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With democracy under increasing attack around the world, is keenly interested in what law can do—and what it can’t do—to counter rising authoritarianism. 

So two years ago, Singh, a veteran human rights litigator, founded an innovative project at Stanford Law School to study and deploy legal tools in defense of democracy and the rule of law worldwide, while engaging students in experiential learning. This year, she joins ������ Law as professor of practice and continues the work of the project as the Rule of Law Lab at ������ Law. 

“I was genuinely curious about what one can do as a lawyer to defend democracy in different countries,” says Singh of the Lab’s origin. Its current projects are far-flung and diverse. The Lab has filed litigation over the Senegalese government’s internet shutdown after protests in 2023, and advocated against Mexico’s move to replace much of the sitting judiciary with elected judges. In the nation of Georgia, the Lab has analyzed the recently enacted “foreign agent” law and other repressive measures that threaten to crush the country’s civil society. And in the United States, the Lab has documented the harm caused by discriminatory educational censorship laws in public schools. 

“Amrit has built—in a very short time—a leading Lab defending the rule of law in important contexts around the world,” says Professor Margaret Satterthwaite ’99. 

“Amrit has built—in a very short time—a leading Lab defending the rule of law in important contexts around the world,” says Professor ’99, who has previously drawn on the Lab’s research in her work as the United Nations special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers. “I am thrilled to have Amrit as a colleague here at ������.… I have always found Amrit to be intensely insightful and strategic, as well as generous with her time and connections. Students will be enriched by her wide-ranging experience, her advice, and her mentoring.” 

Singh’s own background is international and steeped in a deep commitment to social justice. Growing up in India, she at first planned to become an economist, “motivated by a desire to be able to do something meaningful to help people get out of poverty,” she says. “And eventually I realized that law…was a better fit for me because it allowed me to ask a wider range of questions—not only questions about whether a certain allocation of resources was efficient, but also: was it just?” After earning a BA in economics at the University of Cambridge and an MPhil in economics at the University of Oxford, she obtained her JD at Yale Law School. 

Singh spent her first two decades of practice engaged in civil rights and human rights litigation in the US and around the world. As a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, Singh obtained the release of tens of thousands of US government documents detailing the post-9/11 torture program run by the Central Intelligence Agency. At the Open Society Justice Initiative, where she headed the Accountability Division, Singh won landmark European rulings that held Poland and Romania liable for hosting secret CIA torture prisons. She also helped bring to light US intelligence reports on the Saudi crown prince’s role in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. 

By 2021, Singh says, increasing concerns about the state of democracy worldwide inspired her to probe “how different legal systems perpetuate or restrain authoritarianism.” She proposed and then co-taught a seminar at ������ Law, Resisting Contemporary Authoritarianism, with , University Professor and Joseph Straus Professor of Law, as her co-teacher. 

“I was thrilled to find that my students at ������, many of them already familiar with different legal systems in different parts of the world, were extremely interested and engaged in these issues. Their insights were immensely valuable for assessing global trends,” Singh says. And now, she adds, the Rule of Law Lab will benefit from the Law School’s students and faculty, its international perspective, and its strong tradition of public interest and clinical practice. 

“The thing that gives me hope for the future,” she says, “is the spirit of the young people that I teach.… There is so much to learn from them.” —Emily Barker