Diala Shamas

Diala Shamas is a Liman Fellow working with the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project. CLEAR aims to address the unmet legal needs of Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and other communities in the New York City area that are particularly affected by national security and counterterrorism policies and practices.

She received her law degree from Yale Law School in 2011, where she worked with the National Litigation Project, litigating cases stemming from post-September 11th detention policies. She was also an editor for the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal, a founding member of the Middle Eastern and North African Law Students’ Association, and a member of the Transnational Development Clinic. She has also worked with Adalah, a legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel.

Prior to law school, Shamas worked with B’Tselem, a human rights organization based in Jerusalem, where she developed a human rights documentation initiative in the occupied territories using video documentation methods. Her interests in international law, accountability, and community responses to systemic abuses have also taken her to Rwanda, where she helped research transitional justice mechanisms being implemented in that country.