Public Service Profiles
HLS students win record number of public service fellowships
Harvard Law students won nine out of 27 Skadden fellowships in 2005. The Skadden program provides funding to graduating students and recent alumni to pursue public interest legal work. This year's achievement is the most in the history of the fellowship program awarded to students from a single school.
HLS students seek justice for a Brazilian family
In November of 2005, Clinical Professor James Cavallaro and three students traveled to Costa Rica, not for an early winter getaway, but for some of the most intensive legal work of the students' careers. For six days, the team spent nearly day and night preparing to litigate a case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José, involving the abuse and murder of a psychiatric patient in a remote region of northeastern Brazil.
Guilty until proven innocent
Brandon Moon was a 25-year-old college student at the University of Texas at El Paso in 1988 when he was convicted of rape and sentenced to 75 years in prison. Last December, after 16 years behind bars, he was released following conclusive DNA testing that proved his innocence. A few days later, Jennifer Millstone '05 received a gift from Moon--an angel pin that he'd made in prison--to thank her for helping to set him free.
Kosovar student uses legal skills to help her war-torn homeland
For Recica, the opportunity to study for a year at HLS is about more than broadening her perspectives, both legal and cultural. When she received her first law degree at the University of Prishtina in 1995, in the capital of Kosovo, she -- like other non-Serbian Kosovar lawyers -- was not allowed to take the bar exam and practice law. As part of its efforts in ethnic cleansing, the Serbian government had closed the Kosovar education system several years earlier, and the parallel system set up by Kosovar Albanians was not officially recognized. "I wanted to continue my education," she said. "I wanted to see how it is to go to school in normal circumstances."
HLS student gets a front-row seat for U.N. action
Fifteen ambassadors took their seats at the round Security Council table. Two rows behind U.S. Ambassador Gerald Scott sat Alex Wong '07, summer intern at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. The crowd quieted for the start of the meeting about Darfur, and Wong put on his plastic earpiece and prepared to write in his notebook. Though he had little formal preparation for the meeting, his notes would be vetted by his bosses and turned into confidential cables relayed to the U.S. State Department. The crowd quieted for the start of the meeting about Darfur, and Wong put on his plastic earpiece and prepared to write in his notebook. Though he had little formal preparation for the meeting, his notes would be vetted by his bosses and turned into confidential cables relayed to the U.S. State Department.
Chayes Fellows go global to see the law in action
In the summer of 2005, while some classmates in New York and Boston drafted briefs or finalized memos in high-rise office buildings, the 28 Harvard Law students selected as 2005 Chayes Fellows encountered entirely different challenges. While many students worked in human rights with organizations like the U.N., the program encourages students to explore a range of areas of international law and development issues. Brennan worked for an NGO dedicated to biodiversity and found that environmental problems inherently raise international legal questions.
Student Wages Legal Battle to Protect Women from Forced Sterilization
The nurse demanded to know what Barbora Bukovska was doing in the hospital ward asking questions. Bukovska said she was a human rights lawyer and that she wanted to speak to the doctor in charge of the ward at this Eastern Slovakian hospital. But she never got a chance to talk. As the largest ethnic minority group in Slovakia, the Romani population has suffered marginalization and even, during World War II, attempts at extermination. Viewed by many white Slovaks as "gypsies," the majority of Roma live in shantytowns on the outskirts of villages, often without basic utilities, access to education or health care. "In Slovakia, Roma have always been segregated. They live in shacks made from wood or mud, with no electricity and no water," said Bukovska, who was born and raised in what is now Slovakia. She was living and studying in Prague when the end of Communism split Czechoslovakia in two.
HLS Student Wins Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship
Third-year Harvard Law School student O. Grace Bankole has been selected as a 2004 Soros Justice Advocacy Fellow. The fellowship funds lawyers, advocates and organizers who initiate litigation, public education, grassroots organizing and advocacy projects that will have a measurable impact on a host of criminal justice issues.
Student Group Urges Investigation of Missing Sikhs
Harvard Law Student Advocates for Human Rights, a student group that works closely with the law school’s Human Rights Program, has recently filed a friend of the court brief with the Indian National Human Rights Commission regarding the disappearance of thousands of Sikhs in Punjab by the Indian government in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Amanda Leiter Named First Beagle Fellow
Amanda Leiter has been named the first recipient of the Beagle/Harvard Law School fellowship. A 2000 graduate of HLS, Leiter will begin her fellowship at the conclusion of her current clerkship with U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.
School Wins Record Number of Skadden Fellowships
HLS students and recent graduates have won an unprecedented eight Skadden Fellowships to pursue public interest work. The awards represent the most given to applicants from any single law school in the 15-year history of the Skadden Fellowship Foundation.
Student Spotlight: Stephan Sonnenberg
The hardest part of Stephan Sonnenberg's job last summer was telling his clients about the likelihood of a five-year wait for their day in court.
Student Spotlight: Sarah Bennett
Sarah Bennett admits she probably should have been on crutches when she arrived in Cambridge last fall to start her first year at HLS. But the West Virginia native was, by her own account, too stubborn. Never mind that only three weeks before, she'd been bucked off a horse that then fell on top of her, breaking her knee and causing her to hit her head so hard she had a seizure before losing consciousness.
To the Voters Go the Spoils
Jocelyn Benson '04 isn't waiting to finish law school to start changing the world. She's doing it in every free moment she has between her second-year classes, her duties as a resident tutor for Harvard College students and a research job with Professor Laurence Tribe '66.
HLS Announces Environmental Law Fellowship
Harvard Law School has announced a new fellowship program that will place recent graduates at the Natural Resources Defense Council for two years of training in nonprofit environmental law. The Beagle/Harvard Law School Fellowship program, which will begin this year, has been created through a donation from Beagle Foundation and its co-founder Joy Covey, a 1989 graduate of the law school.