Professor Bridgette Carr has dedicated her career to advocating for the rights of human trafficking victims and advancing comprehensive domestic and international anti-trafficking policies. Her work focuses on driving paradigm shifts in the way human trafficking victimization is perceived and addressed, and helping reintegrate victims by developing legal solutions that address the complex issues of coercion and victimization around compelled service and its aftermath.

As the founding director of the University of Michigan Law School’s Human Trafficking Clinic — the first clinical law program solely devoted to addressing this issue comprehensively — Professor Carr, her colleagues, and a new generation of trainees have provided free legal services to victims since 2009, supporting the wide-ranging needs of men, women, and children, both foreign nationals and U.S. citizens, who have been victimized by a range of trafficking crimes. Using the U-M clinic as a model, Professor Carr is working with university partners around the world to develop similar programs to combat human trafficking and train law students, and has helped establish university law clinics in Mexico, Ethiopia, and Brazil to broaden the network of legal experts who can address the issues of compelled service that transcend international borders. She is the lead author of the first casebook on human trafficking law and policy, which examines the cross-section of criminal justice, civil and human rights, immigration, and international law that frames these issues.

A clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, Professor Vivek Sankaran directs both the Child Advocacy Law Clinic and the Child Welfare Appellate Clinic, through which law students represent children and parents in trial and appellate proceedings. Professor Sankaran has written numerous articles focused on improving the child welfare system and has litigated cases before the Michigan Supreme Court. In addition, he conducts state and national trainings and works on child welfare initiatives with various national groups, including the American Bar Association, Casey Family Programs, and the National Center for State Courts.

After graduating from Michigan Law in 2001, Professor Sankaran received a Skadden Fellowship to represent children at the Children’s Law Center in Washington, D.C., where he remained until 2005, when he joined the Law School faculty. In 2009, Professor Sankaran founded the Detroit Center for Family Advocacy, the first organization in the country to provide multidisciplinary legal assistance to families to prevent the unnecessary entry of children into foster care. In 2011, he was named Michigan’s Parent Attorney of the Year. Most recently, Professor Sankaran co-edited both the first national book for family defense lawyers and the third edition of Child Welfare Law and Practice, a widely recognized resource used by child welfare lawyers across the country.