2004 Bridges Summer Research Report Caitlin Sislin Boalt Hall School of Law "International Human Rights and Environmental Jurisprudence in Córdoba, Argentina"

During the summer of 2004, I traveled to Córdoba, Argentina to work at the Center for Human Rights and the Environment (Centro de Derechos Humanos e Ambientales, also known as CEDHA). I went to CEDHA to work primarily with their Access to Justice Program (AJP). The AJP operates on a local and international level to litigate on behalf of victims of environmental degradation; strengthen environmental and human rights legislation; and promote public policy and awareness grounded in the intersectionality between environmental rights and human rights. In early 2003 the AJP launched the Human Rights and the Environment Legal Clinic at the University of Córdoba Law School, the first such legal clinic in Córdoba and the first of its kind in Latin America. The Clinic follows the traditional clinical model of education through action, promoting meaningful student participation in litigation and advocacy. The Clinic’s current docket is loaded with cases tackling local environmental health and justice issues including water contamination, disease resulting from PCB exposure, municipal waste mismanagement and unregulated urban development.

Working with the Clinic was a tremendous learning experience. My primary task was to develop a comprehensive research report on the history, methodology, legal strategy and overall significance of the Clinic, to be included in the Clinic’s first Annual Report. To that end, I worked closely with the students and faculty of the Clinic to understand the work that they do and their intentions in doing it. I conducted detailed interviews with several of the students, to understand their experience in this nascent operation and what their recommendations would be for future success.

Members of the CEDHA clinic hold their weekly meeting.

Across the board, students spoke of the transformative nature of the Clinic for their personal and professional lives. The legal system in Argentina is almost wholly geared towards private, for-profit practice; public interest education is nearly nonexistent at law school since so few opportunities exist for students to enter public interest practice. The approximately twenty students involved in CEDHA’s Clinic were thus making a significant break from the traditional career path of an attorney. By engaging in public interest practice and reflection, these students were building opportunities for themselves and future participants to use their legal training as a tool for the public good. Several of the original six students in the Clinic, after graduating from law school, stayed to work as part-time attorneys for CEDHA. In a discussion, the attorney who coordinated the Clinic told me that it was quite significant that these students took their “first steps” as lawyers into the public interest arena.

In conversation with the attorneys who developed and coordinated the Clinic, I learned that they had three primary intentions in founding the Human Rights and Environment Legal Clinic in 2003. The first was to utilize Córdoba’s hitherto dormant system of provincial environmental laws to litigate against environmental degradation in and around the city of Córdoba, while simultaneously promoting awareness of the linkages between environmental degradation and human rights violations. The second intention was to provide free legal services to poor and indigent victims of environmental harms and thereby to contribute to the revitalization of democratic processes and to equalize access to the benefits of a democratic, law-based society. The third intention was generally to engage the legal academy, and specifically to introduce motivated and socially-conscious Cordobese law students to public interest work. In their everyday activities, the Clinic staff was closely engaged with these goals, and sought constantly to raise student awareness of the larger issues implicated within the work.

Additionally, I conducted research regarding the theory and history of the general legal clinic movement, which initiated in the United States and Europe in the first decades of the 20th century. I learned a great deal about the inherently progressive, collective nature of clinical education within an educational system otherwise geared towards hierarchical instruction techniques and unchanging foundational doctrine. This research inspired me to consider participation in a legal clinic during my own time at law school, and I will likely be applying to participate in the International Human Rights Clinic at Boalt Hall in the spring.

My secondary task at CEDHA was the development and implementation of an international network among environmental and human rights legal clinics. The CEDHA Clinic staff hoped to gather information and expertise, and to encourage student exchange, by establishing contact with clinics around the world that shared the CEDHA Clinic’s mission. To that end, I prepared a comprehensive list of legal clinics in the United States and Canada — as I could not locate any such clinics in Europe — and sent a series of letters and a survey, to which I received several useful responses. I created a page on CEDHA’s website to serve as a clearinghouse for the gathering of further information.

Community members in Buenos Aires work to turn contaminated land into a functioning garden.

In general, my internship was a great success and an invaluable learning experience. My facility with the Spanish language improved tremendously; I learned about the history, benefits and shortcomings of the Argentine legal system especially within the context of the terrible upheavals of the mid-20th and early-21st century; and I was fortunate to interact with a group of highly committed, energetic, forward-thinking students and attorneys.

The only negative points of my internship were the lack of an organized intern program, as I often had to push the staff to provide me with work to do; and the language barrier, which prevented me from fully engaging in legal analysis and discussion with the members of the Clinic. Otherwise, my experience at CEDHA was extremely positive. I am inspired to further explore opportunities to work abroad as an attorney, and I feel that with my greatly-increased language capacities I can comfortably integrate myself into Latin American society. My work further solidified my commitment to practicing environmental law, and I know that my time at CEDHA will inform my understanding and decision-making long into the future. I am thankful to the Center for Latin American Studies for providing me with the opportunity to travel to Argentina for this experience.