Jess Temple joined the International Justice Resource Center as a law fellow in September 2016. She received her J.D. from UCLA School of Law, where she completed the specialization in International and Comparative Law with honors. She received her B.A. in political science and psychology at UC Santa Cruz.
Prior to joining IJRC, Jess worked as an associate with the human rights litigation firm, Schonbrun Seplow Harris & Hoffman, LLP in Venice, California. In this capacity, Jess worked on a number of human rights cases implicating the Alien Tort Statute, as well as on numerous domestic civil rights cases. Previously, Jess worked with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland as a Special Procedures intern in the Justice, Protection, and Social Rights unit. Jess primarily contributed to the work of the Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression and opinion, and the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers.
While at UCLA School of Law, Jess was a student attorney in the International Human Rights Clinic. As an attempt to improve Syrian refugee access to legal and other services, Jess contributed to a guide on information dissemination strategies in refugee crisis, which was translated and distributed widely to refugees and advocates in Lebanon. Jess was an Editor-in-Chief of UCLA’s Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs, a student director of the International Justice Project, and a co-chair of the International Human Rights Law Association. In 2014, Jess directed a project with the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, which lead to a three-day panel with the Special Rapporteur and experts from around the globe hosted at UCLA on global perspectives on racial profiling, particularly discussing manifestations of racial profiling in police, immigration, and detention agencies.
Jess was admitted to the California State Bar in December 2016.