Cardiff Law and Global Justice pro-bono programme was set up in 2015 by Professors John Harrington and Ambreena Manji. Part of the award winning Law Clinic at Catdiff University, it takes its inspiration from legal theorist William Twining’s challenge to take a truly cosmopolitan approach to legal education. Its creation was supported by the Hingorani Foundation of New Delhi and is inspired by the work of Kapila and Nirmal Hingorani, the founders of public interest litigation in India. Kapila Hingorani was the first South Asian woman graduate of Cardiff University, taking her degree in 1948.

Kapila and Nirmal Hingorani. Credit Aman Hingorani

Participating students move beyond the traditional Britain and Europe-centred view of law, engaging with international, regional and national legal systems relevant to securing effective accountability for human rights violations. 

Students develop the combination of socio-legal and blackletter skills necessary to ‘take suffering seriously’, as the Indian legal scholar Upendra Baxi has put it. 

Cardiff Law and Global Justice Pro-Bono students work on a range of legal and political issues in order to assist the public interest law firm Deighton Pierce Glynn (London and Bristol) (DPG), and their partners at various NGOs in the UK and internationally, in achieving justice for vulnerable communities.

International Cardiff: Professor Ambreena Manji discussing the ethos behind the pro-bono clinic and putting law into action.