Sarah Paoletti
Sarah Paoletti is a Practice Professor of Law and founding Director of the Transnational Legal Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. Students in the clinic engage in direct representation of individuals in immigration proceedings, while also partaking in a range of international human rights advocacy related to the rights of migrants. Prof. Paoletti’s scholarship, research and advocacy focuses at the intersection of migration and human rights. She was co-author of two in-depth studies on access to justice for migrant workers from countries of origin in Nepal and Indonesia, and served as a Project Adviser for FairSquare Projects’ Five Corridors Project on the fair recruitment of migrant workers (Fall 2019 – present). She also authored “Working Towards Recognition of the Rights of Migrant and Refugee Children,” in The Oxford Handbook on Children’s Rights Law (2020). Prof. Paoletti has also written in the area of legal education and practice in the field of human rights and immigration, including: Relentless Pursuits: Reflections of an Immigration and Human Rights Clinician on the Past Four Years, 27 WM. & MARY J. WOMEN &L. 121 (2020), Finding the Pearls When the World is Your Oyster: Case and Project Selection in Clinic Design, 5 DREXEL L. REV. 305 (Spring 2013), and Redefining Human Rights Lawyering Through the Lens of Critical Theory: Lessons for Pedagogy and Practice, 18 Georgetown Journal of Poverty Law & Policy 337 (2011) (co-author with Caroline Bettinger-Lopez, Davida Finger, Meetali Jain, JoNel Newman, and Deborah M. Weismann). In addition, Prof. Paoletti has authored numerous amicus briefs addressing international human rights law applicable to individuals subjected to prolonged immigration detention and due process in the context of deportation and removal proceedings, as well as submissions and pleadings before U.N. treaty bodies and special procedures with relevant mandates and the Inter-American Human Rights Commission addressing the full range of migrants’ rights.
Prior to entering academia, Paoletti was a staff attorney at Friends of Farmworkers, Inc. (now, Justice at Work), a statewide legal services program serving migrant workers in Pennsylvania, and later served on their Board from 2007-2016. Prof. Paoletti is a founding member of the Board of Directors of Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc., a binational migrant worker rights organization with offices in the U.S. and Mexico, and she serves on the Executive Committee of Migration that Works. She was a law clerk for the Hon. Judge Anthony J. Scirica, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. She received her JD from the Washington College of Law American University summa cum laude, and her B.A. from Yale University.