International Justice Clinic: Grace Palcic, 3L
The International Justice Clinic has been one of the highlights of my law school experience as it has allowed me to see what human rights work looks like internationally and domestically. Additionally, I have loved learning about and working in advocacy at the unique intersection of domestic and international law.
This school year, I have been on both our Social Media and Human Rights team and the Treaty Body Litigation team. Being a part of the Social Media and Human Rights team has allowed me to see the interaction between U.S. federal, U.S. state, foreign, and international treaty-based human rights laws interact with each other and how private businesses are bound by different laws and obligations. For one of my projects on the team, I was able to work on researching and drafting an animus brief for the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case Gonzalez v. Google in which we applied international human rights laws around freedom of expression to an issue here in the U.S. Working on the brief gave me the opportunity to dive into domestic laws, international human rights treaties, and foreign law and policy, as well as learn from experts within our clinic and across the country and world. Beyond gaining real experience in human rights advocacy, it was an amazing experience to collaborate with so many leaders in the field and ultimately see our work submitted to the Court!
Another major project I was a part of focused on creating a report on new and proposed state social media laws in the U.S. that have the potential to affect human rights. After researching the new state laws and legislation, the relevant human rights treaties, and the federal laws related to treaty implementation and application to U.S., the team focused on determining the potential impacts of these laws on human rights and what it could mean for both social media companies and individual users. Additionally, I have been able to engage with other projects on the team such as work on the Facebook Oversight Board which provided me a greater perspective of the role of private companies in protecting and promoting human rights.
I also have been on the Treaty Body Litigation team where we have explored the different ways treaty bodies can be used to promote human rights through mechanisms such as individual complaints and Universal Periodic Reviews. As part of the Treaty Body Litigation team, I was able to assist one of our clinic fellows, Hinako Sugiyama, in preparing for a presentation to human rights lawyers at the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa. At the conference, I was able to present about the requirements for bringing a complaint through the Optional Protocols of the major UN human rights treaty bodies and address some of the potential benefits and drawbacks that can be considered before pursuing treaty body litigation.
I have also been able to work closely with the other students on the Treaty Body Litigation team to conduct research related to requirements of harm and domestic exhaustion which virtually all UN and regional human rights treaty bodies have to bring an individual complaint. This project has been a great opportunity to see unique how digital rights advocacy fits into human rights law and to better understand the relationship between regional and UN human rights bodies. I'm excited to continue the work on the Treaty Body Litigation team this semester as we're beginning additional cases and advocacy with other nonprofit groups.