Emily Rathburn’s ’23 passion for international law and human rights led to an extraordinary experience as a foreign law clerk at the Constitutional Court of South Africa, which, like the U.S. Supreme Court, is the apex judicial body of that country. According to the program’s description, the “South African Foreign Law Clerk Programme” is for “outstanding recent graduates and young lawyers,” and Rathburn exemplified that standard of excellence. Through the program, Constitutional Court justices appoint young lawyers from around the world to serve as their clerks. Working alongside South African law clerks, each foreign law clerk assists a specific judge by conducting extensive legal research and writing and by helping to draft memoranda, prepare for hearings, and provide editorial suggestions for judgments.
While at Rutgers Law, Rathburn was shaping her journey toward post-graduation through extracurricular activities such as serving as Editor-in-Chief of Rutgers International Law and Human Rights Journal and by taking a class on South African Constitutional Law in her second year, a study-and-travel course that involves a semester of reading and writing about South African law that also includes travel to South Africa over the law school’s spring break. Rathburn was drawn to the program because her studies had always focused on human rights and international law, both of which have deeply influenced South Africa’s historically significant constitution.
About her participation in the course, Rathburn explained, “I had some historical background on South Africa, and the end of apartheid. But I had wanted to learn a lot more about it, including how they were able to move forward to now have one of the world’s most progressive constitutions.”
That was how Rathburn came to be traveling with four of her classmates in South Africa for about 10 days in March of 2022. The experience included a visit to the celebrated Constitutional Court of South Africa where she met Justice Leona Valerie Theron for the first time. Justice Theron’s career arc, with her service at the age of 32 as a trailblazing black female judge and the youngest judge in the country, inspired the Rutgers students on that trip. This led to an invite from Rutgers MSP to Justice Theron to come and keynote the MSP kickoff event later in 2022. At that event, Justice Theron shared her own story of an illustrious career against unlikely odds amid a political transformation in South Africa that has been closely watched the world over.
Because of this encounter, Rathburn knew she wanted to explore the foreign law clerk program.
