Eleos Anti-Death Penalty Clinic (LAW4811)

Established in July 2018, the Eleos Anti-Death Penalty Clinic was the start of an ongoing collaboration between Monash Law and the Melbourne-based NGO Capital Punishment Justice Project (CPJP). CPJP’s mission is to abolish the death penalty worldwide; it has a wide partnership network of capital defence lawyers and anti-death penalty activists. As partners, Monash Law and CPJP have created Eleos Justice, a regional-first hub for evidence-based research, policy and clinical casework devoted to abolishing the death penalty.

At the Eleos Anti-Death Penalty Clinic, we partner with anti-death penalty NGOs and lawyers across the Asia-Pacific region to support them with their casework and advocacy; students utilise their emerging legal skills and work alongside our partners. Our students work in small teams on a variety of projects from assisting on casework and research for strategic litigation, drafting UN submissions, to producing campaign briefs for policy makers in retentionist states who may be trying to introduce legislation that expands the scope of the death penalty.

Students in the Clinic have also produced three short videos—'children of death row inmates’ and ‘the right to effective legal representation’ and ‘Women and Death Row’ for the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty to mark various World Days Against the Death Penalty.