The practicum, taught by Michelle Liu, Awista Ayazi, and Melody Vidmar, is partnering this year with Our Children’s Trust (“OCT”), a non-profit public interest law firm representing the Lighthiser plaintiffs, to support their mission to secure the human rights of children to a healthy environment through strategic litigation. For students, the two-day evidentiary hearing was an extraordinary experiential learning opportunity, connecting their intensive classroom studies with the realities of strategic litigation and the lived experiences of youth on the frontlines of climate change.
Last week, The New York Times reported on Lighthiser v. Trump, a high-stakes challenge to three executive orders expanding fossil fuel use. Just days later, students in the Human Rights Advocacy in Action Practicum were in the Missoula, Montana federal…
Read the announcement here.
Georgetown Law announced today that Agnieszka Fryszman, L’96, one of the nation’s preeminent human rights litigators and founder of the Human Rights practice at Cohen Milstein, has been appointed the 2025–2026 Robert F. Drinan, S.J., Chair in Human Rights.
HRI Distinguished Fellow Scott Busby interviewed by Deutsche Welle about the State Department’s recently released human rights reports. Watch the interview here (Box download)
A coalition of Afghan civil society organizations is proud to announce the launch of a People’s Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan before the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), a groundbreaking initiative to address the impunity around gender persecution in Afghanistan.
Elisa Massimino, Visiting Professor of Law and Executive Director of Georgetown's Human Rights Institute, has urged civil society organisations to be creative and build new institutions in the face of the inaction of the United Nations and other international organisations as human rights decline globally.
In July 2025, approximately 200 years after the imposition of the so-called “Independence Debt,” the Human Rights Institute joined over sixty human rights organizations, including the Kolectif Ayisyen Afwodesandan (KAAD), and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), in sending an open letter to French officials demanding urgent repayment of the “debt.”
HRI Executive Director Elisa Massimino quoted in Courthouse News Service.
Former HRI Director Jane Stromseth has retired from Georgetown Law after 34 years of teaching.
ARUSHA, Tanzania – In an unprecedented legal initiative, a coalition of African civil society groups is preparing to submit a historic petition to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights seeking an Advisory Opinion on the human rights obligations of African states in the context of the climate crisis.
