The Bertha Fellowship is for emerging lawyers (0-2 years out of law school) who are interested in gaining both practical experience working on CCR cases and a theoretical understanding of how legal advocacy can create social change. CCR hosts three Bertha Fellows, one to work alongside attorneys in each of our three docket areas: Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative, Government Misconduct/Racial Justice, and International Human Rights.

The Bertha Fellowship at CCR is sponsored by the Bertha Foundation which hosts emerging lawyers at several legal organizations across the world. In addition to gaining legal experience on CCR cases, Bertha Fellows at CCR will have opportunities to attend regional and international meetings, network with lawyers from around the world, and receive mentoring and non-traditional training in leadership, management, media and advocacy, activism and movement building.

Docket Descriptions

Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative (GGJI): GGJI attorneys are at the forefront in challenging extrajudicial detention, torture and abuse in Guantánamo and related domestic and international outposts of the executive branch’s “war on terror.” The Bertha Fellow assigned to this docket will work with CCR staff to continue and broaden CCR’s efforts – through litigation and advocacy – to challenge executive branch practices premised on expansive conceptions of wartime executive authority, as well as long-standing racism and xenophobia, including indefinite and preventive detention, military commissions, targeted killings and abusive interrogations.

International Human Rights (IHR) The IHR team focuses on litigation and advocacy in U.S. courts, foreign courts, and international fora to press the U.S. government, foreign government officials, corporations and other private actors to abide by international human rights and humanitarian law. Their work also includes providing support to international human rights activists.

Government Misconduct/Racial Justice (GMRJ): GMRJ attorneys develop creative litigation and advocacy projects in areas such as: racial justice; economic and social rights; the government’s criminalization of dissent; mass incarceration; immigrant justice; policing; national security; environmental justice; gender equality and LGBTQ rights.

2016-2018 Class of Bertha Justice Fellows

We have selected four (4) incoming Fellows. We will post their names and biographies upon their arrival in September 2016.