Clare R. Norins

Clare R. Norins is a clinical associate professor and the director of the University of Georgia School of Law’s First Amendment Clinic, which represents clients in federal and state court on a range of First Amendment and media law issues. Representative matters include social media blocking by government officials, retaliatory arrest and prosecution, the right to record, challenges to unconstitutional permit requirements, assertion of the journalist privilege under the Georgia Shield law, and defamation defense.

In 2021, Norins was a co-recipient of the national Clinical Legal Education Association’s award for Excellence in a Public Interest Case in recognition of collaborative advocacy on behalf of non-citizens retaliated against for speaking out about medical abuse they experienced in a Georgia detention center. In 2022, Norins was awarded a 3-year grant from The Legal Clinic Fund for Local News to expand the clinic’s support for local journalism in Georgia. In 2024, she received a grant from the Impact Fund to support a litigation challenge to jail censorship.

Norins’ scholarship has been published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, theWashington and Lee Law Review Online, and theGeorge Mason University Civil Rights Law Journal.

She is a board member of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, an executive committee member of the AALS Section on Communication, Media & Information Law, and a member of the bar in the following jurisdictions:

• Georgia State Bar
• Georgia Supreme Court
• Georgia Court of Appeals
• U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia
• U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia
• U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia
• United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
• United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
• United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
• United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit

Norins joined the law school faculty with 15 years of civil rights experience in private practice, government enforcement, and higher education. At Beldock Levine & Hoffman LLP, she was appointed class counsel on behalf of 1,200 political demonstrators, journalists and bystanders arrested during the 2004 Republican National Convention. While serving in the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Office of the Attorney General, Norins received a 2012 Louis J. Lefkowitz Award for outstanding performance. Immediately prior to launching the First Amendment Clinic, Norins was assistant director of UGA’s Equal Opportunity Office.

Norins graduated Order of the Coif from the School of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She clerked for Judge Michael H. Dolinger in the Southern District of New York.

Publications & Activities
ARTICLES

Stitch Incoming: Lindke v. Freed‘s Impact on Social Media Blocking Litigation, 82 Washington and Lee Law Review Online 172 (2024) (with M. Bailey)

Campbell v. Reisch: Dangers of the Campaign Loophole in Social Media Blocking Litigation, 25 University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 146 (2023) (with M. Bailey)

Restoring Student Press Freedoms: Why Every State Needs a ‘New Voices’ Law , 32 Geo. Mason UCRLJ 63 (2021) (with T. Harmon-Walker and N. Tharani).