Liman Center Names 2025-2026 Public Interest Fellows

The Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law⁴ welcomes its incoming fellows⁵, its newest group of law graduates who will spend a year working in at organizations throughout the United States.

This year’s fellows will join organizations working on an array of issues, including protecting tenants, workers, immigrants, members of Indian tribes, criminal defendants, and imprisoned people, and addressing housing insecurity, non-discrimination, criminal law enforcement, and equality. The fellows will work across the country, in states including California, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Minnesota, Missouri, Massachusetts, New York, and and in Washington, D.C. Since its founding in 1997 and including the new group, the center has supported more than 200 Yale Law School graduates working at host organizations around the country. 

Four incoming fellows will hold specially designated fellowships. In 2017, in celebration of the Liman Center’s 20th year, former fellows helped to fund a Resnik-Curtis Fellowship to honor Judith Resnik, the center’s founding director, and Dennis Curtis, clinical professor emeritus and a pioneer in Yale Law School’s clinical program. In 2018, the Liman Center created the Meselson Fellowship in memory of Amy Meselson ’02, a 2002 Liman Fellow who worked tirelessly on behalf of immigrant children. This fellowship continues through the generosity of her family, friends, and classmates. In 2019, Alan Bersin and Lisa Foster provided funds for a Curtis-Liman Fellow to work in conjunction with Yale Law School’s clinical program on issues of criminal law enforcement and immigration. In 2025, Patrick and Vicki Malone provided funds for a Malone-Liman Fellow⁶ to do targeted work enabling individuals to have better access to legal remedies.

In addition to the incoming fellows, the Liman Center is able to have several current fellows continue with substantial support from their hosts and other funders. Along with its fellows at organizations around the country, the center also has scholars and research affiliates based at Yale Law School and other institutions.

2025-2026 Fellows

Donovan Bendana ’25 will join GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD Law) in Boston, Massachusetts. Through direct representation, litigation, policy advocacy, and public education, he will work to support safe, inclusive, and affirming school environments for queer and transgender students. Bendana received a B.A. in political science and international comparative studies from Duke University. At Yale Law School, he is a member of the Reproductive Rights and Justice Project, Veterans Legal Services Clinic, and the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism.

Natalie Cauley ’21 will be the Meselson-Liman Fellow. She will join the asylum and detention team at the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center in Albuquerque. Her project focuses on providing direct representation in immigration court and improving conditions in New Mexico’s migrant detention facilities. Cauley has experience seeking to lessen the harms of conditions of confinement from her work at the ACLU of Alaska Prison Project. Before joining the ACLU, Cauley clerked for the Alaska Court of Appeals and Alaska Superior Court. She received her B.A. in economics and French from Virginia Tech. She graduated from Yale in 2021. While in law school, Cauley worked with the Challenging Mass Incarceration Clinic and was a Co-Editor-in-Chief for the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism.

Lyle Cherneff ’24 will join the Legal Rights Center in Minneapolis, where he will assist in the launch of a new program to provide free, pre-arraignment legal representation to people arrested in Hennepin County. Cherneff received a B.A. in history and gender and sexuality studies from Brown University. At Yale Law School, he was an editor of the Yale Journal for Law and Feminism and a member of the Challenging Mass Incarceration Clinic. Cherneff published a note in the Yale Law Journal on popular constitutionalism in the Reconstruction era. He is currently a law clerk in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota.

Hannah Friedle, the incoming Curtis-Liman Fellow, will co-teach the Liman Workshop, collaborate with the clinical program, and work at the Federal Defenders Office for the District of Connecticut. Friedle graduated from North Central College in 2018 with a B.A. in Political Science and from Northwestern Law School in 2023. At Northwestern, she worked in the Center on Wrongful Convictions and the Appellate Advocacy Center, representing clients who were incarcerated and on supervised release. Friedle is currently clerking in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.

William Krueger ’24, to be based at ArchCity Defenders, will focus on founding a tenants’ union in St. Louis, Missouri, to empower tenants to improve housing conditions and have fair rents. He will also defend people facing eviction and support litigation related to housing. Previously, Krueger worked in organizing and voter protection on Democratic and progressive campaigns and as an organizer of housing justice efforts. Krueger earned his B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis. At Yale Law School, he participated in the Housing Clinic and served as the campaigns co-chair for YLS Democrats, as well as a board member for the Capital Assistance Project and the Election Law Society.

K.N. McCleary ’24 will join Upper Seven in Helena, Montana, to work on the impact of criminal law on members of Indian Tribes and to address the conditions of confinement in jails where people are detained. McCleary is Little Shell Ojibwe and grew up on the Crow Reservation in southeastern Montana. They earned a B.A. from Yale College in 2018. At Yale Law School, McCleary served in the Veterans Legal Services Clinic, was submissions editor for the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, and was co-president of Trans @YLS and of the Native American Law Students Association. Before law school, McCleary served as the legislative assistant on American Indian Affairs to former Sen. Jon Tester in Washington, D.C. They are currently clerking on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Pablo Moraga ’25 will join Democracy Forward in Washington, D.C., where he will work to protect initiatives that welcome all persons to education and workplaces. His project will focus on defending equitable government programs and on limiting ongoing efforts to end measures shaped to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion. After receiving a B.A. in political science at the University of California, Berkeley, Moraga worked at California Rural Legal Assistance, where he advocated alongside low-income LGBTQ+ farmworkers to protect their rights. At Yale Law School, Moraga has been a member of the Worker and Immigrant Rights’ Advocacy Clinic, an Articles Editor for the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, and Co-President of OutLaws.

Caroline Parker ’23 is the inaugural Malone-Liman Fellow. She will join Towards Justice in Denver, Colorado, a nonprofit that represents workers. Parker will assist low-wage clients facing challenges related to their housing. She will investigate tenants’ living conditions and the management practices of landlords and study problems of workers living in employer-controlled housing in remote areas. Parker will also help coordinate Denver-area organizers working to sustain tenants’ collective bargaining. She received a B.A. from the University of Virginia. Before Yale Law School, Parker worked in the Office of Colorado’s Child Protection Ombudsman, investigating citizen complaints about the child welfare system and developing legislative reforms. At Yale Law School, she was a member of the Community and Economic Development Clinic, a features editor for the Yale Law Journal, and the co-president of the Law and Political Economy (LPE) student group.

Inbar Pe’er ’25 will join the Governors Action Alliance (GovAct). Her project will focus on developing resources to help states protect residents who are immigrants and enable state and local officials to respond to efforts that would undermine community safety by targeting immigrants. Pe'er received her B.A. in Political Science from Columbia University. She is a Hebert Hansell Student Fellow for the Center for Global Legal Challenges, a student director of the Peter Gruber Rule of Law Clinic, a teaching assistant for courses in civil procedure, constitutional law, and international law, and co-chapter director of the Yale International Refugee Assistance Project.

Grace Watkins ’25 will be the Resnik-Curtis Fellow and will join the Office of the Public Defender in San Diego County, California. Her project focuses on implementing the California Racial Justice Act through post-conviction litigation by representing individual clients and developing resources to support historical research and statistical analysis for these cases. Watkins received her B.A. in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and her M.St. in history from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She is currently a D.Phil student in history at the University of Oxford. At Yale Law School, she has been a Coker Fellow, a Legal History Fellow, and a member of the Reentry Clinic.

Kevin Z. Yang ’25 will join the Legal Aid Society's Criminal Appeals Bureau in New York City, where he will represent individuals in parole hearings and appeals, prioritizing cases in which parole was denied based solely on the nature of the crime or where the parole board improperly considered unproven allegations. Yang received a B.A. in political science from Williams College. At Yale Law School, he has been a student director for the Civil Rights Advocacy Clinic and worked on parole advocacy and post-conviction relief for five semesters. He is also a member of the Criminal Justice Advocacy Clinic and the Appellate Litigation Project and a notes and comments editor for the Yale Law Journal.

Continuing Fellows, Scholars, and Research Affiliates

Charlie Jiang ’24 is continuing as a Liman Fellow at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) in Boston, Massachusetts, where he works on issues to lessen racism, improve respect for working-class Asian Americans, and enhance community safety. Jiang has represented individuals attacked due to anti-Asian animus. He is contributing to legislative efforts to improve access to healthcare and other public services. Jiang received a B.S. in engineering physics from Stanford University. At Yale Law School, he was a member of the Community and Economic Development Clinic and an articles editor for the Yale Law and Policy Review.

Ibrahim Diallo, the 2024-2025 Curtis-Liman Fellow, will become a senior fellow in residence. Diallo co-teaches the Liman Workshop, collaborates with the clinical program, and works at the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the District of Connecticut. He graduated from Trinity College in 2011 with a B.A. in International Relations and from Columbia Law School in 2020. In law school, Diallo was named a Lowenstein Public Interest Fellow, founded an externship program for law students to work with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA), and won the Constance Baker Motley Prize, the Samuel I. Rosenman Prize for Academic Excellence in Public Law, and the Emil Schlesinger Labor Law Prize. After graduation, he was a staff attorney with the NYTWA and clerked for the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Reginald Dwayne Betts ’16, a Senior Liman Scholar, is a poet and lawyer. A 2021 MacArthur Fellow, he is the CEO of Freedom Reads, an organization that transforms prison cellblocks into Freedom Libraries. He is the author of a memoir and five collections of poetry, including the American Book Award-winning Felon and Doggerel, released this year. His writing explores the world of prison and the effects of violence and incarceration on American society. In 2019, Betts won the National Magazine Award in the Essays and Criticism category for his New York Times Magazine essay that chronicles his journey from prison to becoming a licensed attorney. He has been awarded a Radcliffe Fellowship from Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Emerson Fellowship at New America, and most recently, a Civil Society Fellowship at Aspen. Betts holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, was a Liman Fellow in 2016, and has been an affiliated Liman Research Scholar since 2020.

Laura Fernandez ’02 is a Senior Liman Fellow in Residence, clinical lecturer in law, and research scholar in law at Yale Law School. Her research focuses on questions of prosecutorial power, ethics, and accountability. Before joining Yale Law School, she was Senior Counsel at Holland & Knight, LLP, where she worked as a full-time member of the Community Services Team. Fernandez clerked in the Eastern District of New York and was an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow at Georgetown Law Center, where she obtained her LL.M. She holds an A.B. in Literature from Harvard College and a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Natalia Friedlander ’18, a senior research affiliate, was the first Resnik-Curtis Fellow and then a staff attorney with the Rhode Island Center for Justice. There, she founded the center’s criminal justice team and challenged unjust conditions of confinement, denial of healthcare, and other abuses in the criminal justice system. Now a visiting clinical lecturer in law, associate research scholar in law, and Robert M. Cover Clinical Teaching Fellow at Yale Law School, her prior work includes Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts, the New Haven Legal Assistance Association, and the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale Law School. Friedlander holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, which recognized her with the Stephen J. Massey Prize for client advocacy and community service, and a B.A. from Brown University. Before law school, Friedlander worked in the field of domestic and international public health.

Brian Highsmith ’17 is a senior research affiliate with the Liman Center. He is also, as of summer 2025, an assistant professor at UCLA, teaching state constitutional law, contracts, and a seminar about local democracy. He began his work with Liman as a Fellow in Residence in early 2020, after completing a two-year Skadden Fellowship with the National Consumer Law Center that worked to challenge unaffordable financial obligations imposed on poor families as a result of their contact with the criminal system. He started a Ph.D. in government and social policy at Harvard in the fall of 2020, with a research focus on the fiscal pressures facing local governments and their reliance on regressive fines and fees assessed through local policing and criminal systems. Highsmith has remained affiliated with the Liman Center, joining in organizing a series of Liman-hosted webinar sessions about the intersections of public finance and criminal punishment, as well as planning the 2023 colloquium, Budgeting for Justice: Fiscal Policy and Monetary Sanctions. For these projects, Highsmith has drawn on his experience working (both before and after law school) on domestic economic policy in Washington, D.C. — including as an advisor at President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the office of Sen. Cory Booker.

Jonathan Petkun ’19 is an associate professor of law at Duke Law School, where he teaches civil procedure as well as a seminar on access to justice. In his research, Petkun uses his training as an economist to empirically study the legal and economic organization of large public institutions, especially federal and state courts, and the U.S. military. With respect to courts, Petkun is interested in how court rules and norms affect litigants’ access. His current projects include a study of federal judicial administration — with an emphasis on the diversity of judges’ administrative roles and the enormous “off-the-bench” influence they wield in policy matters unrelated to any adjudication — as well as a study of the uses and limits of empirical research on civil litigation and procedure. Petkun is a graduate of Yale Law School and holds a Ph.D. in economics from MIT. Prior to his start at teaching, Petkun served as a Senior Liman Research Affiliate (and continues that affiliation) and clerked for federal judges on the District of Connecticut and the D.C. Circuit. Before his academic career, Petkun served as a U.S. Marine stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.