In the fall 2011 issue of With Equal Right, Erin Furlong ('05) shares her experiences and the advantages of obtaining a joint J.D. and M.P.H. degree through the Law School's Joint Degree Program in Law, Health, & the Life Sciences.

"During my 1L year, I occasionally wondered what I was going to do with some of the 'core' courses when I started practice," Furlong says in her essay. "But as soon as I started work on my master's degree, I started to see the connections."

Earlier this month, students and faculty working at the University of Minnesota Law School's Immigration and Human Rights Clinic helped a West African man, who prefers to remain anonymous, secure asylum in the United States. After being arrested, starved, beaten, tortured, and sexually humiliated by government soldiers for his political beliefs, the man risked his life to escape imprisonment and travel to the United States.

The Law School's clinics can make remarkable changes in the lives of their clients, perhaps none more dramatically than the Immigration and Human Rights Law Clinic. The student attorneys in the Immigration Clinic represent refugees who are fleeing persecution in their native countries and seeking asylum in the United States.

Claudia Ochoa ('12) says she didn't know what to expect when she started at the Immigration Clinic last fall. But soon she was part of a team doing interviews and investigations on behalf of a woman from Ethiopia seeking safe haven after a long trip to safety.

The Human Rights Center at the University of Minnesota Law School and the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights in partnership with the Somali Institute for Peace Research are co-sponsoring "Rebuilding Somalia: The Role of the Diaspora" on Saturday, September 24, 2011. The forum will be held in Room 25 of Mondale Hall, 229 19th Ave. S., Minneapolis, from 2:00-4:30 p.m.

An amicus curiae brief drafted by the Law School's Human Rights Litigation and International Legal Advocacy Clinic was cited by two circuit judges in a recent oral argument before the U.S. Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia. Prof. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin signed the brief, which was drafted by Prof. Jennifer Green as Counsel of Record and by student attorneys Astrid Brouillard ('12), Anne Fuchs ('12), James C. Horvath ('12), Melissa Muro Lamere ('12), Nathaniel Nesbitt ('11), Feras Sleiman ('12), and Leo Twiggs ('11).

Students and faculty working at the University of Minnesota's Immigration and Human Rights Law Clinic have secured asylum for another client fleeing political persecution, the third time in recent months that the Clinic's efforts have enabled a person fleeing danger abroad to remain in the United States.

The University of Minnesota Law School's Immigration and Human Rights Law Clinic has secured safe haven in the United States for a client who fled repeated detention and torture in central Africa in 2003. Government forces in his homeland believed (incorrectly) that the client and his wife supported the political opposition. He was held in a small cell, beaten repeatedly, and deprived of food and sanitary facilities. His wife was beaten, raped, and subjected to electric shocks.

Through the efforts of the University of Minnesota Law School's Immigration and Human Rights Law Clinic, a west African woman can put to rest her fears of female genital mutilation. She has been granted asylum in the United States.