Weil and Pro Bono Counsel Miriam Buhl were honored on October 18 in New York by the Center for Constitutional Rights at its annual fall event, CCR Celebrates Changemakers. Ms. Buhl was interviewed onstage during the event.

CCR recognized Weil’s “tireless contribution and commitment to our work: from demanding the humane treatment of prisoners in the darkest corners of U.S. prisons to supporting the speech rights of journalists and defending Natives’ rights to land and religious ceremony.”

CCR noted that Weil serves as “a model for how the legal field can mobilize collaboratively to fight the seemingly unprecedented assault … on our most basic human rights.”

Other Changemaker honorees this year have strong links to Weil’s pro bono work. Activist Dolores Canales is the mother of one of the Pelican Bay prisoners (and a former inmate herself) whom the Firm, led by Anne Cappella, represented and helped reach a landmark settlement ending indeterminate long-term solitary confinement in California (Ashker v. Governor of California) in 2015. Another honoree, Sara Jayyousi, is the daughter of a prisoner who was incarcerated in the Terre Haute Communications Management Unit (CMU) among other locations. Gregory Silbert is handling that matter with CCR.

University of Pittsburgh professor Jules Lobel and CCR Senior Staff Attorney Rachel Meeropol spoke about these issues at the event. Professor Lobel was co-counsel in the study led by senior counsel Eric Ordway entitled Seeing into Solitary, which was commissioned by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice.

In addition, a Weil team led by Jessie Mishkin is assisting CCR with a tribal rights matter in an action brought by the Ramapough Lenape Nation Tribe against the township of Mahwah, N.J., and a local homeowner’s association, for acts of racial and religious discrimination. The case centers on the tribe’s rights to use its ancestral land free from harassment.

Ms. Meeropol presented the award to Ms. Buhl, singling out Weil and the pro bono program’s extraordinary commitment to human rights issues and our remarkable professionalism, diligence and creativity in litigation.