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Seminar on Strategic Litigation in International Human Rights

The Center's Seminar on Strategic Litigation in International Human Rights offers AUWCL students the opportunity to analyze international litigation as a tool for advancing human rights. The seminar focuses both on litigation and factors outside litigation that are necessary to create an environment where the desired legal change can take place. The class has a theoretical and a practical component. Students, therefore, study cases and analyze scholarship related to impact litigation in international human rights law. At the same time, students are assigned a case/project related to work in strategic impact litigation.

STUDENTS HAVE WORKED ON THE FOLLOWING PROJECTS:

• Analysis of the Pardon powers of the President of the United States and its use in the case of Joseph Arpaio;

• Preliminary report on the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions;

• Amicus Brief for a case against Ethiopia before the African Commission of Human and Peoples' Rights;

• Amicus Brief against the death penalty, submitted before the Constitutional Court of Guatemala; 

• Amicus Brief on gender stereotypes and profiling of sex workers in Colombia, submitted before a Court of Appeals in Colombia; 

• Legal Opinion on Inter-American Human Rights standards on gender identity applicable to the regulation of change of legal name in birth certificates and identity cards submitted before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights; 

• Oral arguments before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights during a hearing on the Advisory Opinion on Inter-American Human Rights standards on gender identity applicable to the regulation of change of legal name in birth certificates and identity cards; 

• Amicus Brief on international human rights standards applicable to the regulation of abortion, submitted before the Constitutional Court of Chile; 

• Legal Brief on alternatives to pretrial detention submitted to the Inter-American

• Drafting of an introduction for a bill on Disability Rights in Colombia; 

• FOIA request to different U.S. government offices on the treatment of undocumented migrant children in detention who reach the age of 18 while in detention; 

• Draft of a report for the United Nations on the public health and labor problem of chronic kidney disease in workers of the sugarcane industry in Nicaragua; 

• Litigation support to legal counsels on a case of LGBTI rights in a country in the Caribbean; 

• Analysis of the jurisprudence of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions; 

• Legal analysis of options for legalization of sex work in Latin America; 

• Research for the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights on the rights of people with disabilities in Latin America; 

• Litigation support for a case on due process before the Inter-American system of Human Rights against Panama

“The Center’s work in impact litigation embodies the law school’s commitment to advancing human rights and dignity.”

Robert Goldman, faculty advisor