Center certificate alumnus Rauseo-Ricupero continues human rights work at Nixon Peabody

February 2023

Ronaldo Rauseo-Ricupero, a 2007 graduate of BC Law, is currently a litigator at Nixon Peabody LLP in Boston, where he serves as a member of the firm’s pro bono committee. In that role, he helps to find ways for Nixon Peabody to make a positive impact by providing legal services at no cost to those in need. He has dealt with a number of human rights cases, including a significant collaboration with the BC Center for Human Rights and International Justice. In a recent case, Nixon Peabody and the Center joined to represent an individual who had been erroneously deported from the United States. The individual had been outside of the United States for more than ten years due to an infraction that was eventually deemed not to be a deportable offense. Attorneys from Nixon Peabody and the Center jointly argued the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and secured a precedent-setting victory. In subsequent years, the firm continued to work to unite the client’s family, overcoming many legal hurdles through the efforts of Nixon Peabody associate and Boston College Law School alumna Brianna Nassif Portu ’17. 

Nixon Peabody also handled a case against the prior presidential administration’s family separation policy, working with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts to reunite a child who had been separated from her mother. The firm has also partnered with the ACLU on immigration cases involving a number of people from Indonesia who were invited by ICE to identify themselves voluntarily because they were all part of a single religious group; the group of 70 was told that they would be able to remain in the US as long as they checked in with ICE at given intervals. When the administration changed in 2017, it essentially revoked the deal without notice and attempted to immediately remove the Indonesian individuals back to their country of origin, where they would encounter severe religious persecution. Nixon Peabody and the ACLU were able to litigate the case in federal court and win an injunction to prevent the group’s deportation. Many of these individuals have since had their asylum cases adjudicated in their favor, allowing them to remain in the US. In addition to asylum and immigration work, the firm also advances many other types of civil and human rights, such as those regarding transgender access and name-change issues, prisoners’ rights, domestic violence cases, special education cases, veterans’ disability cases, homelessness and eviction matters, and death penalty cases. Overall, Rauseo-Ricupero holds that Nixon Peabody’s pro bono program utilizes “the tools of litigation to help advance the enforcement and vindication of rights of individuals, some of which fall squarely in human rights.” 

Beyond working on the pro bono programs, Rauseo-Ricupero’s day-to-day work includes maintaining his active litigation practice, through which he defends individuals and companies facing government investigation and related commercial litigation. His practice deals with both criminal and civil defense, necessitating knowledge of the tools available for vindicating a victim of a human rights abuse and for understanding the types of strategies that defendants use in both civil and criminal cases.

Rauseo-Ricupero began at Boston College Law School in 2004. He was able to participate in the CHRIJ’s new interdisciplinary seminar in human rights and international justice, which allowed students from the School of Social Work, the Lynch School of Education and Human Development, the School of Theology and Ministry, and the Law School, to study current issues of human rights together, which he found inspiring. Earning the CHRIJ’s certificate involved being taught by not only his own law school professor and mentor Prof. Daniel Kanstroom, but also social psychologist Prof. Brinton Lykes and theologian and human rights theorist Prof. David Hollenbach, S.J., scholars whom he had not anticipated interacting with when he began law school. He became the first law school recipient of the Certificate in Human Rights and International Justice. His interest in human rights led Rauseo-Ricupero to work for a non-governmental organization called International Crisis Group, which at that time advocated for the Responsibility to Protect doctrine in foreign affairs. He was able to explore the academic and theoretical underpinning of the work done by the International Crisis Group through what he had learned through the CHRIJ’s interdisciplinary seminar. 

Rauseo-Ricupero was also interested in finding out how human rights enforcement worked in practice. To this end, he participated in the Boston College Law School’s externship program at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia located in the Netherlands. Under the supervision of Boston College Law School alumnus and prosecutor at the Hague Phillip Weiner ’80, he and other students learned how to put together a case and bring someone to international criminal justice on a grand scale. Being in the Hague was itself a transformative experience for him. He states that he will never forget being in the gallery when for the first time ever an international court had a head of state defendant come before it. The appearance of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, accused of atrocities before the Special Court for Sierra Leone, in the Chambers of the International Criminal Court, was a watershed moment in the continuing effort to achieve accountability for human rights abuses. 

Rauseo-Ricupero says that it was gratifying to study a wide range of topics while completing the Center’s certificate program. When thinking about the implications of the Responsibility To Protect as part of the International Crisis Group, he understood the work on a political level. However, when he took the seminar, Rauseo-Ricupero was able to better comprehend the legal and philosophical dimensions of this work. Through the certificate, he also completed a writing component, in which he examined the atrocities in Darfur. He took the underpinnings of the interdisciplinary theory he had been learning and applied it to the case, which helped further develop skills he would later apply through his legal practice.

Rauseo-Ricupero shared that he appreciates the wide breadth of scholars and fellow students he has encountered through the Center for Human Rights and International Justice, calling upon them at various points throughout his career. He noted that in asylum cases, for example, “it’s often important to have experts who can describe the social dynamics that an asylee is trying to flee” and the psychological impact that their experience had on them. Those involved with CHRIJ have been an invaluable source of such expertise.

He also expressed gratitude for having received the 2022 Reverend John A. Dinneen, S.J. Hispanic Alumni Service Award as part of the St. Oscar Romero Scholarship program. He noted how the Jesuit scholars and professors he encountered in CHRIJ’s programming enriched his practice and understanding of what law can do. Ultimately, this has allowed him to better appreciate law as an avocation through which he can use his skills to advance his commitment to his values and his community. He also joked that his gratitude to the CHRIJ even extends to his personal life, as it was during this externship in the Hague that he met his now-wife, who was at the time working at the Chambers of the International Criminal Court.  

The advice that Rauseo-Ricupero would give to students wanting to integrate human rights issues into their studies and careers is to be open to many lenses on the concept. When he thought of “human rights” as a student, he had focused at first on the traditional legal “rights” dimension. Exposure to those from the School of Social Work provided him greater access to the “human” dimension of the concept, making his lawyering that much better. Rauseo-Ricupero expressed his hope that his view of human rights can “help inform [his] colleagues from the social work area about the ways that rights can and can’t be enforced by the legal system” and therefore highlight what needs to be done “for non-legal avenues to make human rights a reality.” He believes that possessing different perspectives about what human rights are and how they can be interpreted, adjudicated, and enforced creates a more fulsome appreciation of human rights, and he advises that students intentionally cultivate the types of connections that can advance human rights in a broader capacity.

by Antonio Mata, MCAS ‘23