Mostafa El-Harazi L’23 leveraged his international law experience as an extern with Center for Justice and Accountability in co-founding the International Law Society at Penn.
Sheridan Macy L’24 shares her experience working at the intersections of environmental law and human rights.
As a Global Justice Fellow and Mead Fellow, Natalie Malek L’25 worked for the UK-based international human rights organization, Reprieve.
Criminal fines and fees disproportionately affect poor individuals and people in vulnerable groups, write Prof. Jean Galbraith and students.
Jisha Sarkar
Prof. Bill Burke-White proposes a “green investment treaty” to close the climate funding gap.
The new, formalized, cross-disciplinary program will enable students to study LGBTQ+ issues from multiple perspectives.
Wolff is the Jefferson B. Fordham Professor of Law and Deputy Dean for Equity and Inclusion at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.
Hermes and Alejandra intend to bring what they learn at the Law School back to their home country.
The panel included the Law School’s William Burke-White and Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, Philip Nichols of Wharton, and native Ukrainian Victoria Kaplan LLM’15.
From pathbreaking coursework to pro bono advocacy, students at the Law School engage meaningfully in the fight to advance women’s rights, both locally and around the world.
LaShawn R. Jefferson, Executive Director of Perry World House (left) joined Rangita de Silva de Alwis, Associate Dean of International Affairs of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, in a conversation on global women’s rights.
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law students have an amalgam of academic and experiential opportunities to prepare them for careers fighting for immigration and refugee justice.
For Solbraekke, the interdisciplinary philanthropy program offers a chance to test and flex her leadership skills.
The 2022 GIHR will be held in late May through early June, and applications are now being accepted through April 29.
The Law School remembers and honors the legacy of Lani Guinier, who taught here from 1988 and 1998 and passed away on Friday, January 7, 2022.
Jesse McGleughlin L’20 is the recipient of Toll Public Interest Fellowship and works at the Southern Center for Human Rights.
Student leaders from across the globe joined delivered remarks on the vital status of women’s rights activism today.
De Silva de Alwis explains why there has been an increase in marriages of underage girls in Afghanistan and what could be done to improve girls’ lives.
The 2021 Global Institute for Human Rights - Build Back Better focused on generating novel approaches to address human rights challenges during a global pandemic.
Farid is the immediate former Member of Afghanistan Parliament and is a visiting researcher at the Law School this academic year.
People who wish to enter the United States as refugees must prove a “well-founded fear of persecution, based on five grounds: race, religion, nationality, social group, or political opinion.”
Law School faculty share their insights into how 9/11 has impacted the law, particularly in their areas of expertise:
Zhang’s own experience of attempting to obtain lactation accommodations to take the bar exam helped inspire her career path.
A recipient of the Mead Fellowship, Trevor Stankiewicz L’23 is interning at Fortify Rights, a global nonprofit that works to ensure human rights for all people.
The work of Hugh Fitzgibbon LLM’21 and Meri Baghdasaryan LLM’21 is supported by the Law School’s LLM Postgraduate Public Interest Fellowship.
The model codes address “gender-based harassment in the virtual world of work.”
Upon graduation, eighteen 2021 graduates will pursue important and diverse public interest work with the support of prestigious fellowship funding.
Allison Perlin L’20 works at Human Rights First, where she works to better serve clients in grave need of immigration representation.
At Human Rights First, Patricia Stottlemyer L’17 uses impact litigation to fight for more equitable access to the legal system for asylum seekers.
The Law School team’s proposal, entitled “Feminizing Financing for Trade in Africa: New Approaches to Systemic Challenges,” was selected as one of the top innovative policy proposals for the WTO.
In Fall 2020, Senior Adjunct Professor of Global Leadership Rangita de Silva de Alwis’ “Women, Law, and Leadership” course interviewed over 65 male law students and 40 legal and business leaders to ask about gender bias and allyship in the workplace.
Soohoo is a professor of law and co-director of the Human Rights and Gender Justice Clinic at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law.
Prof. Rangita de Silva de Alwis recently shared her insights on the urgency of women’s rights in this moment with Penn Today.
Adam Garnick L’21, co-director of the Penn Law Immigrant Rights Project offers his take on the recent SCOTUS decision on Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam.
Leaders from around the globe convene for a virtual event through the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School’s Global Institute for Human Rights.
Law students partner with Thomson Reuters to lead seminal research on relationship between women and male leaders in business and law
Alyssa Cannizzaro L’21 and Eduarda Lague L’21, two students in Associate Dean Rangita de Silva de Alwis’ International Women’s Human Rights class, share their insights from their research papers on COVID-19’s impact on two key issues: reproductive healthcare and domestic violence.
Alyssa Cannizzaro L’21 and Eduarda Lague L’21, two students in Associate Dean Rangita de Silva de Alwis’ International Women’s Human Rights class, share their insights from their research papers on COVID-19’s impact on two key issues: reproductive healthcare and domestic violence.
Self-Reporting contributes to human rights improvements, find professors Beth Simmons and Cosette Creamer, who offer recommendations to improve UN Human Rights Treaty Body System
Petition filed on one-year anniversary of implementation of MPP program, also known as “Remain in Mexico”
Six Penn Law students present research findings at New York Bar Association on access to justice in The Gambia
Raghav Mendiratta and Vibha Mohan
Penn Law’s Office of International Programs has released the publication, “Bending the Arc of the Moral Universe: Three Essays on Moral Leadership.”
Ebola. It’s perhaps appropriate that the name itself is a French bastardization of an indigenous name for a river in the Congo. As the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the most fragile states in the world, struggles to find its footing amid a contested presidential election and various rebellions, the nation is also facing the newest instantiation of Ebola outbreak. The ongoing outbreak, first identified in August 2018, is now the deadliest since the outbreak of 2014-16, which began in Guinea in 2013, directly caused more than 10,000 deaths and indirectly caused many thousands more.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict and High-level Mediation Advisory Group to the UN Secretary-General, will serve as a Bok Visiting International Professor in the Fall of 2019 and will teach a course on Women, Peace, and Security with Associate Dean of International Affairs, Rangita de Silva de Alwis.
Few law school classes involve convenings at the UN. Even fewer give students a forum to discuss their policy proposals with UN leadership. Yet Penn Law students in Associate Dean for International Programs Rangita de Silva de Alwis’s seminar on “New Debates in International Women’s Rights” did just that when they convened at the United Nations on April 29 to present their research to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), UN Women, Office of Legal Affairs, and the newly appointed Office of the Secretary-General’s Victims’ Rights Advocate. The students had the opportunity to present to Under-Secretary-General and Legal Counsel Miguel de Serpa Soares and Assistant Secretary-General Jane Connors and other experts. For students eager to share a semester or more of research, this audience of key policy leaders was an inspiration.
A post published last week titled, “A Diverse House,” accused freshman Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) of being a driving force behind the spread of anti-Semitism within the halls of Congress. While we strongly disagree with this false allegation, we write to emphasize that, much like the frenzied outcry that Rep. Omar’s Tweets generated, that post failed to acknowledge the broader context in which Rep. Omar’s criticisms of AIPAC and Israeli policies must necessarily be understood–in particular, the rise of white nationalism and Islamophobia in this country. We write to provide some of this necessary context.
Twenty-two years ago Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty changed the national conversation on race, gender and reproductive justice. Two decades later, it remains more critical than ever before–a rallying cry around the world, for education, awareness, and action. Its vision for reproductive justice for all women engages in the global conversations on Female Genital Mutilation, virginity testing, forced pregnancy, forced sterilization and asks questions on how women’s ability to control their bodies is constantly challenged by politics, economics, race, cultural traditions, and injustice. A whole generation of feminist scholars and practitioners are trained on Dorothy Robert’s groundbreaking scholarship. In marking International Women’s Day, we speak to her about the way she continues to exert an influence on the study of law, gender, and its intersections. A Q&A with Rangita de Silva de Alwis, Associate Dean of International Affairs
Rangita de Silva de Alwis, the University of Pennsylvania Law School’s Associate Dean for International Programs, will be a featured participant at a major international summit, the Women Leaders Global Forum in Reykjavik, Iceland.
In the aftermath of this attack, CNN reported: “Dismay, horror, and disbelief were feelings shared by many in the aftermath of the mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.” Similar headlines blazed the front pages of international dailies, such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC, and The Guardian. While the international community certainly reacted to the shooting with dismay and horror, disbelief was not among the emotions that registered in the Jewish community.
Margaret Zhang L’15 works as a legal fellow at the Women’s Law Project advocating for pregnant and breastfeeding women in PA workplaces, schools, and prisons.
Members of Professor Beth Simmons’ Global Research Seminar on international humanitarian and international criminal law in Colombian peace process, traveled to Colombia to study the recent peace agreement and its implementation.
As part of the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative, in partnership with the Malaysian Centre for Constitutionalism and Human Rights, Penn Law’s Emily Sutcliffe traveled to Malaysia to conduct a week-long training for human rights attorneys and activists.
On November 6, Luis Moreno Ocampo spoke at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House about global justice systems and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
On November 2, Marc Ambinder, Journalist-in-Residence with Penn Law’s Center for Ethics and Rule of Law, spoke with Russian investigative journalist Yevgenia Albats about the ethical challenges she has faced throughout her journalism career in Russia.
Penn Law has announced a new partnership for its Chubb Rule of Law Fellowship, a prestigious post-graduate fellowship awarded annually to a Penn Law student or recent graduate pursuing a public-interest career in international rule of law and human rights. The 2018 Chubb Rule of Law Fellow will be placed with the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Rule of Law, Justice, Security and Human Rights (RoLJSHR) team at the United Nations in New York.
On October 10, Henry J. Steiner, Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard University, visited Penn Law to engage in discussion with students about his newly released book, Eyeing the World, as part of the Law School’s Critical Global Conversations.
According to the United Nations, Rohingya Muslims are considered to be the most persecuted minority group in the world. These unfortunate people are an ethnic Muslim minority numbering around one million living in the Buddhist majority country of Myanmar. The Rohingya have been residing in the northern parts of “Rakhine”, which is a geographically isolated state in western Myanmar. The word “Rohingya” is considered taboo in a country where they have been residing for more than a century. The continued victimization of Rohingyas at the hands of the Myanmar government is not a contemporary issue. The former British colony after achieving independence in 1948 has been struggling with armed ethnic and religious conflict.
The new Penn Law Global Affairs magazine creates a platform for ideas and action for a rapidly changing global order through the prism of Penn Law.
In the Transnational Legal Clinic, which was founded in 2006, students directly represent clients and organizations in international human rights and immigration legal proceedings. In this video feature clinic director Sarah Paoletti and alumni discuss the clinics work for clients seeking asylum and other forms of immigration relief.
In this dispatch, Darien Wynn L’19 describes his work with SECTION27, a public interest law center in South Africa.
Established in 2012 in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the fellowship creates new pathways for students to build careers in international rule of law and human rights.
In this summer employment dispatch, John Peng L’19 discusses his work in Nepal with the Center for Migration and International Relations.
The United Nations (UN) has long characterized the Rohingya Muslims as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities, with anti-Rohingya and anti-Muslim sentiment tainting Burma’s political and social spheres. In contravention to international human rights law, Burmese officials subject Rohingya Muslims to a spectrum of human rights violations including the denial of citizenship rights, restrictions on religious freedom, forced displacement, gender-based violence and the arbitrary deprivation of life.
In April, students from Penn Law’s seminar of International Women’s Rights presented their research during a forum at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. The seminar was taught by Rangita de Silva de Alwis, the Law School’s Associate Dean for International Programs. In this video feature, students from the course discuss their work on women’s rights and the trip to meet with policymakers and researchers.
On May 30, the President of the Human Rights Council, Ambassador Joaquín Alexander Maza Martelli, announced the appointment of Indira Jaising and Radhika Coomaraswamy to serve on a three-member high-level fact-finding mission in Myanmar.
Penn Law professor Beth Simmons, an expert on international relations and human rights, has been elected to the American Philosophical Society. She was one of 32 new members elected by the society’s membership this April.
Patricia Stottlemyer L’17 has been awarded this year’s Chubb Rule of Law Fellowship to support her work in international law and human rights following her graduation from Penn Law this year.
In January 2017, Penn Law faculty members Wendell Pritchett and Fernando Chang-Muy led a delegation of sixteen students to Cuba as part of their year-long Global Research Seminar (GRS).
Transnational Legal Clinic lecturer in law Ayodele Gansallo has been working hard to assist those affected by the recent Trump travel ban. Click the link to read more on Philly.com
Penn Law Dean Ted Ruger affirms that “as a world-leading research and teaching institution, we must engage actively with students, attorneys, and policymakers from around the globe in order to prepare our students to be lawyers and leaders in an increasingly connected society and economy.”
On January 27, President Trump’s signed an executive order blocking refugees and temporarily suspending immigration from seven predominately Muslim countries. A number of members of the Penn Law community have responded to news about the order, and this page contains information on upcoming events, comments from Penn Law faculty, students, and alumni, as well as information about the order’s effects on refugees and immigrants, the legal challenges being brought against it, the response of the judiciary, and the role of lawyers in the order’s wake.
On December 19, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, released its decision in favor of two undocumented workers who were denied access to justice and the right to non-discrimination after being injured on the job while working in the United States.
In honor of Human Rights Day on December 10th, Hayley Winograd L’17, shares her reflections on her documentary A Dignified Death, which addresses issues of the treatment of prisoners and compassionate release from Pennsylvania state prisons. Introduction by Editor Patricia Stottlemyer, L’17.
Congresswoman Barbara Lee delivered the Honorable A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. Memorial Lecture, hosted by the Penn Department of Africana Studies and held at Penn Law, on the successes of the Obama administration and the case for reparations.
Two titans of the global human rights movement reflected on the challenges facing women’s human rights, on September 20, before a packed room of students and faculty at Penn Law. Associate Dean for International Programs Rangita de Silva de Alwis moderated the conversation between former United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary General on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders Hina Jilani and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.
Earlier in the year, on International Women’s Day, The United Nations announced an initiative to end child marriage by 2030. If nothing is done to accelerate change, women married as children will reach one billion by 2030. While child marriage is well-documented as a heinous crime against girls, from a development perspective, addressing the causes of child marriage will be more expedient than addressing the consequences of child marriage: vulnerability to violence, maternal mortality, HIV Aids, and feminization of poverty, among others. As we mark the first year after nations committed to a new development agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals, ending early child marriage must be defined as both a women’s rights issue and a development imperative.
Ursula Wynhoven, Chief of Social Sustainability, Governance, and Legal for the UN Global Compact, sat down with the Law School’s Maura Douglas L’18 for Penn Law’s latest Critical Global Conversation.
After graduating from Penn Law, Sarah Kuper LLM’16 headed to the United Nations to work for her home country of New Zealand. As the Law School’s LLM Rule of Law and Human Rights Fellow, she used her experience in international law in her work at the Permanent Mission of New Zealand to the United Nations.
The University of Pennsylvania Law School has entered into Memoranda of Understanding with UN Women and the UN Global Compact to establish a fellowships for Penn Law students to work with UN Women on issues of gender equality and the law and with the UN Global Compact on human rights and decent work.
Hina Jilani and Dr. Navi Pillay talked at Penn Law about the challenges faced by women human rights defenders and the opportunities they could take advantage of to advance human rights.
In January, Penn Law’s newest Chubb Rule of Law Fellow, Natasha Arnpriester L’16, will begin her fellowship at Human Rights First, where she will be working in the group’s international refugee protection division, focusing on refugee advocacy and refugee law within the international context.
Girls’ education as a justice issue expands the notion of the right to education and invokes the right to education as a justiciable right. This new definition of education as justice provides a fresh lens to analyze the current war against girl’s education.
Montco Court opinion on a denied petition filed by Child Advocacy Clinic professors, Kara Finck and Jennifer Nagda, highlights misunderstandings between state and federal laws which leaves children with Special Immigrant Juvenile status unprotected.
With support from a Chubb Rule of Law Fund Grant, Kathleen Norland L’13 is conducting a “Refugee Access to Counsel” project, collecting testimony from refugees who do not have access to counsel about their interview process and how having a lawyer would have been helpful.
TLC calls for IACHR hearing about Central Americans held in detention centers.
Under Secretary-General and Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zainab Hawa Bangura spoke to Penn Law on the topic of sexual violence and trauma in conflict.
As the Docs Program undertakes visual work on behalf of lifers incarcerated for decades because they are ineligible for parole, we confront a ban on photographing and filming in prisons. Prison Portraits may be useful in providing not only a way to deal with the ban, but also an argument why it is wrong.
Ivan Šimonović, the U.N. Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights, came to Penn Law to speak about a more proactive approach to human rights.
Natasha Arnpriester L’16 worked this summer on issues of antidiscrimination and statelessness at the Open Society Justice Initiative.
After analyzing numerous documentaries about sex trafficking, Law Professor Emerita Kate Nace Day decided to make one that focuses on a vision of civil justice for survivors.
On July 7, 2015, Penn Law and the International Development Law Organization co-hosted a panel discussion at U.N. headquarters on how efforts to promote the rule of law may best address problems of equity and social justice confronting the international community.
As “Let the Fire Burn” (2013) and “The Bombing of Osage Avenue” (1987) show in very different ways, May 13, 1985 was a traumatic day in the history of police/citizen relations in Philadelphia. Its legacy is reflected in contemporary controversies over race relations in America.
Like “The Act of Killing,” Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The Look of Silence” examines the 1965 Indonesian genocide; this time the focus is Adi Rukun, the brother of a victim, who pursues his own mission of truth and reconciliation.
Rangita de Silva de Alwis, Penn Law’s Associate Dean for International Programs, was one of a number of women leaders who spoke at the release of the 2015 Report on the Status of Women and Girls in California.
Reed Brody, the Honorary Fellow-in-Residence for this year’s Public Interest Week, discussed working high profile cases against dictators such as Augusto Pinochet, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, and Hissène Habré.
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The late Harry Reicher, Adjunct Professor at Penn Law, made extensive use of visual material in teaching Holocaust Studies in the Law. His talk at the Shoah Foundation explains how and why.
Harry Reicher, Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and one of Australia’s leading international law and taxation experts, died on October 27. He was 66.
University of Pennsylvania Law Review Public Interest Fellow Shikha Bhattacharjee L’13 spent almost a year doing research on “manual scavenging” in India. The report she wrote based on her interviews, “Cleaning Human Waste: ‘Manual Scavenging,’ Caste, and Discrimination in India” was recently released by Human Rights Watch.
This dispatch from Natasha Arnpriester L’16 is one in a series of firsthand accounts by Law School students about how their summer employment opportunities are preparing them for their legal careers.
This dispatch from Catherine Eagan L’16 is one in a series of firsthand accounts by Law School students about how their summer employment opportunities are preparing them for their legal careers. Eagan, from New Jersey, will be pursuing public defender or civil rights litigation work after graduation.
New study by Prof. Paoletti details abuses suffered by Nepal’s migrant workers in Mideast, shows justice elusive for low-wage workers abroad.
Lawyers play a supporting role in protecting and assisting protesters who interact with digital visual technology. The lawyers may be practicing criminal law, civil liberties, or international human rights.
Penn Law’s Rule of Law Policy and Practice class traveled to Washington, DC for a day of meetings with key stakeholders in Rule of Law and International Human Rights arenas.
Third-year University of Pennsylvania Law School student Lucia Hall Seyfarth L’14 has been awarded the 2014-15 ACE Rule of Law Fellowship, given annually to a Penn Law student or recent graduate pursuing an international public-interest law career.
During spring break two students from the Penn Law Transnational Legal Clinic traveled to Geneva to participate in the United Nations Human Rights Committee’s review of U.S. compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
Important court decisions, revelations about NSA spying, and high-profile trials were among the legal events that captured headlines in 2013. Here, Penn Law faculty to weigh in on the year’s top legal developments.
Sharswood Fellow Matiangai Sirleaf reflects on the passing and legacy of Nelson Mandela.
More than two dozen second- and third-year students participating in Penn Law’s Externship Program are working this semester in government agencies and nonprofit organizations from New York, to Philadelphia, to Washington, D.C.
The rise of pervasive digital surveillance and what it means for the academic world and future professionals was the subject of a program sponsored Oct. 17 by Penn Law and the Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication.
Students in a seminar at the University of Pennsylvania Law School this fall are contributing to a University wide, cross-disciplinary project that seeks to rate how well the world’s leading Internet companies uphold free expression and privacy rights.
Shikha Bhattacharjee L’13 has been awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Program scholarship to India in Law, the United States Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board announced recently.
Last week, Penn Law hosted a panel discussion about rights litigation, law and political reform in China in Fitts Auditorium. The event was divided into two parts: the first part consisted of a panel in which the speakers discussed what the state of the rule of law in China was, and the second part consisted of a panel in which the speakers discussed rights protection, activist lawyering, accountability, and reform.
Five distinguished faculty members from around the world will visit Penn Law in the coming academic year to offer short, specialized courses, as part of a unique program designed to enrich the Law School’s curriculum with global perspectives.
Applications are being received for the 2014-15 ACE Rule of Law & Human Rights Fellowship.
Supported by an International Summer Human Rights Fellowship, Pinky Mehta L’15 is working in Geneva, Switzerland, at the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Cochav Elkayam-Levy, who graduated with distinction from Penn Law’s LLM graduate program in May, has been awarded the Law School’s LLM Rule of Law and Human Rights Fellowship.
Marsha Chien L’10 is a Skadden Fellow at the Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center (LAS-ELC) in the National Origin, Immigration and Language Rights program.
A Sharswood fellow at Penn Law, Matiangai Sirleaf’s research is moving the conversation about transitional justice beyond its traditional framework, which focuses on truth and punishment.
The Penn Law Immigrant Rights Project (PLIRP) is a TPIC Pro Bono Project whose goals include providing pro bono immigration law services to the greater Philadelphia community and educating the Penn community on issues of immigration law.
Third-year Penn Law student Kathleen Norland L’13 has been awarded the inaugural 2013-14 ACE Rule of Law & Human Rights Fellowship.
Students involved in Penn Law’s Transnational Legal Clinic testify on behalf of legal immigrants in the U.S. who suffer widespread abuses under the temporary guest worker program.
Six University of Pennsylvania Law School graduates honored for their career achievements, pro bono work, service to the legal profession and the Law School on October 24, 2012.
The conference brings together leading authorities in the law, technology, and ethics to address the threat of cyberwarfare.
On the eleventh anniversary of the September 11th attacks, Penn Law hosted the inaugural event for the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL) in Fitts Auditorium.
Penn Law is establishing the ACE Rule of Law Fellowship with the generous support of both the ACE Charitable Foundation and ACE Limited General Counsel Robert Cusumano L’80. Human Rights First, a preeminent legal advocacy organization, will partner with Penn Law to enable graduates to work on cutting-edge projects in rule of law and global human rights.
Innovative new seminar, “China and International Human Rights,” draws together Law School students, other Penn students, and members of the wider University community.