by John Bonsignore, Stephen Arons, Peter d'Errico, Ethan Katsh, Ronald Pipkin and Janet Rifkin

Thomas Hilbink is Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Professor Hilbink completed his Ph.D. at the NYU Institute for Law & Society. His dissertation, "Constructing Cause Lawyering: Professionalism, Politics, and Social Change in 1960s America," explores the interactions of lawyers and social movements on issues of civil rights, poverty law, the war in Vietnam, and the environment (among others) at a time when conceptions of what it meant to be a legal professional were in question.  He completed his J.D. at NYU in 1999 where he was a Root-Tilden-Snow Public Interest Scholar, an editor of NYU Review of Law & Social Change and worked in the Brennan Public Policy Advocacy Clinic. While in law school, Professor Hilbink founded and ran the Democracy & Equality Project, Inc., an organization devoted to the development and dissemination of secondary education materials on participatory democracy. After law school Professor Hilbink served as a law clerk to Judge Stephanie Seymour of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. In 2002-2003 he was a fellow in the Law & Society Program at the University of California-Santa Barbara. He has worked for the American Civil Liberties Union in New York City in a variety of capacities for five years both prior to and after law school. Since coming to UMass he has been involved with the ACLU of Massachusetts, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, and the Greensboro Justice Fund. He also serves on the development committees of both the Law & Society Association and the Consortium of Undergraduate Law & Justice Programs.