in New Jersey,
00:24:38
Speaker
we should still consider this a likely issue here. And I learned quite a bit, you know, how ill prepared I was not having the bill in front of me. That was a rookie mistake. I will not do that again. And I got into a little bit of back and forth with one of the legislators and
00:25:01
Speaker
And moving forward, I will never do that again. And I will have a way to gracefully see myself out of any sort of like tennis match, I guess. But I do think that it was valuable in that we were able to provide some education. And the data that we were able to provide, we gathered that throughout the semester.
00:25:25
Speaker
And then the nature of the assembly testimony was some storytelling and that was really personal. And it wasn't something that I had ever really shared with anyone in my life, much less a public hearing.
00:25:44
Speaker
Frankly, because I don't think that it's anyone's business, but I felt empowered to do it. One, because I had just finished reading Chanel Miller's Know My Name, which is an excellent book for anyone who hasn't read it, about turning your sexual assault into, I don't want to say force for good, because that's not what it is, but how you can use that to bring good into the world.
00:26:13
Speaker
And also, you know, I was thinking about abortion storytellers and what they use their stories for. And I, you know, brought that into my assembly testimony. So, yeah. Can I add something to that? So first,
00:26:35
Speaker
Kate did wonderful testimony both times. So she's selling herself short if she says that she made rookie mistakes. And so I'm sorry, Kate, but I'm going to have to brag on you a little bit. So in her Senate testimony, she sat there and argued that people are avoiding medical treatments because this whole unauthorized pelvic exam topic is out there.
00:26:53
Speaker
in social media and Kate did a count of how many TikTok videos there are and how many stories there are and how many views there are of these stories and was able to say that regardless of whether we can prove it's actually happening in New Jersey, people think it's happening in New Jersey and that's enough to cause people to
00:27:09
Speaker
choose to avoid what might be necessary healthcare because they are afraid of being re-traumatized if they are a victim of sexual assault. And that I thought was really important to bring to the Senate. And I think the Senate thought that too. I mean, the assembly testimony that she gave, and just so everybody knows, Paul contacted us, I think, December 30th to say this is going on January 3rd or January 4th. And so we were working over New Year's,
00:27:34
Speaker
for Kate's testimony, and it was very powerful. And what was fun, was not fun probably for Kate, but she was asked to engage in some back and forth, which is what we train our law students to do when we're asking them to engage in what's called oral arguments in the first year. And so, I mean, Kate just sort of like snapped right to, and was able to say, yeah, here's, I can answer your questions, and was really very powerful with her work.
00:27:59
Speaker
One of the things that I that I often say that I know that you also often say with Ann is that the core part of what we do as lawyers is one, we work with words.
Storytelling as a Legal Skill
00:28:14
Speaker
And two, we tell stories. Whatever we're doing, ultimately we're trying to put together a narrative and we're trying to put together a story. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how this course and how the experiences that students get to have in this course is sort of another level.
00:28:32
Speaker
of thinking about that particular lawyering skill, which again is one of those things that I think that people don't always think about when they're like, you know, this is what lawyers do, and yet it's such a core part of what you do if you're good at being a lawyer.
00:28:45
Speaker
So I've written on this topic of storytelling and so I'm teaching it to my students and I make sure that the students, when they are working on bills that they understand fundamentally and can connect to it personally. So, for example, if they're doing work on domestic violence legislation, so you know we're working in domestic violence sexual assault area and I would call
00:29:06
Speaker
this particular thing in one of the sexual assault avenues. They've got to go down to the courthouse and experience what it looks like to see a restraining order hearing if they haven't already seen it and to understand like what it takes to prepare one of these, what it takes to go through one of these. And then they get to tell their stories as law students of, you know, if I'm really nervous to go to a doctor because maybe they're gonna perform an invasive medical exam and I feel like I have the power of being a lawyer,
00:29:33
Speaker
what does an average person without legal training feel like? And it's the same for work in the domestic violence issues where the law students are saying, I kind of understand the area of law, but to go through one of these hearings without any knowledge of law is terrifying, which is one of the other projects is right to counsel. So we're really working through what is a story of what image do you wanna leave your audience with, what do you wanna describe? And so Kate in her testimony
00:30:01
Speaker
each time was really able to say like, I want you to have a vision of people clicking on these TikToks and seeing the issue and knowing that it's not prohibited in your state. Is that what you want legislators? Or I'm a person, I hope you don't mind me saying this Kate, who declined medical treatment because I was afraid of this issue happening. Is that what you want? Is women declining medical care? Because you're looking at one.
00:30:24
Speaker
Thank you for that. And that sort of brings me back to another another piece of this that I want to talk about. I'm going to jump back to you, Kate, because both of us obviously are deeply interested in reproductive justice. That's the work that you and I both do. And I feel like there is this really important and interesting historical link to be drawn here.
00:30:45
Speaker
If you think about even sort of the history of gynecology in this country, the sort of father of gynecology, Dr. Sims, is somebody who was doing unconsented experimentation on enslaved women. And so there's this sort of through line, which is actually a really great podcast if you've never listened to it, through line on NPR.
00:31:04
Speaker
But there's this really interesting and maybe dangerous through line of where we started and kind of where we are. And I wonder if you feel like a bill like this is another stack towards getting us further away from that sort of
00:31:26
Speaker
sense of women's bodies as being kind of available, right? Even without our consent in order to, you know, further medicine or further science, which is sort of like a broad statement to make. But I'm curious sort of how you feel having now worked through this process and come to the end of it. You know, are we in a better place? And are there other other things that we should be thinking about in the same context that could make medicine safer for lots of us?
00:31:52
Speaker
I love that question. Um, thank you. So when my colleagues and I were kind of thinking about kind of a theory of the case for this bill and how we were going to pitch our proposed amendments to legislators and how we wanted to kind of put a fire under people like please, you know,
00:32:13
Speaker
get this up for a vote like why is it just sitting on your desk. We had this, you know, we called it everything but the kitchen sink draft running or just throwing all of our different theories of the case. You know, and for folks who are
00:32:28
Speaker
you know, not really familiar with what I mean when I say theory of the case, it's sort of the thread that runs between, runs throughout all of the different arguments that you might, you know, throw into your overarching like legal arguments. So when you're arguing a case, you know, what runs the common element that runs through them.
00:32:51
Speaker
And one of the theories that we originally ran with, we're thinking about was, you know, this is part of the long running history of exploiting women's bodies, particularly poor women's bodies and women of color bodies, because this is a teaching practice that's most likely to happen at teaching hospitals. And we were writing about Marion Sims. And so we had that in our everything but the kitchen sink draft.
00:33:21
Speaker
And then we had like the theory that we ultimately ended up landing on like you're scaring folks from getting necessary medical care. We had a couple of other theories going on. And ultimately, what we decided on was, you know, we want
00:33:37
Speaker
And we need to go with the theory that's going to be most palatable to legislators. You know, we don't want to feel like we're bashing doctors, because that's, that's not something that anyone's ever gonna fight at. We're telling them like your doctors are bad. We need to punish them.
00:33:56
Speaker
in my soul and I think other people's hearts and souls, we can see that connection. And we feel like we did do something to disrupt that chain of history here. And if that practice of not requiring folks to ask for medical consent, if that wasn't required, if we didn't start here, how far was that permission or lack thereof?
00:34:23
Speaker
How far was that going to extend? You know, if you don't require it with your patients, do we allow it to not extend to like your dates or to like people in general? And so I do think, you know, starting with just like the most basic ask your patients for permission.
00:34:44
Speaker
we can begin to disrupt patterns of toxic masculinity. And starting at a teaching hospital, we can disrupt the historic patterns of exploiting poor people's bodies, people of color's bodies. So more legislation in this vein, it's a no-brainer for me. Yeah, it's a long answer.
00:35:10
Speaker
No, it was a great answer. Yes, great answer.
New Jersey's Law on Invasive Exams
00:35:15
Speaker
So one thing that I realized is I don't think we've actually said what the law says. So it might be useful for us to be explicit about what the law says now here in New Jersey. And then the second thing that I want to talk about, I'm going to put this on the table so you can be thinking about it, Paul. I don't know if you're going to answer what the law says question.
00:35:36
Speaker
There's there's so much legislative noise, right? And what I mean by that is there are so many things that people want the legislature to be responding to. And there are so many topics that they could be covering. And so it might be I think it'd be interesting to sort of hear from your experience, like what makes something rise to the top?
00:35:57
Speaker
What gets something to get the attention that it ultimately ends up actually becoming a bill and then ultimately becoming a law. But before we get to that, can somebody please tell us what this new law in New Jersey actually says, what it requires, and what the repercussions are if somebody doesn't get the permission that they're now required to get?
00:36:18
Speaker
Okay, so in order to perform one of these exams now, a position is required to get an informed written consent. And the bill, or the law now, outlines specific requirements on the consent form that Kate and her classmates helped bring to our attention. And there is an exception for if it's medically necessary. If someone urgently needs care, you don't want to have them stop and try and get a consent form. That was a bit of a concern for some people when we were going through the committee process. Some people reached out about amending that.
00:36:47
Speaker
they had concerns that something would come up and they wouldn't be able to get the care that they need. But yeah, we thought the bill was fine as it was written. And so there's also what happens if you don't get the proper permission. So then it goes through the ethics requirements. And there's also another amendment from Kate and her classmates that if there is a medically necessary exam, then they have to inform the patient afterwards, which is kind of an oversight in our end, not having that in there. Assemblyman Moriarty has a
00:37:15
Speaker
consumer affairs background. So he's kind of a consumer advocate. So for him, I think it's the kind of expertise gap, making sure that consumers are able to make decisions over their own care and they're included as equal numbers in the decision making process. So I think making sure they have all the information they can is definitely necessary.
00:37:32
Speaker
And then what about the second question that I was asking, right? So how do we get to a place where there's an issue that's been sort of floating around or that somebody's interested in? Because I can imagine that there are lots of people who have thoughts about what new laws there should be. And so how do you sift through that noise and then ultimately get to a place where we're actually making law?
00:37:52
Speaker
So I can only speak with Assemblyman Moriarty. I know he's got that consumer affairs background. So anything where there's kind of a power imbalance or people are kind of being mistreated, that always kind of grabs his attention. So if I hear from anybody who reaches out to our office or a lot of times we'll see articles in the news about things that just don't sit right. And so we'll share them back and forth and see if there's anything we can do to kind of pursue legislation.
00:38:16
Speaker
I like I like two things about that. I like the idea of sort of like proactively looking at what's going on in the world. Right. And saying, here's this, you know, practice and it's problematic or and we can fix it. There's a way for us to fix it. And I also like and I think a lot of us know this sort of intuitively, but don't necessarily say it explicitly, you know, but people in the legislature have their pet issues and their their pet projects. Right. And so they're they're always going to be interested in
00:38:46
Speaker
when you can bring something like that to the table. There are many issues that are kind of outside our specialty areas and you try to defer to people who know those areas better. So like normally we don't really do medical bills, but this was one where the consent requirement, it just felt kind of too urgent to leave to other people who haven't been addressing it.
00:39:04
Speaker
So I want to start wrapping
Lessons from Legislative Advocacy
00:39:07
Speaker
up. And I think that the way that I want to wrap up is by asking each of you to share one or two lessons from this particular experience, whether it's getting this bill passed or testifying from the legislature or working with medical providers, all those things. What is a lesson or two lessons?
00:39:30
Speaker
that you would take from this experience that you think is going to be something that's useful to you as you move forward in in well for Kate and Paul as you move forward in your career out in the world as lawyers and then for for Ruthanne as you think about this course and continuing to teach it you know are there things that you're going to draw from this particular experience which I think
00:39:49
Speaker
has been wildly successful, I would say, right? It's pretty great. But I always wanna sort of know, you know, what are you taking forward from this that's gonna help you in your career or in the next big issue that you wanna take on? And whoever wants to start should start. Yeah, I guess I can start.
00:40:07
Speaker
So for me, there are many groups who reached out with kind of suggested changes. And for me, I kind of got settled on how our language was at the one point. So I was kind of resistant to those changes. And maybe I should have been more understanding that people, hey, they're not necessarily trying to undermine your bill, but at the same time, kind of keeping the perspective of people who they had previously met with. So we met with the New Jersey Coalition Against Sexual Assault, representing the sexual assault survivors who definitely have concerns with these kind of practices.
00:40:34
Speaker
And they had us get rid of language that would have allowed for patient representatives because they believe that if you can't provide consent, then someone should be able to consent on your behalf, which you never know somebody else's experience. Maybe they're a survivor and just didn't tell their representative. And that can be traumatic for them. So then other groups reached out trying to get that language back in. And we kind of just dug in where I didn't want to cave on that. But at the end of the day, maybe they're just trying to help the bill. So it's something for me to learn and grow from. Thank you.
00:41:02
Speaker
Yeah, I think I have two big takeaways from this type of work and my work in Professor Robbins' class.
00:41:16
Speaker
And I think a lot of folks go into law school with this idea of constitutional litigation and like I want to work on these big sexy like comma cases. And that was, you know, one of the things that I kind of thought about.
00:41:33
Speaker
you know, going into law school, like, oh, yeah, high and bad, like, big, sexy, like, Roe v. Wade kind of stuff. And to, you know, some degree that I still do think about that. But, you know, if you're listening to this and you're kind of in that boat, I would just encourage folks to think about what do those big, sexy con law
00:41:55
Speaker
cases generally implicate like frequently. They're most often, you know, debating the merits of these sort of statutes, not always, but very frequently. So if you want to not reach those, you know,
00:42:14
Speaker
con law cases that can sometimes have these like really debilitating effects on people's lives. A good way to approach that is create good, effective legislation, start locally. And, you know, this sort of lawyering
00:42:34
Speaker
It's, it's effective they go that route. So that's my first takeaway. And also, you know, this is a kind of an access to justice issue for me like yes lawyers, the training that we get in law school, it's.
00:42:47
Speaker
It's great, like we're trained to do this sort of like statutory parsing and like I knew what sort of stuff I wanted to read and look for specifically when I was suggesting amendments to Paul. Sorry, Paul, like I thought the language in your bill was dope, but you know, this is the sort of stuff that we can also teach to folks in the community and so that they can do advocating for themselves and that's a great
00:43:15
Speaker
tool for community lawyering and movement lawyering. And if you're interested in that sort of work, this is a good tool for that too. Awesome, thank you. Ruthanne? So what I take away from it is the importance of really teaching in law school more than the litigation and transactional routes and that there really needs to be more work done with
00:43:38
Speaker
teaching law students about legislation and, of course, regulation, you know, the administrative side of it, all of the agencies. I don't think we do enough of it. And I also I'm walking away with I mean, I'm learning on the job, too. I didn't know that much until students started pushing me towards doing it. And so every time I meet with the legislator, I learn something new. And the New Jersey legislature is a part time legislature. These people have jobs besides being legislators. I have so much respect for how much work and devotion they put into what the state calls a part time job.
00:44:08
Speaker
and how open they are to hearing from law students and how willing they are to teach. So it's a lot of fun, but I think a big huge takeaway is we're really lucky in New Jersey that we have that kind of open legislature and how important it is to be electing people into the legislature who will keep it that way, keep it open to having the citizenry approach it and having law students approach and being willing to teach.
00:44:32
Speaker
I love that. And being willing to, I mean, Paul was sort of making this point about people bringing in amendments, being willing to hear these other voices and these community voices and people who have different types of expertise, and also respecting the idea that expertise is not just sort of education-based knowledge, right? That expertise can be, this is my life experience, these are the people I've worked with, that can be really, really valuable as well.
00:45:00
Speaker
Thank you all. This was just, you know, I, you know, I've said this to Ruth Ann and Kate personally, I probably haven't said this to you out loud, Paul, but this, you know, this is the kind of work that just makes me so thrilled to be at a law school and in particular to be at a state law school, because I feel like one of the, one of the reasons why we do have a special relationship with the legislature, besides the fact that lots of our grads end up there in various ways,
Conclusion and Rutgers Law Impact
00:45:26
Speaker
is that we're, you know, the State University of New Jersey, right? And we care really deeply about this state and about, you know, the people who are making decisions about the lives of those of us who live in this state. So it's really exciting to have this wonderful example of how you can go basically from zero to 100.
00:45:46
Speaker
and have a really powerful impact on literally thousands and thousands of people's lives. So I'm really proud of you, and I hope that you're all really, really proud of yourselves, because this is the kind of work that I think makes some of the less fun days as a dean are made better from stories like this. So thank you all, one, for doing the work, and two, for being willing to come on the podcast to talk about it. I really appreciate it. Thank you for inviting me. Of course, of course. Thanks for having us.
00:46:16
Speaker
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