Kimberly Angeles, Contributing Photographer

Yale Law School students and community members gathered Wednesday afternoon to hear a talk by journalist and YLS Fellow Emily Bazelon ’93 LAW ’00.

Bazelon’s talk was the third installment in a new speaker series hosted by the law school’s Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice, and was also sponsored by Yale Law Women+. Bazelon is a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine and has published two books — one on criminal justice and another on modern bullying. 

Bazelon said the speaker series — which is titled “Training the Next Generation” — was an opportunity for Yale Law students to think about “alternate career paths, things that are a little bit off the beaten track for law students.” 

“They can make change if they’re lawyers and that’s their goal. They can help educate the world or inform people, which is more my role,” Bazelon said.

Bazelon said in an interview that her talk, which was not open to press, connected her law school education with her work as a journalist. She further mentioned the importance of developing “professionally and also personally” with her family, mentioning that her older son was born while she was in law school. 

According to Yael Caplan LAW ’23, a fellow of the Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice, the speaker series is “focused on legal skill building and career paths for the next generation.” 

Planned guest speakers include “attorneys with accomplished careers in Supreme Court and appellate advocacy, appellate clerkships, defending democracy, reproductive rights, gender justice, and journalism,” Caplan wrote.

The previous two talks were given by Carrie Flaxman LAW ’96, a senior legal advisor at Democracy Forward, a nonprofit which claims to “go to court for people and democracy,” and Lourdes Rivera ’87 LAW ’90, the president of advocacy organization Pregnancy Justice. Democracy Forward has received media attention for their legal sparring with the Trump Administration. 

Attendee Brenda Cachay ’21 LAW ’28 said that Bazelon specifically highlighted her work on shaken baby syndrome, a brain injury caused by forceful shaking of an infant or toddler. 

Bazelon first wrote about the syndrome for the New York Times Magazine in 2011. In October, she followed up with a video opinion piece defending Robert Roberson, a man who has spent over 20 years on death row for allegedly causing his daughter’s death by shaken baby syndrome. In the video, Bazelon suggested that scientific evidence about his daughter’s death undermined Roberson’s conviction. A Texas court subsequently blocked Roberson’s execution. 

“She was talking about how great it’s been to see her work pave the way for more discourse, and how the idea of this being a controversial science is just more widely accepted,” Cachay said. 

Cachay “really enjoyed” Bazelon’s talk, she said.

“It’s always enlightening, I think, to hear about how people who pursue a law degree can still go and pursue so many different careers that aren’t necessarily being an attorney — like you can be a journalist and still touch on so many of these topics of justice,” Cachay said. 

Bazelon emphasized the importance of showing students that they can “make a difference” in light of current political tensions in the United States.

“There are ways in which this is a difficult, really polarized time in the country, but there have been other hard times before. And I want students to feel like what they do matters and that they can make change,” she said. 

Bazelon is set to participate in another event at Yale Law School — a discussion titled “Punishment at the Crossroads” — on Thursday.