In addition to the faculty co-directors, the Program welcomes faculty affiliates who contribute their expertise to our work.
Estelle McKee teaches Lawyering and the Asylum and Convention Against Torture Appellate Clinic.
Following her graduation from Columbia Law School, Professor McKee spent two years as a Pro Se Law Clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Afterwards, she worked as an attorney for Catawba Valley Legal Services, an organization in rural North Carolina that represents rural, low-income clients in areas of employment, income maintenance, housing, family, immigration (Violence Against Women Act petitions), and consumer law. She subsequently engaged in appellate and habeas practice for the Virginia Capital Representation Resource Center and worked as an immigration attorney for Lawler & Lawler in San Francisco.
Professor McKee previously taught at the University of Wisconsin Law School (2006-2007) and Cornell Law School (2000-2006), where she received the Anne Lukingbeal Award for outstanding commitment to the women of Cornell in 2006. She has also taught persuasive legal writing to attorneys throughout the United States, including at the National Legal Aid and Defender Association’s Appellate Defender Training in New Orleans, the King County Department of Public Defense in Seattle, and the Habeas Assistance and Training Counsel’s Persuasion Institute at Cornell, and the Cook County Appellate Defender’s office in Chicago. She has presented on legal writing to federal appellate court staff attorneys and conducted a training on appellate immigration practice for the Legal Aid Society of New York.
Professor McKee has published articles in Bender’s Immigration Bulletin, the Georgetown Journal of Immigration Law, and Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing. She has also authored chapters in the Immigration Law & Procedure legal treatise, and in Immigration Options for Investors & Entrepreneurs.
Professor McKee practices in the Board of Immigration Appeals and the Second, Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals. She is a member of the California and North Carolina bars.
Sheri Lynn Johnson is an expert on the interface of race and issues in criminal procedure, and the Assistant Director of the Cornell Death Penalty project, an initiative to foster empirical scholarship on the death penalty, offer students an opportunity to work with practitioners on death penalty cases, and to provide information and assistance for death penalty lawyers.
After her graduation from Yale Law School in 1979, Professor Johnson worked for a year in the Criminal Appeals Bureau of the New York Legal Aid Society, and then joined the Cornell Law School Faculty in 1981. Professor Johnson co-founded the Cornell Death Penalty Project in 1993.
She currently teaches constitutional and criminal law, and supervises the post-conviction litigation and capital trial clinics.
Elizabeth Brundige is a Clinical Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, where she founded and directs the Law School’s Gender Justice Clinic and teaches undergraduate courses on international human rights. Her teaching, research, and advocacy focus on domestic and international responses to gender-based violence and discrimination.
Professor Brundige formerly served as the Law School’s Assistant Dean for International Programs, Jack G. Clarke Executive Director of International and Comparative Legal Studies, and Executive Director of the Avon Global Center for Women and Justice. Before joining Cornell, she was the Cover-Lowenstein Fellow and a clinical lecturer at Yale Law School, where she taught in the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic. She was previously awarded the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellowship to work with the International Association of Women Judges on human rights programs in southern and East Africa. She was also an Associate Legal Officer at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and a law clerk for Judge Kermit V. Lipez of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and Justice Sandile Ngcobo of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
Professor Brundige received her B.A. from Yale University, an M.Phil. in Development Studies from Oxford University, and a J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was awarded the Khosla Memorial Human Dignity Prize for her human rights work.
After earning her J.D. at Georgetown University Law Center in 2019, Julia practiced as a civil rights attorney with the ACLU of Washington in Seattle for three years. At the ACLU, Julia worked primarily on impact litigation pursuing economic justice in housing and juvenile legal systems. Her work included cases that challenged the criminalization of homelessness and poverty through policy advocacy and impact litigation. Julia wrote or contributed to the writing of over half a dozen amicus briefs to the Washington Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit. She also reviewed legislative bills related to civil rights and civil liberties, advocated for new court rule proposals that advanced race equity, and wrote two sections of a policy report on race and the juvenile legal system presented to the Washington Supreme Court.
As a Law Research, Instruction, and Liaison Librarian, Julia supports the Law Library’s research and reference services and teaches legal research to Cornell Law’s JD students, including in the Lawyering program. Julia also contributes to Law faculty liaison services; law materials selection; and outreach and instruction services in the Law Library.
Carlton Williams is a movement lawyer and organizer dedicated to building and supporting liberation struggles. Mr. Williams has practiced criminal and civil rights law in Massachusetts for many years. He began his legal career as a criminal attorney with the Roxbury Defenders and later served as a racial justice attorney with a civil liberties non-profit. Mr. Williams has been an advocate on issues of war, immigrant rights, LGBTQ rights, and Black and Palestinian liberation. He is a member of the National Lawyers Guild and has served as the chair of its Massachusetts board of directors. He was part of the legal defense for the Occupy Boston movement, providing legal, bail, and court support and training to the thousands of participant-organizers. In 2015, he served on the working group that organized the inaugural Law for Black Lives convening and was a featured speaker in its RadTalks event. Mr. Williams was a Givelber Distinguished Lecturer on Public Interest Law at Northeastern University School of Law, teaching on social justice movements and the law. More recently he served as the executive director of the Water Protector Legal Collective, defending and supporting Indigenous environmental justice and sovereignty. Mr. Williams is a graduate of the University of Rhode Island and the University of Wisconsin Law School. He tweets at @carltonwilliams.