Yale Law grad heads up Buffalo’s Human Rights Center

Melish’s road to the study and practice of law was not typical. During her undergraduate studies in comparative development at Brown University, Melish spent a semester studying sustainable development in Bolivia, another in Kenya and summers in Guatemala to work as an international accompanier with CONAVIGUA, a women’s group.

After college, Melish went back to Central America on a Fulbright to work on a border integration initiative between Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador by using a rights-based approach to address food insecurity in border communities. However, her first-hand experience showed her that invoking this right to food was difficult without proper enforcement. She knew then that she needed to go to law school to learn how to genuinely enforce these food rights.

At Yale Law School, Melish maintained her commitment to studying economic, social and cultural rights, working as editor-in-chief of the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal, book reviews editor of the Yale Journal of International law, student director of the law school’s Human Rights Center and a member of the Human Rights Clinic. She also wrote a book on human rights during this time. During her summer breaks from law school, she worked in South Africa, Argentina and Costa Rica in a variety of human rights-focused settings.

A host of career opportunities opened up for Melish upon her graduation from Yale in 2000—from clerking for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and teaching at a small law school in Miami, to working in Washington D.C. for a non-profit law firm that litigates before the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights.

Prior to being named director of the Buffalo Human Rights Center, Melish went to work with the United Nations in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs and as a representative of Mental Disability Rights International. Additionally, she has served as a visiting professor or lecturer at many law schools, including Notre Dame, Oxford, George Washington, Georgia and Virginia.