Jeena Shah is an Associate Professor at the CUNY School of Law. Prior to joining CUNY’s faculty, Jeena was a Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor at Rutgers Law School, where she directed the International Human Rights Clinic and co-taught in the Constitutional Rights Clinic. In that role, she supervised students in litigation and advocacy in support of grassroots groups fighting for racial and economic justice, the rights of immigrant and LGBTQ communities, and veterans care. For her work with the clinics, the Rutgers Law chapter of the National Lawyers Guild awarded her with the Arthur Kinoy Award.
Before entering academia, Jeena was an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). In that capacity, she litigated Al Shimari v. CACI and Sexual Minorities Uganda v. Scott Lively under the Alien Tort Statute, provided legal and advocacy support to people’s movements across the U.S. and the globe, and designed and conducted trainings on movement lawyering. Prior to CCR, Jeena served as an international human rights attorney with community-based law offices in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and Gujarat, India. In Haiti, with the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, she supported local lawyers and organizers fighting unlawful evictions of communities displaced by the 2010 earthquake and victims of the ex-dictator Duvalier’s crimes against humanity, and observed the country’s national elections. In India, with Navsarjan, Jeena supported local lawyers and organizers representing Dalit victims of hate crimes and other forms of caste-based discrimination. Jeena also practiced at Shearman & Sterling LLP, where she litigated complex commercial and civil rights matters.
Jeena has appeared on various media outlets, including Democracy Now! and Al Jazeera, to discuss human rights issues. In 2017, she helped found and direct the Movement Lawyering Boot Camp. Jeena graduated from NYU School of Law in 2007 and received her B.A. summa cum laude in Political Science and French from Drew University in 2004.
