
Robert and Helen Bernstein Institute for Human Rights
Human Rights Research, Advocacy, and Education
The Bernstein Institute for Human Rights is a center at NYU Law committed to challenging legal systems that exclude, marginalize, and oppress. We support and train community justice advocates, law students, and lawyers on legal empowerment methods as a way to actively challenge inequities here in the US and around the world. We believe that the practice of law can and should be rooted in dignity and care.
The work of the Institute is supported by Professor Margaret Satterthwaite ‘99 as Faculty Director and Sukti Dhital as Executive Director.
Our Focus Areas
International Access to Justice Forum: September 26–27, 2025
The Forum will bring together scholars, researchers, practitioners, reformers, court and dispute resolution experts, and all committed to increasing access to justice to discuss research, theory, and policy developments in the global movement for civil justice.

Institute Updates

New Global Report
The Bernstein Institute for Human Rights is thrilled to share the launch of our global report, Exclusion in Practice: A Human Rights Analysis on the Legal Barriers to Advancing Community Justice. The report explores the power, promise, and struggles of community justice workers—human rights defenders who are key actors in the legal ecosystem. Missed the panel discussion? Watch it here.

Justice Power Relaunched
In 2018, the Bernstein Institute launched Justice Power, a documentation project that partners with directly affected community members, immigration advocates, and lawyers in the United States to highlight legal empowerment strategies that help immigrant communities to know, use, shape, and transform the laws that impact their lives. Our team has spent the past year building relationships with over a dozen new legal empowerment organizations, identifying new strategies, and co-developing how-to guides.
Lab Stories
Jailhouse Lawyers Inititiative
The Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative (JLI), founded by former jailhouse lawyer Jhody Polk, invests in jailhouse lawyers as a core strategy in ending the cycle of incarceration. The JLI fuses legal education, movement building, participatory research, and advocacy to bring visibility to jailhouse lawyers and ensure they have the resources to know, use, and shape law.
Barefoot Law
We are excited to share this video featuring one of our partners in the Lab - Tim Kakuru and Barefoot Law in Uganda. Barefoot Law transforms communities and helps build power among the most underserved people in Uganda by using legal empowerment as a tool to expand access to justice.
Media Highlights
“Through the Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative, Jhody Polk Is Building Legal Empowerment from the Inside Out”

Ms. Magazine
Featured: Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative, Bernstein Institute for Human Rights
“'Cheat Code to Life': Jailhouse lawyers help incarcerated people — and themselves, too”

NPR
Featured: Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative, Bernstein Institute for Human Rights