UW Law Faculty Member Featured in The New Yorker

A University of Wyoming College of Law professor recently was highlighted by The New Yorker for her advocacy for juveniles and late adolescents in the criminal legal system.

The June 6 article opens, “In November 2020, Lauren McLane, a professor at the University of Wyoming College of Law, was forwarded a letter …” The article by Eyal Press highlights a growing movement to look to state constitutions as a way to expand and amplify rights.

McLane took on the case of the incarcerated man who wrote the letter and is crafting an appeal based on the Eighth Amendment -- the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment -- and the broader rights expressed in the Wyoming Constitution. While state constitutions cannot lessen rights afforded by the U.S. Constitution and federal law, they can extend greater rights and protections to their citizens.

McLane was led to modern state constitutionalism through her advocacy for juveniles and late adolescents in the criminal legal system in light of emerging brain science. The writer of the letter McLane received was 19 when his offenses occurred.

At UW, McLane collaborates with Karagh Brummond, of the Honors College, and Kayla Burd, of the Department of Psychology, on issues relating to social and cognitive development of emerging adults.

“Courts have already recognized that juveniles have lessened culpability than adults due to the differences in their brain and psychological development,” McLane says. “Well, the science readily establishes that late adolescents are no different than juveniles in these ways. Even if the U.S. Supreme Court has not yet made this determination, our state courts can and should lead the effort in extending the same constitutional protections to late adolescents as juveniles.”

Both Brummond and Burd are actively involved in the case featured in The New Yorker story.

Brummond is an assistant instructional professor in the Honors College and director of the UW Top-Tier Science Initiative Engagement and Outreach Program. Her public outreach includes statewide education on brain research and serving as an Alzheimer’s Association community educator. Her interest in emerging applications of neuroscience research led her to develop the honors course “Neuroscience and the Law.”

Burd is an assistant professor in the Psychology and Law Doctoral Program, which trains doctoral candidates to apply basic social, developmental and cognitive principles to issues in the legal system. Her research interests are social cognitive processes in legal decision-making -- including eyewitnesses, police officers and jurors -- and the impact of extra-legal biases on perception, memory, reasoning and decision-making.

McLane joined the College of Law faculty in July 2018 after serving as a public defender, private practitioner and innocence lawyer in Seattle. For her first five years at the College of Law, McLane served as faculty director of the Defender Aid Clinic, a student-led, faculty-supervised clinic focused on providing indigent criminal defense representation in Wyoming. During that time, she and her students appeared on behalf of clients in courts at all levels, including at the Wyoming Supreme Court.

McLane now serves in a more doctrinal role, teaching two of the College of Law’s core courses -- “Torts” to first-year students and “Evidence” to second-year students -- as well as upper-level criminal justice seminars. Her primary areas of research and scholarship are forensic science, policing and mass incarceration in the criminal legal system.