Two Students Receive Stevens Fellowships for Public Interest Law

Two Yale Law School students will receive fellowships from the John Paul Stevens Foundation to work in public interest law this summer, the foundation announced June 20.

Oscar De Los Santos ’25 and Nina Vaswani ’24 are among the 153 students from law schools around the country who have been selected this year for the Justice John Paul Stevens Public Interest Fellowship Program. Santos will work with the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation in Sacramento. Vaswani will work in the criminal defense practice of The Legal Aid Society in New York.

The Justice John Paul Stevens Public Interest Fellowship Program provides grants to enable law students at 38 participating law schools to work in unpaid public interest summer law positions. The program was created in 1997 in honor of United States Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, reflecting his belief that a dynamic and effective justice system depends on a cadre of talented lawyers committed to the public interest. In 2010, in celebration of Stevens’ retirement from the Supreme Court, a group of his former law clerks established the John Paul Stevens Foundation to provide a formal home for the program.

As of 2022, the Stevens Fellowship Program had funded more than 680 Stevens Fellows who have worked at more than 300 public interest nonprofits or governmental agencies.