Two Chicago-Kent Students Named 2019 Justice John Paul Stevens Public Interest Summer Fellows
Chicago-Kent College of Law students Breana Brill ’21 and Caitlin Sinclair ’21 have been awarded 2019 Justice John Paul Stevens Public Interest Fellowships. The students have received $7,000 each to support their public interest work this summer.
Professor Nancy Marder explains that when Stevens retired from the United States Supreme Court in 2010, his law clerks decided to expand the number of schools offering Stevens Fellowships. Chicago-Kent was one of the first schools to participate in that expansion. When Stevens gave a lecture at Chicago-Kent in 2012, he was able to meet the Stevens Fellows and hear about their work. Since 2011, 19 Chicago-Kent students have been selected as Stevens Fellows.
Stevens Fellowships are open to first- and second-year Chicago-Kent students who have secured public-interest legal positions at either not-for-profit organizations or governmental entities for the summer. Stevens Fellows are selected based on their commitment to public service and their potential for excellence throughout their legal careers.
This summer Brill will work at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office in the Special Prosecutions Bureau’s Professional Standards Unit, which focuses on prosecuting police and public corruption.
“I knew I wanted to dedicate my summer working in an area of law that helps Chicago communities, and I am thankful to have the opportunity to do that at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office,” she says.
Brill graduated from Michigan State University with a B.A. in professional writing and a minor in African studies. Before law school, she was a member of Michigan State's debate team and a casework intern in U.S. Senator Dick Durbin’s Chicago office.
Sinclair will spend the summer at the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, where she’ll use her legal research and writing skills to support the center’s litigation and advocacy efforts in housing justice, economic justice, health justice, and community justice.
“I was immediately attracted to this internship because it will allow me to build my legal experience off of the foundation of knowledge that I developed while working as a case manager for homeless individuals,” says Sinclair.
Before law school Sinclair worked as a case manager for Downtown Emergency Service Center Connections in Seattle, where she helped homeless clients secure housing, jobs, and treatment for mental illness and substance abuse, and spent a year in AmeriCorps. Sinclair earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Gonzaga University and studied abroad in Zambia.
