Wally Hilke is a Visiting Clinical Assistant Professor of Law at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and Interim Director of the Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic, a law school clinic that provides students with the opportunities to work within social-justice movements on legal and policy strategies aimed at redressing over-policing and mass imprisonment.
At the Clinic, Wally leads a litigation and advocacy docket that includes enforcing a consent decree binding the Chicago Police Department to reduce police violence, among other goals; litigating civil rights cases on behalf of victims of police violence; advocating for the civil rights of transgender incarcerated people; supporting community members who have been illegally discriminated against in employment because of their criminal records; working with GoodKids MadCity to advocate for the Peace Book, a violence prevention model led by young people that calls for deep investments in youth peacekeeping and locally directed violence-prevention resources; and conducting research and analysis of police policy and spending.
Wally has worked with community organizations and leaders on successful campaigns to remove police officers from Chicago Public Schools; end the use of a discriminatory gang database that wrongfully and permanently stigmatized residents; obtain a just resolution for a tenants’ union after their landlord tried to evict them; and establish a Civilian Review Board in New Haven, Connecticut. Previously, Wally litigated wrongful conviction, First Amendment, prisoner’s rights, and postconviction cases in state and federal courts across the country as a civil rights attorney at Loevy & Loevy, and led community-based legal clinics and law-and-organizing litigation and advocacy campaigns at Beyond Legal Aid in Chicago.
