Richard Cohen (right) speaks at Smith's law school. (Jennifer Holladay)

The students attend the historically black Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University here, and their professor is Catherine E. Smith, the Center's 1998-2000 law fellow. The course is "Extremism and the Law," a seminar Smith created based on her tenure at the Center.

"As a professor of color and a civil rights advocate, I have a responsibility to make these issues relevant to the next generation of attorneys," says Smith. "Today's anti-hate movement needs more lawyers in the courtroom — particularly lawyers of color."

The Thurgood Marshall School of Law graduates a majority of new black attorneys in Texas each year; its student body includes not just African Americans, but also Hispanics, Africans, Asian Americans and whites.

"Professor Smith has opened my eyes to an entire facet of the law," said Tara White, an African American student enrolled in "Extremism and the Law." "If anyone ever burns a cross on my yard or my client's yard, I'll know what legal remedies are — and are not — at my disposal."

In April, Richard Cohen, the Center's vice president for programs and former legal director, lectured in Smith's class, discussing the Center's use of civil conspiracy law to bankrupt hate groups.

"The 'Extremism and the Law' course is one-of-a-kind," said Cohen. "Professor Smith's students are well versed in anti-hate advocacy and related civil rights issues."

Smith's work against domestic extremism doesn't end in her classroom, however. Her entrée into academic scholarship, for example, focused on the use of tort law against bias-motivated harassment on the Internet, or "cyberassment," as she calls it.

That article, "The Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress: An Old Arrow Targets the New Head of the Hate Hydra," was published as the lead article in the Denver University Law Review in 2002. It included the story of Center client Bonnie Jouhari, a fair housing worker whom white supremacists targeted with online harassment. (See the June 2000 SPLC Report.)

"Professor Smith's scholarship makes an important contribution to the battle against hate and extremism," said Center chief trial counsel Morris Dees. "Both academics and practitioners can benefit from reading her work."

And that work continues. Smith will teach "Extremism and the Law" again next spring, and two new articles — one focusing on race-based conspiracies under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and another debunking nefarious ways white supremacists attempt to shield themselves from legal actions — will be ready for publication in the 2003-2004 academic year.

"I am grateful for the two years I spent alongside the Center's pioneering legal team," said Smith. "Their ongoing work to dismantle white supremacy and discrimination serves as an inspiration to both my students and myself."

Smith is a 1996 graduate of the University of South Carolina School of Law and a former clerk for the late Chief Judge Henry A. Politz of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Shreveport, La. She also clerked for U.S. magistrate Judge William M. Catoe Jr. in Greenville, S.C. She earned her undergraduate degree from Wofford College.

SPLC Report
June 2003