Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute

Description

The Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute is a nonprofit human rights organization based in Berkeley, California.

It was founded in 1965 by attorney Ann Fagan Ginger and is named for Alexander Meiklejohn, an educator and free-speech advocate. Its mission is to bring the United States into compliance with existing human rights and peace law. It works on rights such as housing, a living income, education, due process, free speech, and freedom from discrimination.

It advocates alongside communities experiencing human rights violations and acts as a watchdog, reporting on U.S. violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other treaties. It gives information and technical help to lawyers, activists, legislators, judges, officials, students and professors on using existing law for human rights and peace. It helped push three international human rights treaties into U.S. law in the early 1990s and works with local governments to get them to report on how those treaties are carried out.

It trains law students and college interns in human rights and peace law, offers continuing legal education for lawyers, and publishes books and a quarterly newsletter. Its archival collections of legal case materials are held at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, the University of Michigan’s Labadie Collection, and San Francisco State University’s Labor Archive.