Naomi Roht-Arriaza, Professor of Law

Professor Naomi Roht-Arriaza grew up in New York and Latin America, including stints in Chile, Guatemala and Costa Rica. She earned a B.A. from UC Berkeley, a M.A. from the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy (formerly the Graduate School of Public Policy), and a J.D. from the UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall). Professor Roght-Arriaza has worked as an immigration paralegal, an organizer, and a teacher for a nonprofit focused on corporate accountability. After graduating from law school, she clerked for Judge James Browning of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. During 1991 to 1992, Professor Roht-Arriaza was the first Riesenfeld Fellow in International Law and Organizations at UC Berkeley School of Law.

Professor Roht-Arriaza is the author of The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights (2005) and Impunity and Human Rights in International Law and Practice (1995), and coeditor of Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth versus Justice. She is a coauthor on The International Legal System: Cases and Materials (6th Ed.) with Mary Ellen O’Connell and Dick Scott (Foundation Press 2010). She continues to write on accountability, both state and corporate, for human rights violations as well as on other human rights, international criminal law and global environmental issues. In 2011 she was a Democracy Fellow at the U.S. Agency for International Development, and in 2012 she was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in Botswana.

Professor Roht-Arriaza enjoys creating mosaics and stained glass.

Courses Taught: Torts, International Human Rights, International Criminal Law, Reparations for Injustices, and Law and Development

Expertise: Transitional/Post-Conflict Justice, Reparations, International Human Rights, and International Humanitarian Law

What I hope you get from a legal education at UC Hastings is... the idea that good lawyering is about much more than reading and analyzing appellate cases. Especially where human rights issues are concerned, a lawyer has to integrate strategic thinking, media and organizing strategies, work with clients and with multiple organizations, ethical concerns and legislative and regulatory approaches to solving a problem.