Patricia Stottlemyer L’17
Patricia Strottlemyer is a human rights lawyer and advocate working to hold the U.S. accountable to its human rights obligations. She currently serves as Senior Domestic Policy Advisor at Oxfam America, where she advocates for federal policies that address inequality, including policies related to immigrants’ rights, racial justice, workers’ rights, and economic justice.
Prior to joining Oxfam, Patricia worked as an impact litigation attorney at Human Rights First in Washington, D.C., where she helped to lead the organization’s strategic impact litigation program. She litigated class action suits against the federal government on behalf of asylum seekers, including the cases striking down he Trump administration’s asylum ban and transit ban. Her work has focused on protecting fair and meaningful access to protection in the United States and fighting against in humane immigration detention. Patricia joined Human Rights First as the Chubb Rule of Law and Human Rights Fellow, working at the intersection of national security policy and human rights law. In that capacity, she served as a nongovernmental observer of the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay.
At Penn Carey Law, Patricia found her passion for lawyering for social change, especially at the intersection of the international human rights and domestic law and policy. She employs a holistic approach to advocacy, marrying client representation, policy reform, and systemic legal change. Patricia spent a year in Penn’s Transnational Legal Clinic, where she represented asylum seekers and others seeking humanitarian protection in the United States. She also pursued a graduate certificate in Middle East and Islamic Studies, building on her pre-law school experience in foreign policy. Patricia was a case manager with the International Refugee Assistance Project, a senior editor on the Journal of Constitutional Law, and editor-in chief, of the Penn Carey Law Global Affairs Blog. She co-authored The Fight for Equal Protection: Reconstruction-Redemption Redux with Penn and a world without prisons.