Student spotlight: Law student Sameer Jaywant, Yale-Jefferson Award winner

Graduating Law School student Sameer Jaywant was one of three Yalies honored for their public service this fall with Yale-Jefferson Awards.

The Association of Yale Alumni (AYA), Students and Alumni of Yale (STAY) and the Jefferson Awards for Public Service launched the Yale-Jefferson Public Service Awards in 2012 to recognize those who inspire the Yale community through innovative, impactful, and sustained service for the greater good. 

Jaywant is a founder and student director of the Rule of Law Clinic at Yale Law School, which works to maintain U.S. commitments to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Through the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, he worked alongside community activists, religious leaders, medical professionals, and Yale students and faculty to create a statewide coalition advocating the abolition of prolonged solitary confinement in Connecticut prisons. The coalition organized a campaign that led the Connecticut legislature to unanimously pass legislation banning the placement of children into the harshest form of solitary confinement, and mandating transparency by the Department of Corrections, marking the first act of public oversight of Connecticut prisons in at least two decades. Sameer also represents the law school in the Graduate & Professional Student Senate, and volunteers for the International Refugee Assistance Project.

Of his many community service projects, Jaywant wrote: “During my time here, Yale has proved to be an invaluable partner in public service. The institutional support runs far beyond financial support and physical facilities; indeed, a sustained and innovative commitment to the public interest seems to be the ethos of our university. … I have learned an immense amount about law, justice, public service, and even myself through these numerous projects and initiatives; no other educational experience has ever been as meaningful to me as my time at Yale Law School.”