CPIL Announces Winner of the 2021 Julianne D. Fellmeth Public Interest Law Scholarship, Alex Ruf ’22 (JD Candidate)
SAN DIEGO (June 15, 2021) - The Center for Public Interest Law (CPIL) at the University of San Diego (USD) School of Law is proud to announce the recipient of the 2021 Julianne D. Fellmeth Public Interest Law Scholarship, Alex Ruf, ‘22 (JD Candidate).
The scholarship was established in honor of Julianne D’Angelo Fellmeth ’76 (BA), ’83 (JD), who retired in 2019 after serving as CPIL’s Administrative Director for 30 years. As the Julie D. Fellmeth Scholar, Ms. Ruf will dedicate 150 hours over the next year to develop an innovative “big idea” for using the law as a tool for social change. Specifically, Alex’s project will focus on researching issues related to juvenile incarceration rates in the state of California. She plans to monitor California legislation relating to the imprisonment of juveniles and the effectiveness of such laws on offense rates and barriers to re-entry into society. Alex hopes to bring awareness to the problems involved in imprisoning minors, suggest new alternatives to incarceration, and closely examine how California’s dependency on incarceration affects juveniles, specifically some of the most vulnerable individuals in our society.
Alex Ruf is a third-year law student and is an Honor Law Scholarship recipient at USD School of Law. She has interned with the Death Penalty Information Center based in Washington, D.C., and at the San Diego County Public Defender Office, Disability Rights California, and Federal Defenders of San Diego, Inc. She serves as the Chair of the Appellate Moot Court Board, Co-President of USD Law Democrats, and is the Community Service Chair of Immigration Law Society. Ms. Ruf hopes to pursue a career in public interest law, focusing on public defense and human rights.
About Center for Public Interest Law
Founded in 1980, the University of San Diego School of Law’s Center for Public Interest Law (CPIL) serves as an academic center of research and advocacy in regulatory and public interest law. CPIL focuses its efforts on the study of an extremely powerful, yet often overlooked, level of government: state regulatory agencies. Under the supervision of experienced public interest attorneys and advocates, CPIL law student interns study California agencies that regulate business, professions, and trades.
CPIL publishes the California Regulatory Law Reporter, a unique legal journal that covers the activities and decisions of over 12 major California regulatory agencies.
In addition to its academic program, CPIL has an advocacy component. Center faculty, professional staff, and interns represent the interests of the unorganized and underrepresented in California’s legislature, courts, and regulatory agencies. CPIL attempts to make the regulatory functions of California government more efficient and visible by serving as a public monitor of state regulatory activity. The Center has been particularly active in reforming the state’s professional discipline systems for attorneys and physicians, and in advocating public interest reforms to the state’s open meetings and public records statutes.
About the University of San Diego School of Law
Each year, USD educates approximately 800 Juris Doctor and graduate law students from throughout the United States and around the world. The law school is best known for its offerings in the areas of business and corporate law, constitutional law, intellectual property, international and comparative law, public interest law and taxation.
USD School of Law is one of the 84 law schools elected to the Order of the Coif, a national honor society for law school graduates. The law school’s faculty is a strong group of outstanding scholars and teachers with national and international reputations and currently ranks 36th nationally among U.S. law faculties in scholarly impact and 22nd nationally in past-year faculty downloads on the Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN). The school is accredited by the American Bar Association and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools. Founded in 1954, the law school is part of the University of San Diego, a private, independent, Roman Catholic university chartered in 1949.