Andrew Bookbinder

Andrew grew up in a Foreign Service family, spending about half of his life in different regions of East Asia until beginning college in the United States. He is a passionate advocate for historically underserved communities and is committed to addressing social justice issues on the systemic level.

He attended the College of William and Mary, where he studied human rights and criminal justice reform. There, he served as a chair of the Refugee Committee with the William and Mary chapter of Amnesty International. Additionally, as a member of the Asian American Student Initiative, Andrew helped successfully lobby for the creation of an Asian and Pacific Islander American Studies major and minor at William and Mary.

Prior to law school, Andrew learned what high-quality and zealous legal representation looks like as an intern investigator with the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. He also worked as a casework supervisor and disaster responder with the American Red Cross in Los Angeles for two years, serving as a housing advocate for individuals and families impacted by disasters.

At Penn Carey Law, Andrew is the Co-President of the Democracy Law Project (DLP). DLP is a pro bono project dedicated to addressing issues of democracy within the broader conversations of racial, gender, environmental, and social justice. He is also an associate editor of the Journal of Law and Social Change, the Public Interest Chair of Penn Carey Law’s Asian Pacific American Law Student Association, and a proud member of the inaugural E&I Fellow Cohort.

This past summer, Andrew served as a summer legal intern at the ACLU of Virginia, where he worked on a wide variety of civil rights cases ranging from voting rights to criminal legal reform and First Amendment issues. Next summer he will be working at the Special Litigation Division of the Public Defender Service of D.C.

In his free time, he enjoys reading fiction, playing soccer and tennis, and occasionally setting his apartment fire alarm off as he tries to cook new and exciting things.