By: Philippa Greer, LL.M. ’14
Harvard Law School student Philippa Greer will spend her winter term pursuing an independent legal clinic at The Justice Project in Pakistan. Her interests lie in strategic litigation and international law. She writes:
I first saw the potential of the Justice Project as I followed the cases of ten individuals who were being held indefinitely at Bagram prison without access to lawyers and without having been informed of the evidence against them. One such prisoner was seized at the age of 14.
Unlike detainees at Guantanamo- who may at least engage a legal team to represent them at a military hearing- prisoners at Bagram have no access to lawyers and thus are unable to challenge the legality of their detention.
The Justice Project conducts litigation in Pakistan to challenge unjust laws and to create progressive legal precedent. Their broad litigation aims, among other things, are to improve the rights of the mentally ill, restrict the application of the Death Penalty, bring Freedom of Information to Pakistan, and enforce the fundamental legal rights of prisoners…
Read more about The Justice Project and Pakistan’s death penalty laws, in Philippa’s full story here.