Kathryn A. Sabbeth
Associate Professor of Law

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
Racial Capitalism in the Civil Courts, 122 COLUM. L. REV. (forthcoming 2022) (with T. Brito, J. Steinberg & L. Sudeall)
The Gender of Gideon (with J. Steinberg), 69 UCLA L. REV. (forthcoming 2022).
SSRN
Erasing the "Scarlet E" of Eviction Records, THE LAB (2021).
Document Link
Market-Based Law Development, L. & POL. ECON. PROJECT (July 21, 2021).
Document Link
Eviction Courts, 18 U. ST. THOMAS L.J. (forthcoming 2022) (invited contribution)
(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).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress
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).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress
In the Media
- Sabbeth: The Eviction Moratorium Limbo Laid Bare the System's Extreme Dysfunction (Washington Post)
- The Stigma of a Scarlet E (New York Times)
- As landlords find loopholes to evict tenants, a concurrent push for gentrification in communities of color; Sabbeth quoted (NC Policy Watch)
- Sabbeth on Talk Justice, Episode 13: Right-to-Counsel Mandates and the Eviction Crisis (Legal Services Corporation)
- Sabbeth Op-Ed: When The Home Is The Hazard: Pandemic Responses Must Address Housing Conditions (Next City)
- Sabbeth: Even with protections, thousands in NC face eviction (WRAL)
- More affordable homes were sold in Wake County in September, but they went fast; Sabbeth quoted (Charlotte Observer)
- New order addresses NC eviction confusion, Sabbeth quoted (Carolina Public Press)
- Sabbeth Interviewed on Tested Podcast about Fighting Evictions (WUNC)
- Study: Mortgages for Black, indigenous, Hispanic applicants in NC denied at higher rate, Sabbeth quoted (News and Observer)