OVERVIEW

As a Legal Fellow with Partners in Justice International, Ms. Ray primarily conducts factual and legal research relating to situations where PJI works, or is considering working, and assists in providing support to local practitioners and survivors of human rights violations seeking accountability for grave crimes in their own countries’ courts.

BIOGRAPHY

Emily Ray is a 2021 graduate of Harvard Law School and a Satter Fellow in Human Rights with Partners in Justice International for the 2021-2022 year. As a student attorney for five terms in the HLS International Human Rights Clinic, Ms. Ray worked primarily on issues surrounding accountability for grave crimes in Myanmar. In January 2020, she visited Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh with her clinical team to deliver a series of workshops on human rights and international law to Rohingya Muslim refugees and members of the diaspora. Her work on Myanmar then expanded to found the Myanmar Legal Representation Project (MLRP), a project designed to increase access to accountability processes for survivors of mass atrocities in and around Myanmar while protecting their safety and legal rights.

During her time at HLS, Ms. Ray also led a clinical team in writing an amicus curiae brief for the United States Supreme Court in Nestlé v. Doe, arguing in favor of corporate accountability for human rights violations committed in the international cocoa industry. Outside of the Clinic, Ms. Ray spent her 1L summer in Georgetown, Guyana, working with the Forest Peoples Programme and Amerindian Peoples Association to assist local indigenous groups in fighting against extractive gold mining and logging in their traditional territories. Her 2L summer was spent working with Paul Hoffman, a prominent U.S. human rights attorney, on primarily civil rights litigation. Her cases included issues such as police brutality at Black Lives Matter protests, the illegitimate arrest and torture of a Chinese activist, and accountability for corporate contributions to systematic violence against banana farm workers in Colombia.

Ms. Ray served as the Co-President of HLS Advocates for Human Rights in the 2020-2021 academic year, as well as a Project Leader and project member in the years prior. Her work with Advocates included topics such as LGBTQIA+ rights, supply chain transparency in the cocoa industry, and child custody protections for survivors of domestic violence. She also served as the Online Managing Editor for the Harvard Human Rights Journal from 2019-2021. Prior to beginning her legal career, Ms. Ray received her bachelor’s degree in philosophy and government from Franklin & Marshall College and her master’s degree in moral, political, and legal philosophy from the University of St. Andrews, where she wrote her dissertation on how to conceptualize individual responsibility for structural human rights violations.

EDUCATION

  • Harvard Law School, J.D., 2021
  • University of St. Andrews, M.Litt. Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy, 2016
  • Franklin & Marshall College, B.A. Philosophy and Government, 2015

LANGUAGES

  • English: Native Fluency (mother tongue)
  • Spanish (basic)

PUBLICATIONS