Tara J. Melish

Tara J. Melish "spent her fellowship year at the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), working to deepen legal protections for economic, social and cultural rights in the Americas through advocacy and litigation before the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights. Following her fellowship, Tara worked as Associate Social Affairs Officer in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and as Mental Disability Rights International’s (MDRI) United Nations representative in the drafting negotiations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol. She is now Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law.

"Active in reporting procedures and litigation initiatives before UN and OAS bodies, Tara serves as consultant or legal adviser to a range of domestic and international organizations, including CEJIL, MDRI, and a number of Latin American NGOs. She publishes and lectures widely on human rights issues and has taught human rights law, international litigation, constitutional law, criminal law, and torts at a variety of law schools, most recently at the University of Virginia and University of Georgia Schools of Law.  She will teach a course on Human Rights Advocacy and Dissemination at Oxford University in the summer of 2008 and has served as visiting scholar at the George Washington University School of Law.  While a student at the Law School, she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal, Book Reviews Editor of the Yale Journal of International Law, Student Director of the Schell Center, and teaching assistant for an undergraduate human rights course. She received the Ambrose Gherini Prize, for best student paper on a subject of international law. Following law school, she also clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and has been the recipient of professional fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Fulbright Foundation."


 * Bernstein Fellowship