We are so proud to report that Professor Anna Welch, Founding Director of the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic (RHRC) at the University of Maine School of Law, received the 2025 Justice Louis Scolnik Award presented by ACLU of Maine. The honor recognizes individuals who make outstanding contributions to advancing civil rights and liberties in Maine. Welch was celebrated at the annual Scolnik Award Reception on November 12, 2025, at Portland’s Ocean Gateway.
“Through her courses, her fieldwork, and as a clinical professor and attorney, she is meeting the needs of those most vulnerable while inspiring a new generation of immigration advocates,” said the ACLU of Maine in its announcement.
Since founding the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic in 2012, Professor Welch has guided Maine Law students in representing asylum seekers, immigrating children at risk, and other vulnerable noncitizens in immigration and human rights cases. Under her leadership, the clinic remains a cornerstone of experiential learning at Maine Law and a powerful force for justice across New England.
Under Welch’s supervision, student attorneys assist immigrants held in detention facilities throughout New England, across the U.S., and at the U.S.–Mexico border. Beyond litigation and research, the RHRC engages in direct representation of immigrants and in larger outreach, policy, and educational projects. Students provide legal resources and limited legal advice to individuals facing deportation without access to counsel.
“The lack of legal representation for detained immigrants is an ongoing crisis,” Welch emphasized. “Our students not only learn the law—they witness the human consequences when justice is out of reach.”
“Now that I’ve seen firsthand what it’s like for some of these women who come to the United States, the immense trauma that they go through, that will forever shape the way I interact with future clients or immigrants,” Joann Bautista, a former student of Welch’s and Maine’s Deputy Secretary of State from 2021–2024, told the Portland Press Herald in 2018.
A Maine native, Welch earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder, graduating Phi Beta Kappa with high honors and highest distinction in journalism and Spanish. She went on to earn her J.D. from American University’s Washington College of Law, graduating summa cum laude and Order of the Coif.
Following a Fulbright Fellowship in Peru, Welch practiced law at Verrill, where she ultimately led the firm’s Immigration & Global Migration Group. She later served as a fellow at Stanford Law School, teaching and supervising students in Stanford’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, before returning home to Maine to launch the RHRC.
Named in honor of the late Justice Louis Scolnik, a former Maine Supreme Judicial Court Justice and Founding President of the ACLU of Maine, the award celebrates individuals who carry forward his lifelong commitment to fairness and equality under the law.
“Professor Welch’s work exemplified the values at the heart of Maine Law – justice, service, and community,” said Dean and President Leigh Saufley. “Her leadership transformed the lives of both clients and students, and this recognition was richly deserved.”
