In the summer of 1985, I was 23 years old and poised to enter my last year of law school. Instead of working for a law firm that summer, I decided to explore law and justice in a completely different context. I applied for a summer fellowship with the newly created Harvard Human Rights Program and was given funding to do legal human rights work with “La Vicaria de Soledaridad,” a legal/social agency of the Catholic Church located in Santiago, Chile. Enthusiastic but naive, I had no idea what I was about to encounter under Chile’s military dictatorship, nor how that experience would be so meaningful to me years later.

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