Law Clinic to Focus on Bosnia

By Lawrence Hurley

A group of law students in Los Angeles is on the legal trail of a notorious Bosnian Serb warlord. Ratko Mladic, who headed the Bosnian Serb army, was one of the key players in the wars that marked the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. But he remains free, despite attempts to bring him to justice at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, based in The Hague.

Enter the aspiring attorneys at UCLA School of Law's new Sanela Diana Jenkins International Justice Clinic?the first human-rights law school clinic in Southern California. They may not exactly be "going out and prosecuting war criminals," says David Kaye, the clinic's executive director, but their legal research and advocacy could increase the political pressure some say is needed to put Mladic on trial for genocide, inhumane acts, attacks on civilians, and other crimes for which he is indicted. "We are representing an abstract client, which is international justice," Kaye points out.

The clinic is creating an online map that will graphically depict Mladic's relationship with other alleged war criminals said to be involved in atrocities, such as the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims in the town of Srebrenica in 1995.

Although the International Criminal Tribunal expects to conclude proceedings concerning the former Yugoslavia in the next few years, Kaye hopes the clinic will keep a spotlight on Mladic and other alleged perpetrators during that time, as memories of the war fade and Serbia?where many think Mladic is in hiding?continues its bid to join the European Union.

But tracking Mladic's activities of 20-odd years ago is just one of several projects for the twelve students participating in the clinic's inaugural year. Because Jenkins, the clinic's eponymous donor, fled Sarajevo during the war, all of its initial projects focus on Bosnia. But the clinic is likely to expand its focus to other countries later, says Kaye.

Other California law schools that run human-rights clinics are at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and the University of San Francisco. Barbara Olshansky, who helped launch Stanford's International Human Rights Clinic in 2008, thinks today's high-profile debate over the United States's own human-rights record?particularly with respect to the detention of suspected terrorists-has sparked interest in the field. "There's a huge outcry from students for this type of program," she notes.

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