Center for Social Justice

Seton Hall Law Center for Social Justice: Students gain hands-on international law exposure through participation in the Law School’s Center for Social Justice and its International Human Rights/Rule of Law Project. This project allows students at all levels, beginning in their first year, to become engaged with international human rights issues ranging from human trafficking, to immigration cases, to working against torture abroad and advocating for Guantanamo detainees. Under faculty supervision, students have worked on briefs before circuit courts and the Supreme Court on international law and human rights issues.

Recently, Immigration & Human Rights clinical students have:

• Won asylum protection for a Congolese client who feared family-based violence and gender-based harm should she have to return to Congo after leaving her arranged marriage to an abusive American citizen. Through research and evidence showing that Congo does not intervene to protect women from family-based violence, the clinic demonstrated that the Congolese government was unwilling or unable to protect the client from harm at the hands of her father in Congo.

• Joined a transcontinental team of attorneys to file a petition before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), challenging the imprisonment without charge of a Haitian national. The petition cited violations of the Haitian Constitution and international human rights treaties, including the American Convention on Human Rights.

• Engaged in ongoing representation of immigrant victims of trafficking, indentured servitude and sexual abuse in obtaining protection under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and for victims of violent crimes that are willing to assist the government in criminal prosecutions. Work on these cases has included advocacy and meetings with the FBI, US Attorney’s Office and local prosecutors to initiate criminal prosecutions and trafficking investigations; interviewing clients, witnesses and mental health experts and drafting detailed affidavits and legal briefs.

• Students represented a gay man from Iran who had fled to the United States after multiple arrests in Tehran, fearing that a new arrest would result in his execution.  Because the client is a chemist, he was of particular interest to U.S.  immigration investigators.  Notwithstanding these difficulties,  students secured his liberty pending a hearing. This case is scheduled for a final hearing at which time the client will be represented by students.
  

• The Clinic represented an ethnic Kurd from Turkey who had been subjected to police surveillance and harassment because of his relationship to a noted Kurdish journalist.  Upon arriving in the United States, the client converted from Islam to Christianity.  While Turkey is a secular state, there has been a sharp rise in anti-Christian violence there, particularly against missionaries and converts from Islam.  This case is scheduled for an asylum interview at which  the client will be represented by students.
  

• Students undertook representation of a lawful permanent resident from Afghanistan who is married to a United States citizen and is the mother of four small United States citizen children.  She was placed in removal proceedings because of her conviction for mail fraud as a result of having cheated on her driving test.  During her residency in the United States, the Taliban had murdered her father and brother, leaving  the rest of her family to reside in Pakistan as refugees.  This case is scheduled for a final hearing where the client will be represented by the students who prepared her application.
  

• Students successfully petitioned for the release of a  Palestinian man from Gaza who had been in detention at the Elizabeth Detention facility.  The client was ordered deported,  but remained in custody a year later with no indication that he could be physically returned to his home country.  By contacting the Egyptian, Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli missions in the United States, the clinical student was able to document that it is impossible to remove anyone to Gaza at this time, thereby compelling the client’s release.