Liza Goitein & Emily Berman

Liza Goitein & Emily Berman

Liza Goitein
Justice, Director, Liberty & National Security Project

Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein directs the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Project, which seeks to ensure that our government respects human rights and fundamental freedoms in conducting the fight against terrorism. Before coming to the Brennan Center, Ms. Goitein served as counsel to Senator Feingold, Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. As counsel to Senator Feingold, Ms. Goitein handled a variety of liberty and national security matters, with a particular focus on government secrecy and privacy rights. She also worked on matters involving immigration, juvenile justice, sentencing, and First Amendment issues. Previously, Ms. Goitein was a trial attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. Ms. Goitein graduated from the Yale Law School in 1998 and clerked for the Honorable Michael Daly Hawkins on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Emily Berman
Justice, Counsel/Katz Fellow

Ms. Berman works to protect individual rights through the promotion of effective oversight mechanisms for the United States' national security policy. Before joining the Brennan Center, Ms. Berman was at New York University School of Law pursuing her LL.M. in International Law. She clerked for Judge John M. Walker of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals (2005-06) and graduated magna cum laude from New York University School of Law (2005), where she was Editor-in-Chief of the New York University Law Review, a Furman Scholar, a Pomeroy Scholar, and an Allen Scholar. She was also the recipient of the George P. Foulk Memorial Award for outstanding sincerity and distinguished scholarship, the Jerome Lipper Price for outstanding work in the area of international law, and the David Friedman Memorial Award for outstanding achievement in evidence. While a law student, she worked with the State Department's Office of the Legal Advisor, the Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First), and the International Center for Transitional Justice. Ms. Berman is a 1994 graduate of Duke University, where she received an A.B. in Political Science.

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