Human Rights Litigation and International Advocacy – 7400

Fall 2012
* Multi-semester course

The Human Rights Litigation and International Legal Advocacy Clinic is a year-long Clinic. It provides students with direct experience in human rights advocacy in fora such as the United Nations, the Inter-American human rights system, and federal and state courts, and will include work in coalitions of nongovernmental organizations doing human rights advocacy.

The Clinic will give students experience in human rights advocacy through direct participation in supervised clinical projects and skill-building exercises. The process will facilitate discussion of the pros and cons of various advocacy mechanisms, possible conflicting strategies among different stakeholders, and how particular strategies are chosen and implemented. The clinic has a two-hour weekly class component and will include core lawyering skills such as interviewing, counseling, negotiation, and legal ethics in practice, and subjects such as how to practice before international human rights systems, how to use international law sources in legal arguments before U.S. state and federal courts, Alien Tort litigation, gender rights, how to interview for human rights documentation, working with clients with Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, the effects on attorneys of secondary trauma, the different types of oral advocacy and writing in human rights advocacy, and the use of education and outreach and the media in advancing a strategy.