The Community & Economic Development Clinic helps make New York City more equitable and democratic through legal support for community-led organizing for racial, economic, and social justice.

The CED Clinic (CEDC) is ideal for students who are interested in using law creatively to combat structural inequalities in New York City and beyond.

Student interns learn a range of lawyering skills – collaborative problem solving, interviewing and counseling, negotiation, transactional drafting, and oral advocacy – through representation of groups like worker-owned cooperatives, community land trusts, tenant unions, and grassroots nonprofits and coalitions. Through the seminar component of the CEDC, students situate their work in the political economy of racial capitalism, with an emphasis on how to strategically deploy law in support of organizing efforts for social change.

The work of the CEDC is organized around two main practice areas:

Economic Democracy

The CEDC focuses on workplace democracy and the redistribution of wealth and power in New York City, through an abolitionist democratic lens. We work with community-led institutions in historically plundered neighborhoods on reparative social equity measures, including the transition to just marijuana policies and health justice initiatives that address the social determinants of health.

Student interns in the economic democracy practice area work collaboratively with worker cooperatives, community land trusts, credit unions, not-for-profits, and movements for racial and economic justice on a range of legal issues, including entity-type counseling, legal formation, governance, contracts, tax exemption, employment, and other organizational operational issues.

Anti-Displacement

The CEDC provides legal support to tenant organizations that are fighting for enhanced protections for renters, including good cause eviction and collective bargaining rights for tenant unions. CEDC student interns also assist tenant associations in litigation for repairs and against landlord harassment and abandonment.

Student interns in this practice area facilitate tenant meetings, lead community legal education workshops, and appear in Housing Court and/or administrative proceedings on behalf of tenants.

Faculty

  • Carmen Huertas-Noble
    Co-Director, Community & Economic Justice Clinic; Professor of Law
    Professor Huertas-Noble is the founding director of the Community & Economic Development Clinic (CEDC) at CUNY School of Law. She earned her J.D. from Fordham University Law School, where she was a Stein Scholar in Public Interest Law and Ethics and served on the staff of the Environmental Law Journal. Prior to joining the CUNY faculty, Professor Huertas-Noble was an Adjunct Professor at Fordham Law School where she supervised students in its CED Clinic. She also served as a senior staff attorney in the Community Development Project (CDP) of the Urban Justice Center (UJC). Professor Huertas-Noble has played a leading role in providing transactional legal support to worker-owned cooperatives in New York.  She worked with ROC-NY in creating COLORS, a worker-owned restaurant in Manhattan, and Green Workers Cooperatives in creating ReBuilders Source, a South Bronx worker-owned business that collects and recycles construction materials. Since then, numerous community groups and attorneys have consulted with Professor Huertas-Noble on entity formation options and democratic decision-making structures for cooperatives. Professor Huertas-Noble’s research and scholarship focuses on promoting alternative ownership models, including community land trust and worker-owned cooperatives (alternative institutions). Her scholarship emphasizes the role of the lawyer in creating meaningful, client-participatory decision-making processes as part of the lawyer’s counseling process and in support of client-centered lawyering on behalf of alternative institutions. Read Professor Huertas-Noble's full bio.
  • John Whitlow
    Associate Professor of Law
    John Whitlow is an Associate Professor at the CUNY School of Law, where he co-directs the Community and Economic Development Clinic (CEDC), supervising the CEDC’s Housing Justice and Tenant Power Practice Area. John also teaches Property Law and courses on housing justice and tenants’ rights. Prior to joining CUNY’s faculty, John was an Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law, where he co-founded and co-directed the school’s Economic Justice Clinic and taught Constitutional Law, and a Visiting Clinical Instructor in NYU Law School’s Law, Organizing, and Social Change Clinic. John has also taught at the University of Pampeu Fabra’s Public and Social Policy Center. Before entering academia, John was a Supervising Attorney at Make the Road New York, where he oversaw the organization’s housing and public benefits legal services and worked on a range of law and policy reform initiatives, and a Staff Attorney at the Urban Justice Center’s Community Development Project (now TakeRoot Justice), where he represented tenant associations, grassroots non-profits, and worker-owned cooperatives. John began his legal career as a Staff Attorney in the Eviction Prevention Unit of Bedford-Stuyvesant Community Legal Services. View John Whitlow's full bio.
  • Missy Risser
    Co-Director, Community & Economic Development Clinic
    Missy Risser is an Associate Professor of Law and Co-Director of CUNY's Community and Economic Development Clinic (CEDC), which provides legal and policy support to organizations that redress structural inequities faced by BIPOC & other marginalized communities. At the CEDC, Missy teaches and supervises students who provide transactional legal assistance to groups organizing for economic democracy, such as cooperatives, community land trusts, and other nonprofits and unincorporated associations. Previously, she was a Supervising Attorney and Staff Attorney in the Capacity-Building and Equitable Neighborhoods practices at the Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center (now TakeRoot Justice). Missy is a co-founder of 1 Worker 1 Vote, a nonprofit that supports the development of worker cooperatives, particularly unionized worker cooperatives. Missy obtained her J.D. from CUNY School of Law, where she attended as a Public Interest Graduate Fellow; her M.Ed. in Urban Education from Temple University; and her B.A. from Vassar College.
x