Laurie Frederik, Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellow in French, starts a new position with the Honorable Judge Stephen J. Dwyer, Washington State Court of Appeals this month.
Frederik graduated with her JD from UW Law in 2023. She is now finishing her LLM in Sustainable International Development at the UW Law School and has been studying French under a Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship with the Canadian Studies Center. As a lawyer, she plans to advocate for the rights of Indigenous and other under-represented communities across borders of the United States and Canada and in international human rights movements.
In January 2024, Frederik will begin a new position as judicial law clerk to the Honorable Judge Stephen J. Dwyer in the Washington State Court of Appeals, Division I. The Court of Appeals hears cases coming up from the trial courts regarding civil cases, criminal felonies, agency decisions, probate, family law, and other cases of fundamental and critical matters of public import. This clerkship will teach her about the internal workings of the court system and how law is made and slowly changed.
Frederik holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, BA Honors from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and a BA from the University of Virginia. Before law school, Laurie was a professor of performance studies at the University of Maryland, where she taught classes on the role of artists and intellectuals in society, social protest, cultural politics, and national identity.
Frederick plans to complete her LLM in Sustainable International Development in fall 2024.