Through the Global Justice Clinic, JD and LLM students at NYU School of Law work to prevent, challenge, and redress human rights violations in situations of global inequality.
Taking on cases and projects that involve cross-border human rights violations, the harmful impacts of activities by state and non-state actors, and emerging problems that require close collaboration between actors at the local and international levels, students engage in human rights investigation, advocacy, and litigation in domestic and international settings. Serving as legal advisers, counsel, co-counsel, or advocacy partners, Clinic students work side-by-side with human rights activists from around the world.
A Human Rights-Based Approach
The Global Justice Clinic endeavors to carry out its work in a rights-based manner that empowers marginalized populations to know and exercise their rights, and that uses methods from across a variety of disciplines.
The Clinic works in proximity with communities and grassroots organizations to ensure they have access to the information and tools they need to advance the fulfillment of rights, to anticipate and prevent human rights abuses, and to seek accountability for violations.
The goal of these legal empowerment efforts is not only justice; it is to support individuals and communities deprived of their rights to lead efforts to prevent and redress abuses.
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Professor Meg Satterthwaite
Global Justice Clinic Director
One of the most important things is to really turn the human rights based approach on ourselves, and to make sure that we do our work in a way that advances the human rights of the people we are working with. For example, are we accountable to our partners?
Fieldwork
Fieldwork consists of projects undertaken for or with individual clients, human rights organizations, and social movement groups in the United States and abroad, as well as intergovernmental human rights experts and bodies, including the United Nations. Projects focus on situations of global injustice where the Global Justice Clinic has a comparatively valuable contribution to make, and where it is not displacing local expertise and capacity.
Over the last decade, the Clinic has provided cutting edge legal analysis exposing human rights abuses premised on national security and counter-terrorism imperatives, including practices such as extraordinary rendition, disappearances, and detainee abuse. As the landscape of the “War on Terror” continues to shift and evolve, so do the Clinic’s areas of concern, which have spread to include the gendered impacts of U.S. counter-terrorism measures, the impacts of lethal robotics and drones, and, most recently, the misuse of commercial spyware by the surveillance state.
In addition to tackling these and other pressing civil and political rights issues, the Clinic works to defend and promote economic, social and cultural rights. It does so by using cutting-edge methodologies to assess—and advocate for—the fulfillment of rights, such as the rights to water and food, examining the roles played by international institutional actors, pushing for corporate accountability, and fostering dialogue between the development and human rights communities.
Projects on these diverse issues give students an opportunity to find their role alongside collaborative partners in formulating policy, conducting research, and developing strategic legal responses to challenging human rights problems.
GJC supervising attorneys Nikki Reisch and Ellie Happel with GJC students Tyler Walton and Astha Sharma Pokharel, and GJC partner Samuel Nesner (Kolektif Jistis Min), meeting with partners in a community empowerment project in Kenyasi, Ghana
GJC supervising attorneys Nikki Reisch and Ellie Happel with GJC students Tyler Walton and Astha Sharma Pokharel, and GJC partner Samuel Nesner (Kolektif Jistis Min), meeting with partners in a community empowerment project in Kenyasi, Ghana
Coursework
The seminar component of the Clinic critically examines the human rights field, while teaching the core skills of human rights work, including fact-finding, interviewing, advocacy, litigation, and evaluation. The Clinic is committed to interrogating and expanding the human rights toolbox by using methods drawn from—and in collaboration with experts in—other fields, including geology, hydrology, public health, forensics, and anthropology.
Students also address questions of ethical, political and professional responsibility related to human rights work. Through readings, discussions, and simulations, students gain familiarity with substantive human rights law and methodologies of human rights practice, developing a base of knowledge that serves them in their Clinic projects and beyond.
For more information on the Clinic and application instructions, please visit the NYU School of Law website.
Margaret L. Satterthwaite
CHRGJ Faculty Director
Director, Global Justice Clinic
Professor of Clinical Law
César Rodríguez-Garavito
Visiting Professor of Clinical Law
Ellie Happel
Adjunct Professor, Global Justice Clinic
Haiti Project Director
Sienna Merope-Synge
Adjunct Professor of Clinical Law
Sara Robinson
Legal Fellow, Global Justice Clinic
Current Projects
Human Rights in Haiti’s Emerging Mining Sector
Legal Empowerment through Community-Led Monitoring
Legal Empowerment and Immigration
Torture, Rendition, and Detention
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James Olriche Pierre
Kolektif Jistis Min, Haiti
The Global Justice Clinic is not ‘above,’ saying what those ‘below’ should do. Instead, we have a meeting space, of debate, of exchange, about what action we will take together.
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Ijeamaka Obasi
NYU Law JD '18
I came to law school to learn how to effectively advocate for increased corporate accountability from within the private sector.
As a student advocate in GJC, my team and I worked with a coalition of Haitian community organizations and residents to prevent and mitigate human rights violations and environmental harm resulting from potential commercial gold mining in Haiti. We employed a variety of strategies guided by international law, mainly designing a household water survey on the right to water.
Through our work on this project, combined with my MBA coursework, I’ve learned how strategies can be used to effectively show that respecting, protecting, and fulfilling human rights are not only obligations of state powers, but also best practices for businesses responsible to the communities in which they operate.
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Alexandra Zetes
NYU Law JD '16
Participating in the Clinic, first as a student and then as a Masiyiwa-Bernstein Fellow, allowed me to work directly on a variety of real-world human rights issues, from an indigenous rights project in Guyana, to litigation on extraordinary rendition and a project on the mental health of human rights workers.
The Clinic provided critical training outside of the academic classroom setting and an opportunity to forge strong, lasting friendships with classmates who have also gone on to build careers in the world of human rights.
I will carry both my experiences from the Clinic, and the relationships I built through that work, with me throughout my career as a human rights lawyer.
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Wade McMullen
Managing Attorney, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and NYU Law JD '11
Because of the incredible partnership with the Global Justice Clinic we were able to present a comprehensive 120-page report to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights detailing excessive use of force by police against Black Americans.
Complemented by the testimony from survivors and activists, the work of the Global Justice Clinic continues to shape the Commission’s response to the epidemic of police violence in the United States, and in turn is helping to set standards for our entire region.
Past Global Justice Clinic Projects 
Press Releases 
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