A contingent of California Western law students have arrived in Santiago de Chile to participate in an intensive internship program at public institutions throughout Chile’s capital. Alissa Bjerkhoel, Solomon Chang, Victor Herrera, Tiffany Javier, Michelle Lauer, and Sarah Yousuf are all committed to contributing to the legal reform process in the Latin American country that has led reform efforts for more than a decade.
Since the second half of the 1990s, Chile has sustained a move from the inquisitorial to the adversarial system of criminal procedure and Proyecto ACCESO at California Western School of Law has been there assisting the Chilean Ministry of Justice, academic institutions and members of the judiciary, public defenders and prosecutors offices.
Five of the law students will be interning at the Public Defenders’ Office in Santiago Sur under the direction of Regional Director Claudio Pavlic and his team. Tiffany Javier is working on juvenile justice issues in the new unit created for a second generation of reforms now underway nationally. Michelle Lauer is interning at SENAMA, the National Commission for the Elderly. The other four interns (Alissa Bjerkhoel, Solomon Chang, Victor Herrera, and Sarah Yousuf) are working on the many cases facing the Public Defenders’ Office each day. After this first day of work, Victor reported in: “Things are going well here. The building is absolutely amazing and the people are incredibly friendly.”
Please watch this website for some journal entries from each of the students as they learn first-hand about the move towards a more transparent judicial system and make contributions to the strengthening of the rule of law in Chile.