Advisory Board
Judith Berkan
Judith Berkan is a partner in the San Juan law firm of Berkan/Mendez. She
specializes in government misconduct litigation and employment discrimination
cases.
Berkan worked as an attorney in New Haven, Connecticut before going
to Puerto Rico as the staff attorney for the Puerto Rico Legal Project
of the National Lawyers Guild, now the Puerto Rico Civil Rights Institute. For
twenty-seven years, she has been teaching, primarily in the Constitutional
Law area, at the Inter American University Law School (IAU) in San
Juan, Puerto Rico. For the past seven years, she has directed
a civil rights practice clinic at IAU.
A frequent speaker and author of many articles on civil rights issues,
she was the President of the Human Rights Commission of the Puerto
Rico Bar Association in the mid-1990's and a member of the Commonwealth Supreme
Court's task force on gender discrimination.
Berkan has won many significant jury awards in civil rights cases
and has argued several leading First Circuit cases including Gutierrez
Rodriguez v. Cartagena (standards for supervisory liability of
high-level officers, including the island-wide superintendent of
police); Camilo Robles v. Hoyos (supervisory liability and
qualified immunity issues); Zambrana v. Suarez (color of law
and off-duty officers); and the Lipsett v. Blanco and Rodriguez-Hernandez
v. Miranda decisions (dealing with attorneys fees in civil rights
cases).
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