Alumna Connie Chung

EJF stipends helped Georgetown Law alumna Connie Chung pursue a career in public interest law in law school and beyond. Here she shares her experiences:

When I started law school, I was interested in international human rights work. So for my 1L summer, I received an EJF grant to work in Durban, South Africa, at the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD). ACCORD is a human rights NGO promoting peace and sustainability throughout the African continent through dispute resolution and peacekeeping methods. I studied about the various conflicts in Africa and published an article on the civil war in Sierra Leone. I also attended a peacekeeping conference in Harare, Zimbabwe, with mid-level UN officers and other human rights workers. Not only did I learn a great deal about the civil conflicts in Africa, but I got to travel around Africa for two months.


Above- Connie working at ACCORD in South Africa

The next year, I wanted to try my hand at civil rights and impact litigation. Through my 2L EJF grant, I got to work on employment discrimination cases at the Employment Law Center (ELC) in San Francisco. Two of ELC’s cases were coming before the US Supreme Court that fall, so I spent much of the summer working on the oral arguments. In addition, I successfully represented a client—a single father with two children—in his unemployment insurance hearing.

These summer internships helped me land a permanent position after law school at the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, where I worked on cases involving post-9/11 religious and racial profiling, police accountability, reproductive rights, and the First Amendment. I then moved to Los Angeles where I worked on housing discrimination cases at the Housing Rights Center (HRC). At HRC, I first-chaired my own cases in state and federal court, and argued my first case before the Ninth Circuit.

There were times in law school when I doubted whether I’d made the right decision to pursue public interest law, but my EJF summers reminded me why this was the right career path for me. Now I’m looking at changing jobs again, but I know the experiences I had during my EJF summers will help me land a new job, just like they’ve done so far.

Rebecca Project for Human Rights

Anna Carpenter shares her experiences:

This summer, I worked as a law clerk at the Rebecca Project for Human Rights (RPHR), a national legal and policy advocacy organization based in Washington, DC. RPHR works to promote policy reform, justice and dignity for vulnerable families. The organization works at the nexus of the child welfare, criminal justice, and substance abuse treatments systems that impact the lives of vulnerable families. RPHR works to address the pervasiveness of violence against women and girls, the draconian conditions that too often characterize maternal incarceration, and the dearth of access to health and healing for incarcerated mothers and their children—RPHR frames these issues in a human rights context.

I began working with RPHR during the spring semester, when I was enrolled in Professor Aiken's Motherhood and Criminality course. As part of that experiential learning class, I worked for RPHR and supported their work to send the shackling of pregnant incarcerated women. In the United States, most state and federal prisons engage in the horrible practice of shackling women during pregnancy and childbirth. Women are routinely shackled, with hard, heavy iron shackles, across their stomachs (including during transportation to the hospital while they are in labor), by their legs and by their wrists. Women are usually shackled to the hospital bed throughout
labor and childbirth. All of this, despite the presence of guards in the room and despite the fact that most incarcerated women are non-violent offenders.

This summer, I continued to work on the shackling issue by conducting national survey of state policies on shackling. I was also able to write an amicus brief for an 8th Circuit case where a civil rights claim was brought on behalf of a woman who was shackled in Arkansas. My time with RPHR has truly been gift in my personal and professional life. I respect and admire the staff and their approach to the work. I would encourage anyone seeking an amazing summer work experience to contact this inspiring organization.

Les Mêmes Droits Pour Tous

Ioana Rusu writes from West Africa:

I first met Mamadou Alpha Barry during a routine visit to La Surêté, the largest prison facility in Guinea, West Africa. A young man of only 23, he had been placed in pre-trial detention since 2004. His family could not afford a lawyer, so he asked our organization to take his case. Several weeks later, we finally located his file and were shocked to discover that all charges against Mamadou had already been dropped--in November 2004. He should have been set free, but someone neglected to convey this information to the prison. Mamadou Alpha Barry walked out of prison a free man on July 7th, 2008, after over 3 years and 7 months of illegal detention.

Mamadou’s case is shocking, but sadly far from unique. The disorganization and corruption endemic in Guinea’s judicial system have given rise to grave and pervasive human rights abuses. I have spent the past 10 weeks working with Les Mêmes Droits Pour Tous – MDT (Equal Rights for All), the only non-governmental organization in Guinea currently providing free legal assistance to adult detainees.
The work is challenging and often extremely frustrating. Some of our clients have already finished their sentences, but have not yet been set free. Others have been in pre-trial detention for many years. Yet others have confessed to crimes they did not commit after having been severely tortured by the police.
During my ten weeks with the organization, I have attended trials and hearings, met with clients, followed-up with cases of illegal detention, and helped raise awareness about police brutality. For more information about MDT’s work and my experience working in the Guinean judicial system, please email me at Ioana.C.Rusu@gmail.com.

South African Human Rights Commission

Christina Calce shares her experiences in South Africa:

Not that long ago, my supervisor asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I replied, only half jokingly, "save the world." I realize that that is a rather ambitious plan, but I feel like I am at least doing a bit to help the people of South Africa in my position at the South
African Human Rights Commission.


I am here with two other Georgetown students, Danielle Petrilli and
Nyasha Griffith, and the Commission has divided us between three of
its departments: Appeals, Gauteng Province ("GP"), and Legal Services.
I started in appeals, rotated to the GP floor about a week ago, and
will head to Legal Services next week.

As an appeals intern, I dealt primarily with research and analysis related to government legislation on hate speech. One of the most interesting things about S.A. is that its constitution is only 14 years old: it was established after the fall of apartheid in 1994. Most legislative acts enforcing constitutional provisions are even younger than that. Consequently, there is limited jurisprudence on most topics and a wide range of debate on issues such as, "Where does the right to free expression stop and the right to protect human dignity through measures prohibiting hate speech begin?" My particular research was related to situation wherein the Commission found that a prominent union leader did not commit hate speech when he made certain anti-farmer statements following allegations that white farmers had attacked a black farm worker. The farmers' trade union filed an appeal disagreeing with the Commission's finding, and my supervisor asked me to research all possible interpretations of the hate speech legislative provisions. In my memo, I argued that the Commission had been correct in its initial finding, and that in this case, freedom of expression and free political discourse were the most important rights
at stake.

Now I am in the GP division where I deal primarily with complaint intake, but also have the opportunity to investigate allegations of human rights abuses. Yesterday, we drove to a shantytown about an hour outside the city. The place was wreaked with poverty: most buildings were little more than shacks of scrap metal and corrugated steel, children played with toys made from wire scraps, and the "road" was a dirt path interrupted at points by mini-rivers of water, waste and motor oil. The government is threatening to bulldoze most of the town in order to lay water and sewage pipes which would run to another nearby community. While clean water and proper sewage are certainly desirable, the government had not considered what would happen to the people whose homes were destroyed in the process. Adding to the issue
were three individuals who had obtained permits from the municipality to construct "proper homes." They built and paid for these homes themselves, using concrete and cinderblocks to create permanent dwellings. The government threatened to bulldoze these homes as well, even though the people had devoted their limited resources to
purchasing the cement and cinderblock supplies. The demolition has ceased for now, and we are working to have either the municipality reroute the pipes or to have the department of housing provide alternate homes.

Next week I head to the legal services department, which may more aptly be referred to as "litigation." Cases that we can't resolve through mediation at the provincial level are sent to the Equality Court, and I will be assisting Commission advocates in preparing their cases.

Needless to say, I couldn't be in South Africa without the Equal Justice Foundation's help. Thanks to the Equal Justice Foundation, I have gained a great deal of legal experience, and I have also given back to the South African people. I might not be saving the world, but if we can at least save the shantytown shacks from being demolished, then my work here will have been worthwhile.

South African Human Rights Commission

Danielle Petrilli writes from South Africa

This summer I am interning with the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Commission was established to investigate the prima facie violations of human rights as contained within the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.

In my first week with the Commission I assisted in the inspection of a displaced person camp for the victims of xenophobic attacks in the Gauteng Province. The attacks were largely a result of high unemployment rates in South Africa coupled with increasing numbers of immigrants from nearby, less stable countries, particularly Zimbabwe.

The camp we inspected was set up a few days before our arrival and the residents had been recently moved from various other smaller sites. The day of our visit Johannesburg was rainy and cold, affording our team the opportunity to see the newly set up camp at its worst. The Commission’s task was to investigate not only the quality and availability of things like food, shelter, and water, but also to monitor the set-up of schools, transportation to work, health care, etc. Walking through the camp on such a dreary day with residents swarming for news and the opportunity to tell their story was both frustrating and moving. Interestingly, it was mostly men that approached us or sought news from the camp managers. One of my first lessons in the camp was that due to traditional gender roles, female concerns in such emergency situations easily fall by the way-side. Additionally, adolescents and teenagers are often the last to receive attention for all focus is placed on babies and small children. These were just a few of the lessons I learned in my first day of fieldwork.

I have also had the opportunity to observe several mediations. In one such mediation, I accompanied a legal officer from the Commission to mediate a dispute concerning a piece of land between two Afrikaner ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church. Unwilling to question the status of the land’s ownership with the government, the ministers opted to resolve their dispute within their own community. This mediation was my induction to the tension that still exists for some citizens between the old National Party government and the post-apartheid African National Congress government.

Throughout my internship, I have had the opportunity to engage in many valuable comparative law debates. From formal debates over the status of hate speech in South Africa versus the U.S. to informal discussions about the future of the U.S. presidency, I believe my internship with the Commission has afforded me a plethora of new perspectives. This is an experience I certainly would not have been able to gain without the help of EJF funding.