Law student wins social justice scholarship

A scholarship given to recognize work that promotes peace and social justice was awarded to Wayne State University Law School third-year student Nicholas Klaus of Ferndale.

“We were deeply moved by your commitment to the National Lawyers Guild and human and civil rights as a whole,” wrote WSU history Associate Professor Aaron B. Retish on April 11 when he informed Klaus that he’d won the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Veterans Scholarship.

The award goes each year to WSU undergraduate and graduate students who best exemplify the values of the university’s students who fought fascism in Spain in the 1930s. This is the 32nd year the scholarships have been given.

Recipients were honored Wednesday, April 15, at WSU. Klaus, who will receive a $750 scholarship, was nominated by Wayne Law Assistant Professor Eric A. Zacks.
“Although Nicholas has been engaged with a number of activities while in law school, his leadership of and service to the National Lawyers Guild perhaps best illustrate his qualification for a scholarship that recognizes student promotion of peace and social justice,” Zacks wrote.

The National Lawyers Guild is an association dedicated to protecting human rights and civil liberties. Klaus is Wayne Law’s student representative to the Michigan-Detroit chapter of the guild as well as the guild’s national student vice president and a member of its National Executive Committee.

“During the past year, Nicholas has personally been engaged as an official NLG legal observer of protests that occurred in St. Louis and Ferguson over the past several months,” Zacks wrote.

Legal observers are not engaged in the protests but instead are tasked with the important task of documenting interactions between police and demonstrators for guild lawyers, who, later, if warranted, pursue legal action to protect the rights of protestors.

As an official observer during the demonstrations in Missouri after the killing of a black, unarmed teenager by a white police officer, Klaus – with protestors and other guild officials – was tear gassed, sprayed with rubber bullets and held at gunpoint by police despite his neutral role.

“Although he has found himself in harm’s way, Nicholas has willingly served as a legal observer for the NLG in dozens of different situations, including (two) contentious election(s) in El Salvador,” Zacks wrote. “In addition, Nicholas has taught a number of NLG ‘Know Your Rights’ training sessions for union and other activist organizations …

“His other law school activities also reflect his commitment to the promotion and protection of human and civil rights … He currently clerks with a constitutional rights law firm (Constitutional Litigation Associates) and is a student attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Civil Rights Clinic. He also has served as a student attorney with the Wayne Law Criminal Appellate Clinic and the Wayne Law Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Clinic … Nicholas’s dedication to the protection of human and civil rights and pursuit of the rule of law though his NLG activities could not better exemplify the values of the Wayne students fighting fascism in Spain in the 1930s that the scholarship seeks to recognize.”