Soros Justice Fellowships

Asian Law Caucus

Angela Chan will launch a juvenile justice project at the Asian Law Caucus (ALC) by utilizing litigation, education, and policy advocacy to obtain equal access for Asian Pacific Islander (API) families to participate in the rehabilitation of their youth. ALC, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, is the nation's oldest legal and civil rights organization serving low-income Asian Pacific American communities. The project will provide needed advocacy for API youth and their families, one of the fastest-growing populations in our nation’s juvenile justice system. In San Francisco alone, APIs constitute as much as 15 percent of the juvenile hall population and are predominantly from indigent families of limited English proficiency. The project focuses on dismantling barriers to language access in the juvenile justice system that prevent API families from participating in the defense and rehabilitation of their youth.

Chan, a native of Portland, Oregon, earned a JD, cum laude, from Harvard Law School. She graduated summa cum laude from Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. At Occidental, she earned honors and distinction for her sociology thesis on intraethnic conflict and solidarity among Chinese immigrants working in ethnic enclaves, which was published by the Harvard Asian American Policy Review. At Harvard, Chan was copresident of Harvard Asian Pacific American Law Students, and served on the Black Letter Law Journal and the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Journal. She was awarded a Harry S. Truman Scholarship, a Harvard Asian Pacific Alumni Association Fellowship, and a Harvard Southern California Alumni Association Fellowship for her commitment to public service and civil rights work. Prior to and during law school, she assisted in developing class action suits for the national office of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; the NAACP Legal Defense Fund; Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll; and the Asian Law Caucus. Chan also participated in externships at the Harvard Civil Rights Project, Greater Boston Legal Services, the Public Corruption and Civil Rights Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and was a student attorney for the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project. She is serving as a judicial law clerk to the Hon. Napoleon A. Jones Jr. in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.

San Francisco, CA |  One Year |