Our legacy
The Barbara McDowell Public Interest Law Center was established to honor the work and legacy of Barbara McDowell, an exceptional advocate for social justice reforms who had a decorated legal career.
Following her untimely death from brain cancer at the age of 56 in January 2009, Barbara’s husband, Jerry Hartman, established the Barbara McDowell Foundation in her name to honor and continue her extraordinary work.
Director of the Appellate Advocacy Program
Barbara, for the three years prior to her death, was the founding Director of the Appellate Advocacy Program at the Legal Aid Society of Washington, D.C. Prior to that time, the Legal Aid Society had never had a program dedicated solely to appellate advocacy. After Barbara’s death Legal Aid renamed the program the Barbara McDowell Appellate Advocacy Program.
As Director of the Appellate Advocacy Program, Barbara represented the rights of impoverished and indigent individuals in many matters in the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia involving domestic violence, adequacy of housing, unemployment compensation, and administration requirements related to filing claims for public benefits. There she handled more than 70 matters and won several important cases establishing the rights of the poor in areas of housing, public benefits, and domestic violence.
While at Legal Aid, Barbara was awarded the Rex Lee Advocacy and Public Service Award for Appellate Advocacy (named for the former Solicitor General of the United States) given by Brigham Young Law School, which recognized Barbara as the outstanding appellate advocate for 2008. The award was presented by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. Barbara was also awarded posthumously in April 2014 Legal Aid’s Servant of Justice Award for her work at Legal Aid. Jerry Hartman accepted the award in her behalf. His remarks can be found here.
“As Barbara expressed it to me, echoing the same words of Lyra McKee, the Northern Ireland journalist recently murdered, Barbara saw the poor in America, like the poor in Northern Ireland, having a “poverty of vision” and a “poverty of ambition.” Much, much too often Barbara believed mainstream Americans cast a blind eye on their fellow Americans living in squalor who wanted nothing more than the same equal opportunity enjoyed by so many privileged Americans. Barbara strove to vanquish that sad image.”
– Jerry Hartman’s Remarks at the Tenth Anniversary Celebration of the Barbara McDowell Foundation, 2019
Assistant to the Solicitor General
Prior to becoming the Director of the Appellate Advocacy Project at Legal Aid, Barbara was Assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States from 1997 to 2004, in which role she argued 18 cases before the United States Supreme Court, including two cases on the same day. Barbara also was the principal author of more than 12 principal briefs to the Supreme Court.
The case of which Barbara was most proud was Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians (1999). In that case, Barbara successfully defended the Tribe’s retention of hunting, fishing, and gathering rights guaranteed to them in an 1837 Treaty. The state of Minnesota argued that a Presidential Executive Order from 1850 removing the tribe from that land abrogated those rights. To prepare for her argument, Barbara traveled to Minnesota to meet with the Tribe. She smoked a peace pipe at dawn with leaders of the Tribe who had gathered at the shores of a lake on the Tribe’s land to pray for her success in her argument.
Barbara McDowell with Justice Byron White, 1986
“My current career path grew out of my church’s work with young people and families in an inner area of the District. As I learned of the difficulties that poor people encountered in their contacts with landlords, government agencies, and the local courts, I began to think about how I could use my skills as an appellate lawyer to their benefit. Happily, the Legal Aid Society was thinking along the same lines: to start an appellate project with the goal of shaping the law in DC affecting people in poverty.”
– Barbara McDowell, Acceptance Speech for the Rex Lee Advocacy and Public Service Award for Appellate Advocacy
Jones Day Law Firm
Before joining the Solicitor General’s office, Barbara was a partner at the Jones Day law firm from 1987 to 1997, where she was a member of the Issues and Appeals Group. In addition to cases for the firm’s clients, Barbara was committed to handling pro bono matters, including a case involving a felon’s right to serve on a jury many years after he was released from prison.
Barbara attended Yale Law School and clerked for Justice Byron White at the United States Supreme Court.