CO-DIRECTOR

As of July 1, 2024, Nicole B. Godfrey is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law where she teaches in the Civil Rights Clinic (CRC). Professor Godfrey previously taught in the CRC as a clinical teaching fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor from 2015-2022, and she directed the Housing Justice Clinic at Michigan State University College of Law from 2022-2024. In the CRC, Nicole supervises law students representing clients on a range of civil rights matters from police brutality to compassionate release motions and clemency petitions. The bulk of the CRC’s work, however, is focused on representing incarcerated people challenging their conditions of confinement in state and federal prison systems; such cases include challenges to indefinite solitary confinement, lack of adequate medical and mental health care, policies inhibiting the free exercise of religion, and policies and practices leading to disability discrimination. Professor Godfrey’s research focuses on the law of incarceration, with particular attention to the Eighth Amendment, First Amendment, Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and claims brought against the Federal Bureau of Prisons and its employees. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in the New York University Law Review, Nevada Law Journal, Oregon Law Review, Nebraska Law Review, and Seattle University law Review, among others, and her scholarship is informed by her teaching and practice experience. Professor Godfrey was named an American Bar Foundation Fellow in 2023, and she has been awarded a Hughes Research and Development Fund Pilot Project grant from the University of Denver for the 2024-25 academic year, which she will use to study whether current systems of accountability are providing a sufficient check on the power wielded by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Prior to joining academia, Professor Godfrey represented clients in civil rights actions in federal court while working for small civil rights firms and non-profits; her work focused primarily on cases brought by incarcerated people challenging their conditions of confinement. She has represented people in federal custody since 2009. She holds a B.A. from Boston University and an M.A., L.LM., and J.D. from the University of Denver.

CO-DIRECTOR

Danielle C. Jefferis is an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska College of Law. Professor Jefferis’s research focuses on theories of punishment and the law and policy governing prison and detention. She takes both critical and comparative approaches to her work, looking at carceral systems, practices, and theories around the world. Professor Jefferis has presented her research at Harvard Law School, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Denver College of Law, Loyola University School of Law, Louisiana State University Law, the Australian National University, London University, Amsterdam Law School, the University of Lisbon, and Leiden University, among others. She has provided expert commentary on prison and detention issues for national and international media outlets, including VICE, Mother Jones, and NowThis, and has been solicited as an amicus curiae for cases involving prison law and prisoners’ rights in courts around the country. She is the recipient of the 2024 Rev. Dr. Michael W. Combs Memorial Fund for Scholars of Equality and Justice Award and a 2023-24 UNL Layman Award. Professor Jefferis’s research and scholarship are informed by her unique teaching and practice experience, which lie at the intersection of constitutional law and prisoners’ rights, immigration law, and federal courts. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in the North Carolina Law Review, Fordham Law Review, Michigan Journal of Race and Law, Indiana Law Journal, and Cornell Law Review Online, among others. She has extensive civil rights litigation experience and has represented plaintiffs in federal courts across the country, including in the United States Supreme Court. She is also a member of the expert panel for the Office of Inspector of Prisons in Ireland, which is tasked with carrying out statutory oversight duties in prisons across the Republic of Ireland. Before entering academia, she was the Nadine Strossen Fellow with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project in New York and an associate attorney with a boutique civil rights firm in Colorado. Professor Jefferis also clerked for the now-retired Honorable Gale T. Miller of the Colorado Court of Appeals. She holds a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and a B.A. from New York University.

CO-DIRECTOR

Laura Rovner is Professor of Law and Director of the Civil Rights Clinic at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, in Denver, Colorado. Through the clinic, she supervises law students representing incarcerated clients in constitutional litigation about prison conditions, such as indefinite solitary confinement, denial of outdoor exercise, lack of adequate medical and mental health care, and the free exercise of religion. Professor Rovner was a member of the litigation teams that led to the creation of outdoor exercise yards at the state of Colorado’s supermax prison, for which the team was selected as a finalist for the 2017 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award from the Public Justice Foundation. She has provided expert testimony before the European Court of Human Rights about conditions of confinement in the federal supermax prison and served on the Colorado legislature’s Work Group on Serious Mental Illness in Long-term Isolated Confinement. Her 2018 talk at TEDxMileHigh - What happens to people in solitary confinement - was selected for inclusion on the TED website and has been viewed over 2.3 million times. She lectures and writes about the rights of people incarcerated in prisons and jails, as well as about clinical education and pedagogy. Laura is the founder of the Christopher N. Lasch Clinical Teaching Fellowship LLM program at Denver Law, and regularly consults with clinical programs in the U.S. and abroad about clinical teaching, including issues concerning academic freedom and political interference. She is the recipient of the University of Denver’s Distinguished Teaching Award and has been honored with the University’s Outstanding Teaching Recognition for multiple years. Laura graduated from Cornell Law School and received her LLM from Georgetown University Law Center.