Sarah E. Ricks, the codirector of the Pro Bono Research Project, teaches Legal Writing, Current Issues in Civil
Rights Litigation, Public Interest Research and Writing (a hybrid
clinical-writing course), and Advanced Legal Writing. A former attorney for the City of
Philadelphia, she is a member of the American Law Institute, a former
board member of the Women's Law Project, and chairs a subcommittee for
the American Bar Association. She serves as a
faculty adviser for the Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Professor Ricks visited at the University of Pennsylvania Law School for
2012-2013. At Penn, she taught Civil Rights Litigation and helped redesign
the legal writing curriculum to integrate introductions to client
interviewing, negotiation, and counseling, innovations she has brought
back to Rutgers.Professor Ricks graduated from Yale Law School, where she cofounded the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism and was named the outstanding female graduate of 1990. She graduated summa cum laude
from Barnard College, Columbia University, and was elected to Phi Beta
Kappa. After clerking for the Hon. Thomas N. O'Neill Jr., of the U.S.
District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1990-92,
she joined Pepper Hamilton in Philadelphia as a litigation associate.
From 1995 to 2001, she was an appellate and legislative attorney for the
City of Philadelphia Law Department. She litigated dozens of federal
and state appeals, including arguments before the Court of Appeals for
the Third Circuit and the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court. She
represented the City of Philadelphia at the trial and appeal of its
public school desegregation suit and in litigation challenging the
Pennsylvania system of funding public education.
In 2009, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter appointed Ricks a commissioner on the Philadelphia Commission for Human Relations, which
enforces the city's antidiscrimination laws in employment, public
accommodations, and housing. As a commissioner, she has sat on panels
hearing evidence and issuing rulings on employment and disability
discrimination claims. The commission substantially revised the
antidiscrimination law, held a year of public hearings on intergroup
conflict in the public schools, and issued a report covered by print and
television media.
In 2009, Professor Ricks was elected to the American Law Institute. Ricks was a board member of the Women's Law Project from 2005-2013. Since 2012,
she has co-chaired the Section 1983 Subcommittee of the American Bar
Association Civil Rights Committee and contributed to the ABA Civil
Rights blog. She served on the Yale Law School Executive Committee
(2012-2015).
In December 2003, in ruling on a substantive due process issue that
has split the federal circuits, the Third Circuit adopted much of the
reasoning of Ricks's brief filed on behalf of Amici Cities of Camden,
Newark, Pittsburgh, and Harrisburg, and repudiated 15 years of
district court decisions.
Professor Ricks and Jill Friedman, acting assistant dean for pro bono programs,
codirect the Pro Bono Research Project, which since 2003 has offered
free student legal research services to public interest law
practitioners.
