by Owen Lubozynski
In 2014, Professor Elizabeth Brundige founded Cornell Law School’s Gender Justice Clinic, one of the few legal clinics in the United States to focus on addressing gender-based violence and discrimination at the local, national, and global levels.
L to R: Joanne Joseph ’15, Carolyn Matos Montes ’15, Prof. Elizabeth Brundige, then Women & Justice Fellow Sharon Pia Hickey, and Alexandra Kitson ’16 work together on a proposed resolution recognizing freedom from domestic violence as a human right.
“In my previous legal practice, I had become convinced that these problems were among the most
pervasive and devastating human rights violations around the world,” says Brundige. “I also saw how closely they were often linked to other multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and violence.”
“The clinic’s first decade has been shaped in such powerfully positive ways by its law student members,” Brundige notes. “I am inspired every day by their thoughtfulness, creativity, care for each other, and dedication to supporting their clients and to making the world more just.”
– Prof. Elizabeth Brundige
For the past ten years, the Gender Justice Clinic has engaged students in a rich variety of projects serving diverse clients and policy initiatives, calling on the use of both domestic legal tools and international human rights strategies, incorporating multidirectional learning, and emphasizing advocacy that centers the participation of affected individuals and communities.
“The clinic’s first decade has been shaped in such powerfully positive ways by its law student members,” Brundige notes. “I am inspired every day by their thoughtfulness, creativity, care for each other, and dedication to supporting their clients and to making the world more just.”
Here, some of the clinic’s dozens of alumni reflect on their experiences:
Carolyn Matos Montes ’15
“The Gender Justice Clinic gave me the opportunity to practice real-world lawyering skills while still in law school,” notes Matos Montes, one of the clinic’s first students. “I appreciated that it spanned multiple semesters and that I could participate in multiple projects.”
Matos Montes’ projects included drafting, lobbying for, and implementing a resolution declaring freedom from domestic violence a human right in Tompkins County and Ithaca, New York. She also partnered with a law school clinic at the University of Nairobi in developing and hosting a workshop for stakeholders in Kisumu, Kenya, addressing sexual violence by teachers against schoolchildren.
“My work in this clinic has informed my pro bono work and projects throughout my career,” she says. “As a first-year associate, I participated in an externship with the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York City, and across my career I have been committed to helping immigrant women participate more fully in our society by helping them obtain divorces from abusive husbands or by helping them obtain green cards via the U-Visa program. I am forever thankful to Professor Brundige and the valuable experiences I gained while participating
in this clinic.”
Carolyn Matos Montes ’15 represents the Gender Justice Clinic at a Center for Reproductive Rights litigation workshop in Nepal on the right to contraception.
Joshua Baldwin ’16, then Tompkins County Advocacy Center Adult Education Director Kristi Taylor, Joanne Joseph ’15, and Carolyn Matos Montes ’15 speak at a panel event on the human right to be free from domestic violence.
Shabina Begum, LL.M. ’18
“The Gender Justice Clinic was a perfect bridge between practice and academia for me,” recalls Begum, who enrolled in Cornell Law during a sabbatical from practicing law in England and Wales.
“Professor Brundige delivered an interactive and engaging clinic, where I was able to gain a practical understanding of policy drafting on domestic abuse, and she also supported and encouraged me to conduct research on child marriage in the U.S. as a clinic project.”
She adds, “The clinic allowed me to learn and hone in skills which I later utilized when I returned to England and was invited to be part of the pro bono legal team that drafted the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022.”
An international expert on child, early, and forced marriages in the UK, Begum is a partner in the international child-care department of Goodman Ray Solicitors in London. She has also taught courses on gender rights as a university lecturer.
Shabina Begum, LL.M. ’18 presents at a community event on child marriage in the United States and United Kingdom.
Dara Brown ’18
“Today, as an international arbitration attorney, I notice the great impact that the Gender Justice Clinic has had on my writing, project-management, and organizational skills,” says Brown, an associate with White & Case, as well as a junior board member of the DC Volunteer Lawyers Project, providing legal representation to domestic violence survivors.
As a student, Brown represented the clinic at a Lawyers without Borders legal training in Tanzania, which focused on trial advocacy and human trafficking. She also represented a client in a successful pregnancy discrimination complaint to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the New York State Division of Human Rights; contributed to the implementation of the Tompkins County and Ithaca domestic violence resolutions; and worked on a practice guide on anti-gender-based violence law for legal and judicial officers in Zambia.
The impact of the clinic, Brown observes, “is evident in my ability to become an expert on key issues in my international disputes in preparation for brief submissions and hearings. It is also self-evident in my pro-bono work, where I have used the clinic experience to obtain restitution for a male child sex-trafficking victim in Prague and to create guidelines for hospitality companies to better detect and prevent human-trafficking.”
L to R: Prof. Muna Ndulo; Tinenenji Banda, J.S.D. ’16; Christopher Sarma ’15; and Amy Stephenson ’15 launch a legal practice guide, authored by the clinic and its partners, on juvenile justice law in Zambia.
Lorelei Lee ’20
“I came to Cornell with my boots on the ground,” says Lee, who entered law school following twenty years of stigmatized labor in the sex industries, seeking new tools to politically organize with their co-workers. “I ended up finding in the clinic what I’d been searching for: a universe of legal tools and a carefully built culture of respect and support.”
Alongside policy work, white papers, amicus brief research, and more, Lee helped update sections of the Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook for incarcerated transgender pro se litigants and co-wrote an explainer of a newly passed anti-trafficking law that had devastated Lee’s cohort; “FOSTA in a Legal Context”
was later published in a special issue of Columbia’s Human Rights Law Review.
Upon graduation, and with Brundige’s mentoring, Lee developed the Bella Project for people in the sex trades, co-teaching the clinic for several years. Students in the Bella Project worked directly with impacted people,
who taught sex work and trafficking as complex issues containing nuance often lost in legal discussions. In 2023, Lee and Brundige brought students, sex workers, and trafficking survivors to Geneva for an unprecedented presentation on sex workers’ rights before the U.N. Human Rights Committee.
“The response we received from UN committee members, and from civil society members representing other organizations and other issues, made clear that they’d experienced nothing short of a paradigm shift,” Lee recalls.
“The clinic utterly changed my life,” says Lee. “It’s given me social and political power, resources, and the ability to give back as much as possible to the community of sex workers and survivors who’ve kept me alive long before Cornell was on the horizon.”
Peyton Brooks ’23
“From assisting a prominent human rights advocate on their asylum application, to drafting a brief for the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights regarding gender-based violence in the U.S. military, the clinic allowed me to do meaningful work, interact directly with clients, and contribute to issues that I am passionate about,” says Brooks, who is now an associate at Ropes and Gray.
His clinic work also included contributing to research on the Peace Corps’ efforts to prevent and respond to sexual violence experienced by its volunteers, as well as helping to develop and deliver a community education workshop exploring the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that ended the federal constitutional right to abortion.
“The relationships I forged through the clinic have been critical for my growth as a lawyer, advocate, and human being. Professor Brundige continues to be one of my top professional and personal role models, while my peer student attorneys make up some of the most caring and dedicated people I have ever worked with.”
L to R: Jacinda Rivas ’23, Peyton Brooks ’23, Esme Brooker ’23, and Prof. Elizabeth Brundige lead a community workshop on reproductive justice after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Whole Women’s Health Organization.
Logan Kennedy ’21
“I am a better attorney and person because of the work we did and Liz’s mentorship,” observes Kenney, an associate with Willkie Farr & Gallagher and a member of the U.S. Army Reserve. While in the clinic, Kenney worked on an in-depth defensive asylum case on behalf of a domestic violence survivor and on advocacy for a client who was video recorded while lactating at work.
She also contributed to a long-running Gender Justice Clinic project representing twenty-seven former service members who were sexually assaulted while serving in the U.S. military. In 2014 and 2015, the clinic petitioned the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of these clients, making theirs the first cases ever brought by survivors of sexual violence against the United States before an international human rights tribunal. Clinic students, including Kenney, have also advocated for these survivors before the United Nations.
TOP to BOTTOM: Logan Kenney ’21, Emma Horne ’21, and client Stephanie Schroeder speak to U.N. missions about sexual assault in the U.S. military.
“I attribute my successes as an attorney to the foundation created through my work with the clinic. The hands-on experience I gained by interviewing clients, speaking before the U.N., and drafting portions of a shadow report for the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review has directly impacted my current practice, where I represent veterans and Gold Star families who have been victims of or are related to victims of, state-sponsored terrorism. I am also fortunate to work with the GJC as co-counsel to this day, representing the same clients I had the privilege to represent during law school.”
Kenney initiated and has helped lead her firm’s present collaboration with the clinic on the military sexual assault project, as co-counsel for its regional human rights litigation.
Nathalie Greenfield ’21
“The clinic taught me about the importance of focusing on our clients first and foremost as human beings,” says Greenfield, who worked on an in-depth defensive asylum case on behalf of a domestic violence survivor and then on an application for Special Juvenile Immigrant Status for her children.
She refers to the clinic as exemplifying “the gold standard of client-centered representation.” “Professor Brundige was a model in compassionate and professional client-attorney interaction. She approached our client’s life and case holistically, and I carry those lessons with me to this day in my capital defense practice.”
Greenfield also engaged in several policy-focused clinic projects, including research and writing for an international body on witness testimony in gender-based court violence cases and contributions to a nongovernmental organization report on women’s incarceration in Sierra Leone.
She is now an associate attorney and mitigation specialist with Phillips Black, working for women
sentenced to death, as well as a consultant with the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide.
Nathalie Greenfield ’21 (left) and Logan Kenney ’21, collaborate on a brief in support of a domestic violence survivor’s asylum claim.
Emily Armbruster ’20
“The clinic was an integral part of my legal education—it was a space where I could bring my full self every day and know that I was valued as a person and as a professional,” recalls Armbruster, now a policy legal specialist at the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights.
“The projects I worked on over the course of four semesters prepared me to shift my career into policy work,” she says. “For example, through a project related to military sexual assault, I learned how to effectively advocate by blending oral and written advocacy and litigation and policy approaches. Through a legal explainer of federal legislation on online sex trafficking, I learned how to analyze a piece of legislation and explain its implications to others. And through all of my projects I learned how to be a better advocate by listening to the needs and claims of the people I am advocating for.”
Armbruster’s clinic work also included contributing to the Tompkins County domestic violence initiative, working closely on a TED-style talk with the survivor-advocate whose regional human rights case inspired the project. Additionally, she conducted advocacy-based research for a grassroots organization that advocates for migrant massage parlor workers’ rights.
She adds, “I am forever grateful to Liz for creating such a welcoming and supportive space at Cornell.”
Emily Armbruster ’20 presents on military sexual assault at an NGO briefing with members of the U.N. Human Rights Committee in Geneva, Switzerland.
Esme Brooker ’23
“I will always remember getting to do meaningful pro bono legal work as a student, and the immense care, knowledge and kindness that Professor Brundige brought to members of the clinic, to our clients, and to any community on or off campus that we interacted with,” says Brooker, an associate at Morgan, Lewis, and Brockus.
In the clinic, Brooker represented a gender justice activist in her application for asylum. She contributed to the community education workshop on Dobbs and delivered a workshop on the implications of legal developments on reproductive rights for healthcare practitioners serving LGBTQ+ patients. She also conducted research on the impact of Myanmar’s 2021 coup and the human rights violations that followed for women, in support of a Myanmar women’s rights organization.
“As I’ve graduated and moved into practicing, the experience I gained through the clinic has been invaluable in my continuing pro bono asylum work.”
Cailley Silbert ’24
“My time in the clinic taught me to think beyond basic legal frameworks and find new ways to represent my clients, even after being told that there is nothing else I can do,” says Silbert.
“This was particularly true of my work on the clinic’s military sexual assault cases. Our clients have been told—repeatedly—that there is nothing the military or civilian justice system can do to remedy the violence they faced. So, we turned to international human rights bodies.” In 2022, the IACHR ruled their cases admissible.
“While those cases are pending, we have continued to advocate for change,” notes Silbert. “We have spoken with everyone from students in the greater Ithaca community to other human rights organizations, including the U.N., to highlight the importance of this issue and to show our petitioners that, even though we have been pursuing cases for over a decade, we are still actively pushing for change.”
She adds, “As I leave law school and start my career, I will always think about my time in the clinic and remember to pursue every avenue available to help my client, even if it has not been done before.”
Cailley Silbert ’24 (left) and Pilar Gonzalez Navarrine ’24 (right) speak to local high school students, including clinic intern Greta Garrison (center), about using human rights to address gender justice.
