The International Human Rights/Rule of Law Initiative provides students with extensive exposure to human rights and rule of law issues as they arise in domestic litigation, international human rights complaints, policy work, international field work, coursework, and scholarship. The Initiative pulls together the work being done in the Immigration & Human Rights Clinic, the Immigration & Workers' Rights Clinic, the Constitutional and Civil Litigation Clinic and the International Human Rights Project, and collaborates with organizations such as the Center for Constitutional Law, the ACLU of NJ, the Gibbons Public Interest and Constitutional Law Fellowship, the Immigration and Refugee Rights Clinic at the University of Sofia, Bulgaria, and Seton Hall Law's Haiti Rule of Law Association.

Clinics

The Civil Rights and Constitutional Litigation Clinicfocuses on national security and human rights cases emerging from the "war on terror," including those raising issues related to the lawfulness of extraordinary rendition, torture and indefinite detention. The clinic has been heavily involved in the Guantánamo Bay habeas cases, is involved in litigation to protect the rights of immigrants, prisoners rights and to increase openness in government.

The Immigrants' Rights/International Human Rights Clinic represent people from all over the world who are in need of protection from persecution, trafficking and torture, as well as immigrant workers who have been the victim of wage theft. The clinic represents clients before asylum officers and in Federal Immigration Court, in appeals to the Board of Immigration Appeals, the Second and Third Circuits, or the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Students may also be engaged in fact-finding and as well as comparative law and human rights projects with immigration clinics. Another key aspect of the clinic is providing assistance to day laborers in the greater Newark area, through wage and hour cliams in small claims court and communitiy outreach on issues impacting immigrant workers in New Jersey.

Clinic Faculty

Lori Nessel

Cases, Projects, Initiatives

Center for Social Justice faculty, and the students they supervise, transform the lives of countless individuals through their work on a wide range of legal, social, and public policy issues. Here is a sampling of some of their recent work.

Request for a General Hearing on Extrajudicial Medical Repatriation of Immigrants from the United States

Submission to the UN on Medical Repatriation

ICE Raids - Challenging the unlawful raiding of immigrants’ homes by the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agents.

Guantánamo – Working on behalf of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay and the case of Murat Kurnaz.

Guatemala Rule of Law - The program’s goals are to expose students to issues involving access to justice in a country that faces great challenges and to identify ways that the Center for Social Justice can support the development of the rule of law in Guatemala.

Haiti Rule of Law  – Collaboration between Seton Hall Law and L’Ecole Superieure Catholique de Droit de Jérémie in Haiti.

Cross-Border Collaboration with the University of Sofia, Bulgaria - Working together to bring petitions before the European Court of Human Rights.

Crossing the Line: Damaging Immigration Enforcement Practices by New Jersey Police - Read the report authored by Practitioner-in-Residence Bassina Farbenblum.