The Human Rights Clinic is an experiential learning program in which students gain practical human rights lawyering experience in both domestic and international settings. Students have significant responsibility as legal advisors, litigation partners, or advocacy partners with lawyers and human rights advocates in Australia and Asia, under the Clinic Director’s supervision. Through work on specific cases, advocacy and law reform projects and a weekly seminar, the program aims to strengthen students’ practical skills in legal and non-legal writing, international and comparative legal research, advocacy, problem-solving, and independent judgment, while encouraging critical reflection on the role of law and lawyers in advancing human rights at home and in our region. The clinic’s casework and projects involve law, clients or contexts that extend beyond Australia’s borders, and focus primarily on advancing the human rights of migrant workers and refugees. Clinic projects may include, for example, supporting organisations in Asia and Australia to bring or intervene in public interest litigation within national courts to implement international human rights standards; drafting communications to UN human rights bodies on behalf of individual noncitizen clients; undertaking fact-finding and documentation of systemic rights violations, and producing an advocacy report; drafting white papers and parliamentary law reform submissions; or filing freedom of information requests. The seminar addresses ethics and accountability issues in human rights work and develops students' practical skills in areas such as interviewing; human rights report-writing; law reform submission-writing; advocacy and the media; international and comparative legal research; and working with disadvantaged clients and culturally diverse clients and partners. In contrast to the standard Human Rights Clinic (LAWS3309 and JURD7409) students in the Non-Intensive program attend the clinic one day each week instead of two days, in addition to the weekly two hour seminar.

Pre-requisites:
Litigation 1 and Litigation 2
Legal Research and Writing
Law, Lawyers and Society
International Law, International Human Rights and Advocacy, Refugee Law or similar subject.

Bassina Farbenblum, Australian Human Rights Centre, Faculty of Law, UNSW.

Assessment will be on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis and will consist of satisfactory completion of:

Refer to the course outline which will be provided by the lecturer at the beginning of the relevant semester.