Jim Gash Presents at Yale Law School

Professor James Allan Gash presented “Trading Almost for More: Hastening Justice in the Developing World” at Yale Law School.  Professor Gash spoke about his efforts to reform the juvenile justice system in Uganda. The program was held on November 8.

Via Yale Law School:

Jim Gash is a Professor of Law and an Associate Dean at Pepperdine University School of Law, where he teaches Torts, Evidence, Remedies, and Legal Ethics. He also directs the Global Justice Program in Pepperdine’s Nootbaar Institute for Law, Religion, and Ethics. Prior to teaching, Professor Gash clerked on the Fifth Circuit and joined Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, D.C., where he focused on appellate and commercial litigation. He is an alum of Pepperdine University School of Law, where he graduated first in his class in 1993 and was Editor-in-Chief of the Pepperdine Law Review.

In 2010, Professor Gash began traveling periodically to Uganda to help imprisoned juveniles who were waiting for their day in court. Over the next seven years, Professor Gash returned to Uganda twenty-one times to help other juvenile and adult prisoners secure access to justice. At the invitation of the Chief Justice of Uganda, Professor Gash became a Specialist Advisor to the High Court in January of 2012 and moved his family to Uganda for six months. Over the course of those six months, he designed and helped implement a juvenile justice structure that seeks to ensure Ugandan children will never again be forgotten by the judicial system. Soon thereafter, that system was implemented in adult prisons throughout Uganda.

In March of 2013, Professor Gash became the first American ever to argue a case in the Ugandan Court of Appeals. The appeal concerned the case of one of the prisoners he met on his first trip to Uganda in 2010.

In recognition of his ongoing work in Uganda, Professor Gash received the 2013 Warren Christopher Award, which is presented to California’s International Lawyer of the Year. His book “Divine Collision: An African Boy, An American Lawyer, and Their Remarkable Battle for Freedom” was published in 2016, and a documentary called “REMAND” featuring his work began screening in 2017.

Additional information may be found at yale.edu