Professor Maryellen Fullerton: Refugee Law Scholar and Teacher Without Borders
Professor Maryellen Fullerton is one of five professors retiring after this spring semester. To share a memory of or to send greetings to Professor Fullerton, please send an email to communications@brooklaw.edu with the subject line "Professor Fullerton Retirement." She would love to hear from her former students and colleagues.
Professor Maryellen Fullerton moved frequently as a child, but she put down long-term roots when she joined the Brooklyn Law School faculty in 1980.
Born in Hawaii, Fullerton went to first grade in Alaska, and by the fourth grade had also lived in New Jersey, Alabama, Louisiana, and the Washington, D.C., area. She completed her schooling while living in Germany, North Carolina, Illinois, and Pennsylvania.
"I am more surprised than anyone that I have remained in Brooklyn for more than four decades, but Brooklyn Law School provided such a warm and supportive community that I never wanted to leave," Fullerton said. "It’s been a wonderful place to hone my teaching skills, to develop as a scholar, and to engage with the bar. I have benefited enormously from all the opportunities that Brooklyn Law School offered."
Fullerton took a somewhat winding path to becoming a law professor. After graduating from Duke University and doing graduate work in psychology at the University of Chicago, she spent six years pursuing other interests in fields as diverse as mental health and planning film festivals. Then the Watergate scandal broke, the legal and political ramifications captured her attention, and she decided to go to law school. Always interested in educational reform, she chose to study at the all-clinical Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C.
Contemplating the Law in Federal Court
Following law school, Fullerton clerked for Hon. Frank M. Johnson, Jr., U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Alabama, who gained prominence for numerous rulings on civil rights and constitutional law. It was a trial court, and the pace was fast. She then clerked for Hon. Francis L. Van Dusen on the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.
"I did a lot of research and writing as a district court clerk, but I did even more when I worked on the appellate court. Clerking on the appellate level after the trial court also gave me a different look at the institutional development of federal law. In drafting opinions and discussing cases with the judge, I thought a lot about how to craft a clear appellate opinion that the district courts could apply," Fullerton said. "So that gave me a taste of more focused research and writing. What I loved most was thinking about the law, how it affected society, and how it changed."
Becoming a professor was, she said, "a career that merged all these possibilities," and when Brooklyn Law School offered her a position in 1980, the decision was easy. She liked what she learned from the hiring committee about Brooklyn Law School’s history as an institution that provided access to the legal profession to women, people of color, immigrants, and returning veterans. Plus, New York City was her favorite destination, full of energy and possibilities. Decades later, Fullerton has not left—at least not for long.
Unlocking the Mysteries of the Law
As a teacher, Fullerton draws on her own experiences as a law student for guidance. In the first few weeks, 1L classrooms are filled with a "silent anxiety" in which many students are wondering if they are in the right place.
"When I was a law student, there were concepts that seemed mysterious and hard to comprehend. What I like the most about teaching is unlocking those mysteries for my students," Fullerton said. "I feel so fortunate to be able to help students comprehend this new language of the law and give them the feedback and confidence to know that they can do it and it’s worth the journey."
On a broader scale, she sees how the law—and the budding professionals in her classrooms—can be a positive force. "It’s really important to me to bring more people with good hearts and good intentions into the legal profession and help them develop skills that allow them to improve our legal system," Fullerton said.
Zeroing in on Immigration Law
Initially, Fullerton taught Civil Procedure and Federal Courts, but when Dean David G. Trager asked Fullerton to consider what else she might enjoy teaching, she shifted her focus to immigration law, a "backwater area" at the time.
"Immigration lawyers clearly existed, but it was not an area in which prominent law firms practiced; there wasn't much scholarship about it; and there were no casebooks and other teaching materials," Fullerton recalled. "But it was a great mix of constitutional, administrative, labor law, and legal history. It allowed me to teach all these perspectives in one course."
It was 1986, three years before the Berlin Wall fell—an interesting time in immigration history. During that period, asylum seekers from Africa and Asia were moving through Eastern Europe and into West Berlin, creating growing legal and political tensions between East and West. The U.S. had just passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which legalized many undocumented immigrants who had arrived in the country prior to 1982. Fullerton decided that it would be a "fascinating and worthy scholarly enterprise" to explore how different countries were dealing with immigration issues, specifically refugees and asylum seekers crossing borders.
She won a Fulbright Scholarship to study refugee law systems in Germany and Belgium, both civil law countries with distinct and nuanced approaches. "While living in Europe, I was also invited by lawyers and scholars associated with the Dutch and Danish Refugee Councils to visit their countries and to attend asylum hearings," Fullerton recounted. "After further research, I wrote a law review article comparing the asylum systems in all four of these countries, and the rest is history."
Comparing Legal Perspectives
Fullerton continued her comparative research and later spent successive sabbatical years doing field research on refugee law in Hungary, Spain, and Italy. The European Union’s development of a common asylum system added new scholarly dimensions. In more recent years, Fullerton has taught in Taiwan and immersed herself in Asian refugee law. "My scholarship has helped me offer students insight into the way different legal systems handle the same problem. That’s why comparative law has enriched my teaching," Fullerton said.
It has also helped to burnish Brooklyn Law School's reputation for thought-provoking, global scholarship. As one of the few American law professors who writes about developments in migration law in various countries, Fullerton, the Suzanne J. and Norman Miles Professor of Law, fields multiple scholarly invitations and opportunities worldwide.
As she reflects on the "happy choice" to devote her scholarship to the complexities that arise when people migrate from one country to another, Fullerton commented on her family history. "It wasn't conscious, but my family background probably explains, at least in part, my interest in migration issues," she said. "My grandfather immigrated as a young man, and my family moved to multiple different places when I was growing up. Before I could put it into words, I understood something about the challenges and the benefits of migration."
Fullerton’s husband and three children came to understand the challenges and benefits, too.
"Whenever I've had the opportunity to go overseas to do sabbatical research, they’ve gone along. It didn’t always make my children happy to hear 'OK, now we're going to Budapest, and you'll go to first grade there' or 'This year you'll go to fourth grade in Madrid.' But they’ve seen that different ways of doing things can be really cool," she said.
Taking on Interim Dean Role
Due to her reputation and leadership skills, the Board of Trustees tapped Fullerton to serve as interim dean in the 2018-19 school year.
"It was a very fast-paced and intense year, and it gave me a deep appreciation of how complicated a law school is to run, particularly one like Brooklyn Law School that doesn't have a central university administration," Fullerton said. "I learned so much about how different divisions of non-academic staff interacted and kept the school running behind the scenes."
Fullerton said she was fortunate to be able to assemble a supportive team of colleagues, including Professor Christina Mulligan, who threw herself into improving the functioning of the law school as Vice Dean, and Professor Edward Janger, the David M. Barse Professor of Law, who took on the newly created role of Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Scholarship, redoubling his efforts to support the entire faculty’s scholarly work.
"I knew I wanted to return to full-time teaching after one year as interim dean, so I set a few modest goals," Fullerton said. "I set out to spotlight the faculty, improve relations with the student body and the Board of Trustees, and develop deeper connections between the federal bench and Brooklyn Law School."
To shine a light on the Brooklyn Law faculty’s intellectual work, she launched a lunch series in the student lounge where junior faculty scholars spoke about their research to an audience of students and staff, and she arranged to have young faculty discuss their work at evening events held at law firms. Additionally, Fullerton attended and participated in the informal summer faculty workshops "because I think the dean should be involved with the rich intellectual life of the law school," she said.
To engage students, she started weekly "drop-in" office hours at the dean’s office, setting aside several hours each Monday.
"Any student could sign up and come talk to me about anything on their mind," Fullerton said. "I also set the goal of meeting with the leaders of many of the student organizations to hear their perspectives about what was working and what could be improved."
Fullerton made it a point to visit each member of the Board of Trustees at their office to better understand their concerns. Each month, she invited a Board member to the weekly faculty lunches to share their experiences as a law student and their perspectives as a Trustee.
In addition, she built relationships between the school and the local judiciary.
"My efforts to forge strong ties with the federal judges in Brooklyn led to a series of informal student breakfasts with judges at the federal courthouse," Fullerton said. "It also led to the school’s first EDNY Day, in which federal judges from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York (EDNY) co-teach in classrooms, speak on panel discussions, and meet and mingle with students. Law students benefit so much from meeting federal judges, and I believe these types of efforts help students who are interested in becoming law clerks or interns."
Ultimately—and happily—Fullerton returned to teaching when the year was over. "I was glad to rise to the occasion, but it was really clear to me by that time in my career that my first love was teaching," she said. "I made a vow that I wasn’t going to move up the ladder at the expense of what I really loved to do."
Transitioning BLS Into National Recognition
When Fullerton joined Brooklyn Law School, it was a time of significant institutional change. She joined a small but growing cohort of female professors.
"Although the majority of the faculty was male, there was a strong presence of women interested in the law and teaching. We brought different ideas, different personalities, and we could see we were part of a sea change," Fullerton recalled. "I want to give a personal shout-out to Professor Stacy Caplow, who joined the faculty a few years before I did [in 1976] and whose creativity exemplified some of the ways we wanted to change legal education."
The two became regular collaborators over the years. The first was when Fullerton accepted Caplow’s invitation to leave classroom teaching for a semester and become a "visiting professor" in the Safe Harbor asylum clinic.
"Taking the opportunity to supervise students representing real asylum seekers was an exciting and challenging experience that subsequently illuminated my entire approach to teaching," Fullerton said. "Stacy later talked me into co-teaching International Criminal Law with her, where my international perspective complemented her background in criminal law and procedure. Most recently, she and I co-taught Law, Literature, and the Immigrant Experience, one of the highlights of my teaching career."
The other professors who are retiring this spring started in that same era and also injected fresh ideas: Professor Joel Gora in 1978; Susan Herman, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Professor in 1980; and Professor Aaron Twerski, the Irwin, and Jill Cohen Professor of Law, in 1986.
"I learned so much from each of them, both in visiting their classrooms and in talking to them about legal ideas," Fullerton said. "Watching Professor Twerski address the Agent Orange litigation was eye-opening and observing Professor Herman lead the ACLU for 12 years while balancing her full-time role as law professor and scholar was awe-inspiring. I never tired of debating Professor Gora about campaign finance laws, and I never convinced him either."
Another colleague who she believes deserves special attention is Brooklyn Law School’s icon, Professor Joseph Crea ’47, who was a great friend until he died at 104. In the 1970s and 1980s, Crea led the "old guard" of professors into accepting the young faculty members and their ideas.
"It’s really hard to see the future, but Joe could see that legal education was changing. He embraced a new vision, and he was able to pull other faculty members along," Fullerton said. "Dean David Trager, who served from 1983 to 1993, was also a visionary. He led the school as it transitioned from local law school to regional powerhouse to national institution."
All the retiring faculty—Fullerton included—can be proud of the institution that Brooklyn Law School has become. "We were part of that change," Fullerton said.