Visiting Clinical Associate Professor of Law
Director, Loyola Genocide Justice Clinic
Courses Taught
- Comparative Law and Religion
- Genocide Justice Clinic
- International Human Rights Clinic
- International Litigation
- International Trade Law
- Law and Genocide
Court Admissions
- State Bar of California
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
- U.S. District Court for the Central District of California
- U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
Links
Education
- BA, Oberlin College
- JD, magna cum laude, Pepperdine University School of Law
- LLM with Distinction in Public International Law, London School of Economics and Political Science
Background
Rajika L. Shah is the Director of the Loyola Genocide Justice Clinic (LGJC) at LMU Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, California. The LGJC provides students hands-on legal experience in real-world, active cases and claims involving post-Holocaust mass atrocities, with substantive work primarily focused on reparation and accountability in international and domestic tribunals. She was also previously the Deputy Director of Loyola’s Center for the Study of Law and Genocide.
Prior to joining Loyola, Rajika litigated international human rights and property restitution cases on behalf of Armenian and Sudanese genocide victims, indigenous groups, and religious and ethnic minorities. She has represented plaintiffs in numerous complex and high-stakes disputes against foreign sovereigns and commercial entities, at both the trial and appellate levels. She also represented Libyan terrorist hijacking victims before the U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission.
Rajika has extensive research experience through her work with the Oxford University Press. She was instrumental in building and developing Oxford Reports on International Law (ORIL), the most comprehensive fully indexed and searchable database of international caselaw and scholarly commentary across a wide variety of international law subjects. Separately, she served as Managing Editor of the European Court of Human Rights module of ORIL, and authored case reports on a range of admissibility and merits decisions from UN human rights treaty bodies for the UN human rights module.
While interning with the U.S. State Department’s Office of War Crimes Issues (now the Office of Global Criminal Justice), Rajika traveled to the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. She also completed internships at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (Los Angeles Immigration Court), and externed for the Hon. Terry J. Hatter of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
Rajika received her LL.M. in Public International Law with Distinction from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where her team were semifinalists in the Jean Pictet Competition in international humanitarian law, held in Vrnjačka Banja, Serbia. She has a J.D. (magna cum laude) from Pepperdine University School of Law and was a member of the Pepperdine Law Review, and her B.A. is in Comparative Religion from Oberlin College.
Rajika is a member of the American Society of International Law and American Branch of the International Law Association and currently serves on the Executive Board of ASIL Insights. She is also a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy and part of the Council’s Gitmo Taskforce.
Selected Publications
- R. Shah, “The Role of Law in Enabling Postgenocide Recovery: Assessing the Importance of Property Restitution,” in Klejda Mulaj, ed., Postgenocide: Interdisciplinary Reflections on the Effects of Genocide (Oxford Univ. Press 2021).
- Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation, Amicus Curiae Brief of The 1939 Society, American Jewish Committee, Bet Tzedek, Center for the Study of Law & Genocide, and The Holocaust Education Center in the Desert, Inc. In Support of Petitioners, Case No. 20-1566, U.S. Supreme Court (Nov. 18, 2021).
- Republic of Hungary v. Simon, Federal Republic of Germany v. Philipp, Amicus Curiae Brief of The 1939 Society, Michael Bazyler, Bet Tzedek, Center for the Study of Law & Genocide, and The Holocaust Education Center in the Desert, Inc. In Support of Respondents, Case Nos. 18-1447, 19-351, U.S. Supreme Court (Oct. 28, 2020).
- M. Bazyler, L. Boyd, R. Shah, K. Nelson, Searching for Justice After the Holocaust: Fulfilling the Terezin Declaration and Post-Holocaustimmovable Property Restitution (Oxford Univ. Press 2019).
- Kashef v. BNP Paribas, S.A., Brief of Sudanese-American Community Groups as Amici Curiae in Support of Plaintiffs-Appellants, and Supporting Reversal, Case No. 18-1304, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (July 12, 2018).
- R. Shah, Assessing the Atrocities: Early Indications of Potential International Crimes Stemming from the 2017 Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis, 41 Loy. L.A. Int’l & Comp. L. Rev. 181 (2018).
- R. Shah, The Making of California’s Art Recovery Statute: The Long Road to Section 338(c)(3), 20 Chapman L. Rev. 1 (2017).
- M. Bazyler and R. Shah, The Unfinished Business of the Armenian Genocide: Armenian Property Restitution and U.S. Courts, 23 Southwestern J. Int’l L. 101 (2017).
- Nelson and R. Shah, An Immovable Property Restitution Legislation Database: ESLI’s Initiative to Bring Present and Future Meaning to the Terezin Declaration Commitments, Vol. XIII No. 2, Limes+ 101 (2015).