PUBLIC JUSTICE FOUNDATION
http://www.publicjustice.net
Date Posted: 08/31/2017
Job Type: Legal: Project-Based (e.g., Skadden)
Schedule: Long-term & full-time
Experience: Entry Level 0-3 years
Bar membership required: Awaiting Results
Job Type: Legal: Project-Based (e.g., Skadden)
Schedule: Long-term & full-time
Experience: Entry Level 0-3 years
Bar membership required: Awaiting Results
Practice Areas: Animal Rights, Consumer Protection/Debt, Employment/Labor, Environmental, First Amendment, Food and Drug, Litigation, Water Resources
Job Description
Public Justice is a nonprofit organization dedicated to pursuing high impact lawsuits nationwide to preserve the integrity of our society and the planet we call home. It seeks to host recent law graduates with outside fellowship funding, including fellowships through Equal Justice Works, Skadden, and law schools, as part of its Food Project.
Public Justice’s Food Project works to address the fact that our current industrialized factory farm system allows a few corporate actors to exercise extraordinary legal, legislative, electoral, communications, and market power, to the detriment of independent farmers, animals, the land, water, consumers, and the public. Our vision is part of the good food movement’s vision for a food and animal agriculture system that is just, sustainable and accountable. To attain our vision, Public Justice’s Food Project uses cutting-edge litigation that is coordinated with the larger good food movement to redress the structural and institutional inequities on which the current system relies. Our work falls under the following tactical umbrellas: (1) forcing the industrialized factory farm model to internalize impacts on farmed animals, neighboring communities, food chain workers, and the environment; (2) challenging misleading narratives, including consumer product information, and industry-sponsored laws that block transparency or seek to disguise the true nature of industrial production; (3) combating corporate consolidation and dominance of markets on behalf of independent producers; and (4) aligning ourselves with independent farmers and rural communities against an administration that purports to speak for these constituencies, but instead perpetuates corporate power.
The fellow would work with Food Project attorneys and other staff attorneys to develop and implement new legal strategies in one or more of these areas, expanding the Project’s tactics and docket. For example, we would be interested in speaking with candidates about ways to use environmental litigation to protect agricultural workers and their families, develop and implement a campaign to challenge laws that limit factory farms’ liability, or expand our efforts to obtain and publicize records that document the harms caused by industrial agriculture. Public Justice’s two Food Project Attorneys will enthusiastically collaborate with candidates on their fellowship proposals. The fellow could work in either Public Justice’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. or its Oakland, California office.