Human Rights

This year, as they prepared to graduate, five members of the Class of 2016 took time to reflect on their interests and share experiences they will take from their time at Harvard Law.

Naz K. Modirzadeh '02, the founding director of the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict (PILAC), has been appointed as a professor of practice at Harvard Law School.

Raheemah Abdulaleem ’01 was standing on a Washington, D.C., street corner in 2009 on her way to work at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division when a man yelled at her from his car to “go back to your country.” An African-American who grew up in Philadelphia in a family whose roots in the United States are nearly as old as the country, Abdulaleem was wearing a hijab, the traditional headscarf worn by some Muslim women.

For more than half a century, Phil Heymann has served the nation— and Harvard Law School—with distinction.

Last fall, the Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, produced a report for Amnesty International on the legal issues surrounding encryption. While the encryption debate is most often painted as a two-sided battle between law enforcement and technology companies, there are many other stakeholders around the world that are deeply concerned about the widespread implications of regulating encryption in iPhones and other telecommunications devices.

When Wendy Sherman, former under secretary of state for political affairs, was in the midst of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, she often felt that her team was playing “several games of multidimensional chess at the same time.” On April 20, Sherman delivered a guest lecture to the Harvard Law School Negotiation Workshop.

Since graduating from Harvard College in 1985 and then getting his law degree, Alan Jenkins '89 had been on a career fast track, but he felt frustrated about the forces of injustice and inequality he saw around him.

Gabriella Blum LL.M. ’01 S.J.D. ’03, Rita E. Hauser Professor of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at Harvard Law School has been named a 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

In a report issued last week, the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic and Human Rights Watch call for countries to retain meaningful human control over weapons systems and ban fully autonomous weapons, also known as 'killer robots.'

Clinical Instructor Deborah Popowski '08 has led the effort to hold psychologists accountable for their involvement in torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Thirteen Harvard Law School students were selected as the 2016 Cravath International Fellows. The fellows traveled to 12 countries for winter term clinical placements or independent research with an international, transnational, or comparative law focus. Below, four of those students are highlighted.

Harvard Law student Aya Saed ’17 was among 30 recipients selected to receive the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, the premier graduate school fellowship for immigrants and children of immigrants.

Each year, teams of Harvard Law School students are given the opportunity to spend their Spring Break experiencing legal services work with clinics and legal organizations in the Boston area, or working on projects around the country and abroad--here, a few students share their accounts, reflecting on the significance of their service.

On March 9, as part of the Herbert W. Vaughan series at Harvard Law School, a panel of experts featuring Yuval Levin, founding editor of policy journal National Affairs, discussed the role of religious liberty in modern American life.

This is the last in the Harvard Gazette's series on inequality, one of America’s most vexing problems, examining Harvard’s ground-level efforts to make a difference in the surrounding communities, and beyond.

During the 2016 winter term, 65 HLS students traveled to 30 countries conducting research for writing projects or undertaking independent clinicals, with support from the Winter Term International Travel Grant Program. The following are snapshots of 11 student experiences.

Harvard Law School hosted the first-ever Legal, Cultural and Strategic Issues in Counterterror Operations Symposium bringing together military officers from the 3rd Legal Operations Detachment and academic scholars whose work focuses on areas of Islamic and human rights law as well as on cultural and international security issues.

Fifth in a Harvard Gazette series on what Harvard scholars are doing to identify and understand inequality, in seeking solutions to one of America’s most vexing problems.

Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic and its partners have filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court in the In re South African Apartheid Litigation suit, asking the Court to clarify the circumstances under which defendants may be held accountable in U.S. courts for human rights violations.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, founding Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and Tim McCormack, Visiting Professor of Law at HLS and Special Adviser on International Humanitarian Law to the Prosecutor of the ICC, recently discussed challenges that lie ahead for the organization, the first permanent court established to deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Lecturer on Law Alan Jenkins ’89 shared ideas for reframing conversations on race and social justice at a talk at Harvard Law School on Jan. 12. The talk was moderated by Clinical Professor Dan Nagin, vice dean for experiential and clinical education at HLS.