Kathryn A. Sabbeth

Associate Professor of Law

Email
sabbeth@email.unc.edu
Work
(919) 962-2515
Office
3060 Van Hecke-Wettach Hall
Curriculum Vitae Download Photo

Areas of Expertise

  • Access to Justice
  • Civil Procedure
  • Civil Rights and Discrimination
  • Critical Legal Theory
  • Housing Law
  • Labor and Employment Law
  • Law and Society
  • Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility
  • Legal Profession
  • Poverty Law
  • Public Interest Law
  • Public Law and Legal Theory

Biography

Kathryn Sabbeth is an associate professor of law at the University of North Carolina. Her teaching and scholarship focus on public interest litigation, access to justice, and housing. Throughout her work, Sabbeth explores the potential for lawyers to promote equality and the limits of that potential. Her courses at UNC have included the Civil Legal Assistance Clinic, Civil Lawyering Process, Employment Discrimination, and Legal Ethics and Social Justice. In the Civil Legal Assistance Clinic, Sabbeth’s students represent clients in housing, employment, and other racial and economic justice cases. Before joining the UNC faculty, Sabbeth taught at Georgetown University Law Center, where she served as a teaching fellow in a civil rights clinic and supervised federal litigation regarding employment discrimination, education equity, and public access to Guantánamo information.

Sabbeth received her B.A. in Sociology from the University of Michigan, Phi Beta Kappa, and her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was an Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Fellow, an editor for the Review of Law and Social Change, and the recipient of the Christian Jarecki (‘98) Memorial Prize for outstanding work in NYU’s clinical program. During law school, she worked at organizations including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Foreclosure Prevention Project of South Brooklyn Legal Services, and the workers’ rights firm of Vladeck, Waldman, Elias and Englehard, P.C. Following graduation, Sabbeth joined the Housing Unit of South Brooklyn Legal Services. Sabbeth also clerked for the Honorable James C. Francis IV in the Southern District of New York and the Honorable Warren J. Ferguson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Education

  • LL.M., Georgetown University
  • J.D., New York University Law School
  • B.A., Sociology, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

Selected Publications

The Gender of Gideon (with J. Steinberg), 69 UCLA L. REV. (forthcoming 2022).
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Erasing the "Scarlet E" of Eviction Records, THE LAB (2021).
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Market-Based Law Development, L. & POL. ECON. PROJECT (July 21, 2021).
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(Under)Enforcement of Poor Tenants’ Rights, 27 GEO. J. ON POVERTY L. & POL'Y 97 (2019).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

Housing Defense as the New Gideon, 41 HARV. J.L. & GENDER 55 (2018).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress | Document Link

Simplicity as Justice, 2018 WIS. L. REV. 287 (2018).
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The Prioritization of Criminal Over Civil Counsel and the Discounted Danger of Private Power, 42 FLA. ST. U. L. REV. 889 (2015).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

What's Money Got to Do With It?: Public Interest Lawyering and Profit, 91 DENV. U. L. REV. 441 (2014).
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Towards an Understanding of Litigation as Expression: Lessons from Guantánamo, 44 U.C. DAVIS L. REV. 1487 (2011).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

Contracting (Out) Rights (with D. Vladeck), 36 FORDHAM URB. L.J. 803 (2009).
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