Loyola Law School » About Us » Faculty & Administration » Faculty » Faculty List A-B » Buckingham, Samantha

Samantha Buckingham

Clinical Professor of Law

BA, University of Virginia
JD, Stanford Law School

Background

Samantha Buckingham is the co-director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic at the Center for Juvenile Law and Policy.  She teaches courses associated with the year-long clinic and supervises students who represent juvenile clients in delinquency courts in Los Angeles.  In addition to her work in the clinic, Professor Buckingham teaches classes available to all students at Loyola Law School.

Prior to joining the faculty at Loyola Law School in 2008, Buckingham advocated on behalf of indigent clients for five years as a trial attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. At PDS, she represented adults and children charged as adults in criminal court with serious felonies, including homicides.  She also represented children facing delinquency adjudications in family court. As a law student, Buckingham clerked for Legal Services for Children and the Federal Public Defender, both located in San Francisco. Prior to that, she taught high school at the Maya Angelou School, a Washington D.C. charter high school for adjudicated and at-risk youth.

Buckingham serves as teaching faculty for the Trial Advocacy Workshop at Harvard Law School.   Buckingham has also trained public defenders nationally through her work with the Southern Public Defender Training Center and the National Juvenile Defender Center.  

Achievements

  • Congressional Testimony for Reassessing Solitary Confinement: The Human Rights, Fiscal, and Public Safety Consequences
    • Hearing before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights.
  • Congressional Testimony for Ending the “School to Prison Pipeline”
    • Hearing before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights.
  • Using Adolescent Brain Development in Your Representation of Children and Young Adults, National Association of Public Defenders, March 2009.
  • The Juvenile Delinquency System, South Bay Child Guidance Center, Fall 2010.
  • Investigation for Sentencing, Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, October 2010.
  • Prosecutorial Misconduct, California Supreme Court Historical Society, April 2011.
  • Direct Examination, Harvard Law School, January, 2012.
  • Making the Most of Your Motions Practice, Southern Public Defender Training Center, July 2012.
  • Representing Youthful Offenders, Southern Public Defender Training Center, July 2012.
  • Developing Timelines to Enhance Litigation Strategy, National Juvenile Defender Center, October 2012.