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Does anyone know of any schools with strong Human Rights Law programs outside of the T14?

I would not recommend going to law school with the ultimate goal of working in human rights, unless you interpret human rights to involve legal aid work. Human rights jobs, particularly human rights law jobs, are so rare that it would be the height of foolishness to plan on working in that field. Same for the other 3 fields that everyone fantasizes over: environmental law, international law, and sports law. The jobs aren't out there for those fields.

summoner wrote:... unless you interpret human rights to involve legal aid work.

That is my interpretation. Let me try to ask it this way, what are the some schools outside of the T14 list that have well respected Public Interest programs?

mt1042 wrote:

summoner wrote:... unless you interpret human rights to involve legal aid work.

That is my interpretation. Let me try to ask it this way, what are the some schools outside of the T14 list that have well respected Public Interest programs?

I'd be interested in this as well.

Also, what other interpretations of human rights law could there be? Seems to be a fairly explicit term to me.....

jayn3 wrote:

mt1042 wrote:

summoner wrote:... unless you interpret human rights to involve legal aid work.

That is my interpretation. Let me try to ask it this way, what are the some schools outside of the T14 list that have well respected Public Interest programs?

I'd be interested in this as well.

Also, what other interpretations of human rights law could there be? Seems to be a fairly explicit term to me.....

When most 0Ls talk about human rights law I believe they're thinking of NGOs, the U.N., Amnesty International, etc.

Outside very rare occasions legal aid work only deals with human rights at its most general level in the sense that giving someone access to judicial process could be construed as a human right.

To answer the questions, though, go to the school that offers the best blend of prestige and cost; all schools have public interest programs.

To the contrary of what's been said in this thread, I've heard one of my professors discussing the need for lawyers in Africa that deal with human rights issues (specifically with regard to IP). While IP is largely a trade right nowadays, it relates to human rights (e.g. health) because of traditional knowledge or agricultural/genetic resources. Many NGOs voice these issues to WIPO and the WTO. I didn't get the impression that these jobs are really that rare (especially for somebody dedicated to doing it - those people are rare) or competitive in the same way working for the U.N. is competitive. The coolest jobs like the U.N. will almost all require legal experience first anyhow.

Also, I am not sure I agree with whoever said (above) that environmental law is in the same boat as international and sports law. Insofar that it's kind of weird to talk about practicing environmental law generally (like practicing international law) I would concede. But there are a lot of jobs out there, on both sides of the coin (hello BP counsel), that deal with particular environmental law aspects. There's just so much domestic law dealing with it that you can really make yourself an expert in a niche and thrive (see Matthies posts from maybe a year ago on his take w/r/t water law).


The main takeway, which we can all agree on, is that if you can specifically elaborate what kind of thing you want to do, you can put yourself on a path to get there. No guarantee you are good enough to get there, of course. But to a certain extent that applies across the board.