All of us at MyLLife are delighted to share a summer internship reflection from one of our 2025 MyLLife Scholars, Ayisha Siddiqa!
This summer, I had the opportunity to intern with Blue Ocean Law, a Guam-based firm dedicated to international human rights, climate justice, and indigenous rights. As a second-year law student at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, my decision to work with Blue Ocean Law was rooted in my longstanding commitment to public interest advocacy and shaped by my background as a Pakistani immigrant. My lived experiences and academic training have taught me to see law as both a shield against injustice and, at times, a barrier to redress. This internship allowed me to explore that tension firsthand by supporting communities pursuing accountability for historic harms.
Under the supervision of senior attorneys, I assisted in pretrial preparation for litigation before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on behalf of the Republic of the Marshall Islands. My primary assignments involved researching equitable claims, jurisdictional issues, sovereign immunity, and the federal government’s trust responsibilities. Much of my work centered on the legacy of U.S. nuclear testing in the Pacific and the enduring impact on Marshallese communities, including health consequences, environmental devastation, displacement, and systemic discrimination in migration contexts.
In practice, this required untangling layers of legal doctrine that often foreclose meaningful redress. I studied how statutes of limitations bar claims long before the full scope of harm is understood, how the political question doctrine shields the government from accountability on sensitive issues, and how strict evidentiary standards disadvantage claimants dealing with complex or scientifically technical harms. I also analyzed how U.S. geopolitical interests have shaped not only the underlying actions but also the remedies available to survivors, narrowing the space for advocacy over time and relegating claims to specialized forums.
Deliverables
My principal deliverables were a series of legal memoranda and written recommendations. These included:
- Drafting memoranda analyzing the jurisdictional and equitable barriers facing Marshallese claims, with close attention to sovereign immunity and the limits of the Court of Federal Claims’ authority.
- Researching comparative case law, particularly Native American treaty rights, land takings, and sovereignty jurisprudence, to situate Pacific claims within a broader historical framework of U.S. law and indigenous advocacy.
- Outlining potential claims in tort, property, contract, and takings law that might be available under existing statutory and case law frameworks, with attention to both doctrinal soundness and client confidentiality.
- Preparing practical recommendations to guide litigation strategy and clarify which avenues, though narrow, remain viable for acknowledgment or compensation.
- Through these written products, I sought not only to provide precise legal analysis but also to frame arguments in ways that preserved space for advocacy. My goal was to identify every possible path, however limited, and to articulate clear recommendations in a complex and politically sensitive legal environment.
Lessons Learned
The most important lesson I gained from this internship is that law is rarely neutral. Doctrines such as statutes of limitations or the political question doctrine are not simply technical rules, they are instruments that profoundly shape whose claims can be heard and whose are silenced. I learned to see how legal structures themselves reproduce exclusion, particularly in cases of state-sponsored harm, where the government has strong incentives to limit liability.At the same time, I came to appreciate the possibilities that emerge from creative lawyering. By drawing on comparative legal traditions, Native American treaty rights, indigenous sovereignty, and the history of land takings, I realized that analogies can help reopen legal questions that appear foreclosed. This broadened my understanding of legal advocacy as an exercise in imagination as much as technical research.
Finally, I learned that rigorous legal writing carries ethical weight. Each recommendation I made had to balance candor about the limits of the law with sensitivity to client needs and community struggles.
My internship at Blue Ocean Law has deepened my understanding of how law, policy, and international politics intersect in the aftermath of state-sponsored harm. It has shown me both the barriers survivors face in seeking redress and the ways lawyers can, with persistence and creativity, push the law to recognize marginalized voices. I leave this experience with sharpened research skills, practical experience in drafting legal memoranda, and, most importantly, a clearer sense of my role as a lawyer: to ensure that even within narrow pathways, law remains a tool of protection for those most impacted by injustice.
