For more than 25 years, the Human Rights Clinic has advanced human rights through legal advocacy on behalf of individual and organizational clients. Working with survivors and their families, communities, civil society organizations, and international human rights bodies, the Clinic leverages litigation, investigation, documentation, and policy work to support efforts to secure truth, accountability, protection, and repair.
The Clinic’s work is rooted in relationships. Many projects grow out of long-term collaborations with clients and partners confronting violence, exclusion, displacement, and impunity in the United States and around the world. Current and recent projects have addressed violence against human rights, environmental, and Indigenous defenders, abusive counterterrorism and national security measures, climate-related displacement, migrants’ rights, land and resource rights, reproductive justice, policing, immigration and state violence.
Students are central to every phase of the Clinic’s work. In a supportive and collaborative learning environment, they investigate facts, interview witnesses, analyze legal standards, draft reports and legal submissions, develop advocacy strategies, and contribute to litigation before national, regional, and international bodies. Through this work, students develop foundational lawyering skills that carry across practice areas: rigorous factual investigation, legal analysis, client communication, strategic judgment, collaboration, professional writing, oral advocacy, and ethical decision-making. They also have opportunities to strengthen professional language skills through transnational advocacy, multilingual research, and work with partners in different legal, cultural, and political contexts.
In addition to work on human rights projects, clinic students participate in a seminar that provides a bridge between legal theory and practice. The companion seminar is devoted to familiarizing students with substantive international law, providing rigorous legal training, and facilitating peer feedback and critique on cases and projects. It also offers students the opportunity for critical reflection on the lawyer’s role in human rights advocacy and to examine the power imbalances that can shape human rights work, including the responsibilities that come with practicing from institutions in the Global North while working with clients, communities, and partners in the Global South.
You can find more information about the requirements for participation in the clinic here.