About Us

The Rule of Law Lab is a nonpartisan institute which studies and uses legal tools to defend democracy and the rule of law worldwide.

Democracy and the rule of law are in decline around the world. Governments elected to power with populist agendas are increasingly adopting authoritarian tactics. 

The sheer scale of the problem–as well as significant collaboration amongst autocrats around the world to sustain their repressive agendas–illustrates the significant need for a principled, non-partisan response to counter democratic regression.

The Rule of Law Lab at NYU School of Law studies and deploys legal tools—legal research, documentation, litigation and advocacy—in close collaboration with local practitioners and academics to protect democracy and the rule of law around the world.
 

Our Team 
 

Amrit Singh

Amrit Singh is Professor of Practice and the founding director of NYU Law's Rule of Law Lab, which studies and deploys legal tools to defend democracy and the rule of law worldwide. A human rights lawyer, as well as an expert on democracy and the rule of law, she has conducted strategic litigation, research, and advocacy on a broad range of rule of issues in the US and globally.

Prior to joining NYU, Singh served as Professor of the Practice of Law and founding Executive Director of the Rule of Law Impact Lab at Stanford Law School. Singh also served as director of the Accountability Division at the Open Society Justice Initiative where she oversaw projects on numerous rule of law and human rights issues. She successfully litigated before the European Court of Human Rights cases seeking accountability for European government complicity in the CIA’s post-September 11, 2001, torture program. She successfully challenged Egypt’s emergency law as well as its torture and arbitrary detention practices before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Among other cases, she served as counsel in US litigation seeking accountability for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Singh has previously taught at the Yale Law School. She has testified before Congress and been a frequent commentator in the U.S. and international press. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, CNN, The Guardian, Le Monde, The East African, The New York Review of Books, The Lancet, Los Angeles Times, Just Security, Al Jazeera, and TES Magazine. She is author of a number of human rights reports, including Eroding Trust: The UK’s Prevent Counter-Extremism Strategy in Health and Education; Death by Drone: Civilian Harm Caused by U.S. Targeted Killings in Yemen; and Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition. She is also co-author of Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond (Columbia Univ. Press).

Before joining the Open Society Justice Initiative, Singh was a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, litigating immigrants’ rights and national security cases, including landmark litigation that exposed Bush administration torture policies. She was a law clerk to the Honorable Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum of the US District Court in the Southern District of New York. 

She is a graduate of the Yale Law School, Oxford University, and Cambridge University.