Claudia De Palma is an Assistant Professor at Temple University Beasley School of Law, specializing in legal writing, complex litigation skills, and public interest law. Her scholarship examines the possibilities, limitations, and consequences of using public interest litigation to remedy systemic inequality and discrimination.
Professor De Palma has over 13 years of experience practicing law as a complex litigator and a civil rights attorney. Prior to joining Temple, Professor De Palma was a senior attorney at the Public Interest Law Center in Philadelphia, where she engaged in impact litigation to advance the civil, social, and economic rights of communities facing discrimination, inequality, and poverty. While in practice, she litigated constitutional challenges to protect employment, voting, and education rights, including Pennsylvania’s landmark school funding case, William Penn School District v. Pennsylvania Department of Education, which resulted in a historic increase in public education funding across the Commonwealth.
Before joining the Law Center, Professor De Palma was an associate at Hangley, Aronchick, Segal, Pudlin & Schiller, where she represented the Governor and the Secretary of the Commonwealth in a case reforming Pennsylvania’s gerrymandered congressional map, and helped successfully defend the City of Philadelphia’s soda tax to fund early childhood education. She previously served as a law clerk for the Honorable Vanessa L. Bryant of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.
Professor De Palma received her J.D. from the New York University School of Law, where she served on the editorial board of the NYU Review of Law and Social Change, and holds a B.A. in American Studies from Yale University.