Clare R. Norins

Clare R. Norins is a clinical associate professor and the inaugural 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, 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 noncitizens 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, the George Mason University Civil Rights Law Journal, and is forthcoming in the Washington and Lee Law Review Online.

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
U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
U.S. 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, 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 from the School of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was inducted into the Order of the Coif. She clerked for Judge Michael H. Dolinger in the Southern District of New York.