Clinic News

Clinic Fall 2023 Newsletter
International Human Rights Law Clinic, 11/15/23
Clinic Work Contributed to U.N. Slamming U.S. Border Patrol, Policing Practices
San Francisco Chronicle, 11/8/23
Co-Director Roxanna Altholz Quoted About Clinic Work with Forensic Anthropologists on U.S-Mexico Border
The Baffler, 11/1/23
Clinic Helps Detained Human Rights Defenders in Vietnam Renew Appeal to United Nations
International Human Rights Law Clinic, 6/22/23
New Video About Clinic Bringing Anastasio Hernandez Rojas Case to International Stage
UC Berkeley, 4/21/23
Clinic Submits Final Arguments to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights About Anastasio Hernández Rojas Case
International Human Rights Clinic, 2/15/23
Clinic Fall 2022 Newsletter
International Human Rights Law Clinic, 11/16/22
Clinic Helps Bring U.S. Law Enforcement Killing to International Stage for First Time
Berkeley Law, 11/10/22
Clinic Argues Family Members of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas vs. United States Case Before Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
International Human Rights Law Clinic, 11/3/22
Clinic Students Contribute to Complaint Urging the UN to Call for Abolition of U.S. Life Sentences
International Human Rights Law Clinic, 9/15/2022
Clinic Students Provide Legal Support for Open Letter about Vietnam from Human Rights Activists to the UN
International Human Rights Law Clinic, 9/13/2022
Co-Director Roxanna Altholz Quoted on NBC About Anastasio Hernández Rojas Case Against U.S.
NBC-7 San Diego, 8/16/22
Clinic Helps Family of Anastasio Hernández Rojas Take the Next Step in Landmark Human Rights Case Against U.S.
Alliance San Diego, 8/16/22
NBC Interviews Co-Director Roxanna Altholz About Charge in Berta Cáceres Murder
NBC, 6/21/22
Clinic Fights Growing Surveillance of Victims and Advocates in Mexico
Berkeley Law, 6/14/2022
Clinic Files Amicus Brief About Colombian State Surveillance of Human Rights Defenders
International Human Rights Law Clinic, 5/24/2022
CBP Eliminates Border Patrol Cover-Up Teams Thanks to Clinic Partnership with Southern Border Communities Coalition
Southern Border Communities Coalition, 5/6/22
Co-Director Laurel Fletcher Talks About Russia and the International Criminal Court
San Francisco Chronicle, 3/27/2022
Co-Director Roxanna Altholz on Migrants Who Made It Over the Border and Were Then Killed in Phoenix
Vice, 3/3/2022
Clinic Contributes to Lawsuit against Mexican Attorney General’s Illegal Surveillance of Mass Killings Investigators
Washington Post, 2/18/22
Co-Director Laurel Fletcher Co-Authors “When Did It Become Illegal to Defend Human Rights?”
OpenGlobalRights, 1/19/22
Co-Director Roxanna Altholz on U.S. Missing Filing Deadline in Border Killing Case
San Diego Union Tribune, 12/1/21
Co-Director Roxanna Altholz on Landmark Ruling on Paramilitary Violence in Colombia
The Intercept, 11/24/21
Clinic Reveals ‘Increasingly Hostile Environment’ for Online Freedom of Expression in Gulf Nations
Berkeley Law, 11/18/21
Clinic Fall 2021 Newsletter
International Human Rights Law Clinic, 11/16/21
Clinic Releases New Report on Persecution of Online Expression in Gulf and Neighboring Countries
International Human Rights Law Clinic, 11/9/21
Co-Director Roxanna Altholz on Low Oakland Homicide Arrests
East Bay Times, 10/18/2021
Co-Director Roxanna Altholz Interviewed in “Berkeley Law helps uncover the ‘Truth’ in San Francisco policing”
Reuters, 10/13/2021
Clinic Releases New Working Paper on Anti-Black Police Violence in San Francisco
IHRLC, 10/4/21
Clinic Student Wins CLEA Outstanding Clinical Student Award
IHRLC, 4/15/21
Co-Director Roxanna Altholz Interviewed in “Can Oakland’s Department of Violence Prevention Succeed?”
Oaklandside, 4/13/21
Co-Director Laurel Fletcher Discusses the International Human Rights Community Connecting More to Local Human Rights Groups
OpenGlobalRights, 3/26/21
Clinic Files Testimony in Border Case Before Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
International Human Rights Clinic and Alliance San Diego, 2/24/21
Clinic Authors “The Human Rights Council Must Establish an Accountability Mechanism for Sri Lanka’s Victims”
Just Security, 2/11/21
Co-Director Laurel Fletcher Writes “Art as Justice: Public Memory and Torture”
Oxford Human Rights Hub, 1/12/21
Co-Director Roxanna Altholz in New Documentary, “Who Killed Berta? An Environmental Murder Mystery”
Bloomberg, 1/4/21
Co-Director Roxanna Altholz in “Faces of Assassination” Podcast
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 12/18/20
Clinic Files Amicus Brief in Ninth Circuit Supporting Challenge to Immigration Ban
International Human Rights Law Clinic, 12/15/20
Clinic Fall 2020 Newsletter
International Human Rights Law Clinic, 11/17/20
Clinic Files Amicus Brief in D.C. Circuit Supporting Challenge to Immigration Ban
International Human Rights Law Clinic, 12/15/20
Co-Director Roxanna Altholz Discusses Work on “Berkeley Law Conversations: Race & Policing” Panel
Berkeley Law, 6/8/20
Clinic Students Protect Land Rights in Liberia
Berkeley Law, 5/6/20
Co-Director Laurel Fletcher on the Evolution of the Transitional Justice Field
Justice Visions Podcast, 4/1/20
Unsolved Homicides, Family Trauma
KPFA, Against the Grain, 3/17/20
“Like Crawling on Broken Glass”: The Aftermath of Gun Violence
California Magazine, 2/25/20

Co-Director Laurel Fletcher and Student David Maxson Harris ’21 Write “The Case for U.S. Social Justice Movements to Go International” California Law Review (10/20)

Co-Director Roxanna Altholz talks about the clinic’s role in “Tracking Suspects Who Never Thought Anyone Would Look,” a new podcast from Bloomberg.com. (8/10/20)

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has decided to move forward with the first case involving a killing by U.S. law enforcement (Co-Director Roxanna Altholz is co-counsel with Alliance San Diego). (7/30/20)

The clinic joined efforts with the organization REDRESS to file a complaint with the United Nations Human Rights Committee on behalf of a British citizen tortured by Sri Lankan officials. (6/29/20)

Co-Director Roxanna Altholz on laws and law enforcement behaviors that undermine the human rights of Black and Latino victims of violence as part of “Berkeley Law Conversations: Race & Policing.” (6/8/20)

Clinic students traveled to Liberia with clinic Co-Director Laurel Fletcher and Teaching Fellow Tamara Morgenthau to interview indigenous community members fighting to have their land rights recognized. (5/6/20)

Co-Director Roxanna Altholz discusses her “Living with Impunity” report on KPFA. (3/17/20)

Co-Director Laurel Fletcher discusses the evolution of the field of transitional justice on the Justice Visions podcast. (4/1/20)

“Like Crawling on Broken Glass”: The Aftermath of Gun Violence California Magazine, (2/25/20)

Berkeley became the first city to pass a resolution supporting A New Border Vision. Read about the clinic’s work to bring the New Border Vision before Bay Area governments. Watch Vanessa Rivas-Bernardy ’21 speak at the Berkeley City Council meeting. (1/28/20)

“Living with Impunity: Unsolved Murders in Oakland and the Human Rights Impact on Victims’ Family Members” presents work by clinic Co-Director Roxanna Altholz and other researchers who found that surviving family members often were victimized a second time as law enforcement and other agencies treated them with indifference—and even hostility. Read more about the Living with Impunity report. (1/23/20)

Clinic student David Harris ’21 addressed the Berkeley Unified School District Board last week about A New Border Vision. Clinic co-directors Roxanna Altholz and Laurel Fletcher helped the Southern Border Communities Coalition draft the vision to help build momentum for a state and congressional resolution on border policies. Watch David Harris speak in this video. (1/8/20)

Clinic Co-Director Roxanna Altholz, former member of an international team that investigated the murder of Berta Cáceres, winner of the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize, says the problem is bigger than the lack of progress on company president Roberto David Castillo Mejía’s case and that her murder was the culmination of years of coordinated corruption and violence. (12/21/19)

Read the International Human Rights Law Clinic’s fall 2019 newsletter.

Clinic Co-Director Roxanna Altholz ’99 worked with four Berkeley Law students on an amicus brief filed Dec. 23 to encourage the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case of Melida Teresa Luna-Garcia. Altholz traveled with two of them to Ciudad Juárez to interview 23 asylum seekers in person. Their stories, and those of a dozen others, form the backbone of the brief. Univision also covered the clinic’s work on the brief here. (12/19/19)

Clinic Co-Director Roxanna Altholz is one of the lawyers representing migrants in an amicus brief to be filed in the Supreme Court saying El Paso border agents are undermining asylum cases by using false addresses on migrant papers. (12/19/19)

Co-Director Roxanna Altholz spoke at an Open Society Foundations discussion on “Financing Atrocity, Forging Accountability: New Strategies for International Justice.” (5/28/19)

Students combat child labor and slavery in the Ivory Coast’s chocolate industry, by conducting a fact-finding mission to the Ivory Coast and putting together a consumer fraud case against chocolate companies. (5/28/19)

Co-Director Roxanna Altholz moderated a World Affairs event on “Land, Environment & Global Justice: Sierra Leone and Around the World.” (5/16/19)

Clinic joins migrant rights organizations to create a New Border Vision, co-sponsoring an event with the Southern Border Communities Coalition to shape a vision that expands public safety, protects human rights, and welcomes residents and newcomers on U.S. borders. (5/14/19)

Clinical Teaching Fellow Tamara Morgenthau moderated a discussion on “After Jesner: The Future of the Alien Tort Statute.” (4/10/19)

Co-Director Laurel Fletcher was the keynote speaker at a racial justice conference: “What Can International Transitional Justice Offer to U.S. Social Justice Movements?” (4/12/19)

Co-Director Roxanna Altholz speaks about clinical pedagogy at a conference in Mexico. (3/30/19)

Co-Directors Laurel Fletcher and Roxanna Altholz joined other international human rights and immigration law professors, clinics, and organizations in submitting an amicus brief to U.S. federal court arguing that the U.S. government’s practices of family separation and arbitrary detention of asylum seekers violate binding international law. (2/14/19)

Co-Director Laurel Fletcher was a 2019 Herbert Smith Freehills Vistor at the University of Cambridge and delivered a lecture at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law: “Let’s Talk About the Boteros: Law, Memory, and the Torture Memos at Berkeley Law.”

Clinical Teaching Fellow Tamara Morgenthau appeared as counsel for interveners before the Supreme Court of Canada in the case Nevsun Resources Ltd. v. Gize Yebeyo Araya, et al. seeking to hold a Canadian corporation liable for human rights abuses at an Eritrean mine.

Berkeley Law’s 20-year commitment to human rights through the International Human Rights Law Clinic and the Human Rights Center was highlighted in a fall 2018 Transcript magazine feature story.

Co-Director Roxanna Altholz testified about the remains of migrants who disappeared along the United States border before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in support of the Forensic Border Coalition (10/2018).

Clinical Teaching Fellow Tamara Morgenthau participated in a Berkeley Law panel on “Is a Habitable Planet a Human Right? Juliana v. the United States.” (10/23/18)

Daughter of Slain Environmentalist Connects Migrant Caravan to Honduran Government’s Failures (11/02/2018)

Group seeks U.S. DNA to identify missing migrants (10/05/2018)

Deadly Corruption in Honduras (3/13/2018)

Honduras arrests ‘mastermind’ behind Berta Caceres’ murder (3/3/2018)

Honduras Police Arrest Executive in Killing of Berta Cáceres, Indigenous Activist (3/3/2018)

Berta Cáceres murder: ex-Honduran military intelligence officer arrested (3/2/2018)

Honduras arrests alleged mastermind behind activist’s murder (3/2/2018)

Moving from Rights Eroded to Rights Realized (1/9/2018)

Clinic Director’s blog post on the conceptual foundations of transitional justice (12/20/2017)

New Report Spotlights Repression of Human Rights Activists (12/11/2017)

IHRLC 2017 end-of-year newsletter (12/2017)

The Honduran Candidate: President Juan Orlando Hernández is moving closer to authoritarian rule (11/23/2017)