As a part of its focus on service-learning, the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice works closely with two of the Law School's ten human rights- and civil rights-related clinical programs: the Transnational Worker Rights Clinic and the Immigration Law Clinic. These clinics provide a structure for direct advocacy opportunities and interdisciplinary collaboration between students and faculty.
The Transnational Worker Rights Clinic is the first of its kind nationwide to provide students the opportunity to represent low-income immigrant workers who seek to recover unpaid wages. The Clinic develops students' skills as practitioners and human rights advocates by teaching how to apply international labor rights standards in a local context.
The Immigration Law Clinic allows students to represent clients in deportation hearings, asylum applications and cases involving the Violence Against Women Act in hearings before immigration courts and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Through its partnership with the Immigration Law Clinic, the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice maintains awareness of human rights violations throughout the world from which individuals are seeking asylum in central Texas. It also remains in contact with nongovernmental organizations in an effort to pursue strategies to aid asylum seekers and to improve the human rights situation in the clients' countries of origin.
In addition to the Transnational Worker Rights Clinic and the Immigration Law Clinic, students also have the chance to participate in a wide array of other human rights-related clinics. They include: the Actual Innocence Clinic, the Capital Punishment Clinic, the Children's Rights Clinic, the Criminal Defense Clinic, the Domestic Violence Clinic, the Housing Law Clinic, the Juvenile Justice Clinic, and the Mental Health Clinic. For more information on these clinical opportunities, see the Law School's Clinical Programs site.