Lindsay MacDonald selected for Stuart A. Markus award

Friends and readers of the blog know that my family set up an award in my Dad's name at the University of Miami School of Law.  The Stuart A. Markus Award recognizes an individual student each year for outstanding work in one of the School of Law’s in-house clinics. The winner is selected by vote of the in-house, live-client clinic directors.  The first award went to Bethany Bandstra.

This year the Markus Award went to Lindsay MacDonald, a student in Rebecca Sharpless’ immigration clinic. Highlights of her clinical work include: litigating a habeas petition in U.S. District Court for a transgender Haitian woman that challenged the legality of her prolonged immigration detention; writing the Eleventh Circuit briefs in the same woman’s asylum case; working on a motion to suppress in immigration court in a case where immigration agents profiled our client in violation of the Fourth Amendment; preparing two cancellation of removal cases in immigration court and litigating one to an adversarial merits hearing; litigating a legally and factually complex dependency case in Broward for an unaccompanied border child that required a deposition of her father as well as numerous court appearances over the course of many months; and authoring the Eleventh Circuit brief in a multi-issue case that is the most complex the Clinic has handled to date. Lindsay was scheduled this April to do the Eleventh Circuit oral argument in the transgender client’s case, but the court rescheduled the case until June. Lindsay has earned no fewer than 10 Dean’s Certificates/CALI awards or their equivalents in her classes and is third in her class of 412.

 

Stuart A. Markus (BED ’54, J.D. ‘57) practiced law in Miami for over 50 years.  Throughout his career, Stuart fought hard for his clients in every area of the law.  He never turned away a person in need, and helped countless people with practical, hands-on advice and representation that went far above and beyond the norm.  The Markus Award is given annually to a student who shares that caring spirit, and who has made a meaningful difference in someone’s life – which is something Stuart did every day.

Congratulations to Lindsay!