WASHINGTON – Ndjuoh MehChu has served as one of two inaugural law teaching fellows in the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center (TMCRC) at Howard Law for the past year. Passionate about advocating for marginalized groups and advancing racial and economic justice, MehChu supported the center’s mission of expanding civil and human rights through advocacy, grassroots organizing, and scholarship. TMCRC announced that MehChu recently accepted a clerkship with legendary jurist Judge Jack B. Weinstein in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.  

Appointed to the federal bench by President Lyndon B. Johnson, Weinstein is widely considered one of the leading scholars and jurist of our day. Prior to his appointment, Weinstein was a law professor at Columbia Law School and attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.  A mentee and former colleague of Thurgood Marshall, Weinstein is the only living person to work on, and sign, the legal brief in the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education.

“It is bittersweet to be leaving the Howard University community. The opportunity to extend the legacy of Thurgood Marshall at the institution where he received legal training and began his journey as a social engineer is uniquely attractive,” said MehChu.  “Clerking for Judge Weinstein, in a sense, feels like a continuation of the work I’ve been doing at the center. It’s an opportunity that I’m excited about.”

MehChu joined the TMCRC in August 2018 as the first law teaching fellow in Howard Law’s history. He helped set the groundwork for implementing the center’s operations and strategic goals. An interdisciplinary scholar, he writes primarily in the areas of human and civil rights, critical race theory and economics. He is particularly interested in reparations for descendants of slavery in the United States.

“Naturally, one of the things that surfaces in looking at racial differences along economic dimensions is the topic of reparations, which is a subject I’ve always been interested in and one that we’re starting to see is becoming part of a national dialogue,” he said.

In addition to his research and writing, MehChu’s work at TMCRC involved teaching and mentoring students. He supervised student projects related to bail reform, reparations, and police accountability in the Howard Law Human and Civil Rights Clinic. He was an advisor to the Howard Human and Civil Rights Law Review. MehChu also taught a seminar on social justice lawyering that focused on legal advocacy from a client-centered perspective and builds on the idea of rebellious lawyering, a touchstone of the discipline of critical race theory.

“It has been a great pleasure to work with Ndjuoh,” said Justin Hansford, professor at Howard Law and executive director of TMCRC. “As the very first teaching fellow for the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center, he came in with a commitment to service from day one, even helped to move boxes in as the center went from being just a vision to reality. He set the pace for much of our work in the center. We are sad to see him go, but he truly made his mark as an engaging scholar and adored young professor. We are grateful for his contributions to the center and very excited for his tremendous next step in his career.”

As a law clerk to Weinstein, MehChu will help the judge adjudicate a variety of civil and criminal cases. MehChu says he looks forward to learning from Weinstein, particularly as it relates to the judge’s approach to resolving disputes with an eye towards justice.  

“It’s an opportunity that I’m truly humbled to have. Judge Weinstein has more than 50 years of service on the federal bench and has had an immense impact in shaping the law,” said MehChu. “He is celebrated as a jurist perhaps most notably for his pioneering work on the Agent Orange case [a suit involving war veterans’ claims of exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam], for his civic-minded approach to the law, and for using the law as an instrument in the pursuit of social justice.”

Prior to Howard Law, MehChu was a Criminal Justice Reform and Children’s Rights fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center.  MehChu holds a B.A. in economics and Africana Studies with highest honors from Rutgers University-New Brunswick and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School where he was an international human rights fellow in Italy and Switzerland. Before law school, MehChu was a special education and math teacher in the Bronx, New York.

Click here to learn more about the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center.

*Photo 1: Ndjuoh MehChu Headshot

*Photo 2: Howard Human & Civil Rights Law Review editorial board members, staff, and faculty advisors, 2018-2019

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About Howard University Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center

The Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center (TMCRC) is the flagship setting for the study and practice of civil rights law at Howard University, the leading historically Black university in the United States. TMCRC seeks to expand civil rights, human rights, freedom, and equal justice under the law by integrating legal advocacy, grassroots organizing, and academic study..

About Howard University

Founded in 1867, Howard University is a private, research university that is comprised of 13 schools and colleges. Students pursue studies in more than 120 areas leading to undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees. The University operates with a commitment to Excellence in Truth and Service and has produced four Rhodes Scholars, 11 Truman Scholars, two Marshall Scholars, one Schwarzman Scholar, over 70 Fulbright Scholars and 22 Pickering Fellows. Howard also produces more on-campus African-American Ph.D. recipients than any other university in the United States. For more information on Howard University, visit www.howard.edu.

Media Contact: Misha Cornelius, misha.cornelius@howard.edu