Alexandra (“Sasha”) Filippova, Senior Legal Fellow, has focused her legal practice on human rights, international dispute resolution, and public international law. Until recently, she was an international arbitration and litigation associate at Shearman & Sterling LLP, where she collaborated with CJA as part of her pro bono practice, acting as co-counsel in a successful lawsuit against the Syrian government for its extrajudicial killing of war correspondent Marie Colvin (Colvin v. Syria) and co-authoring an amicus brief highlighting the importance of the command responsibility doctrine as a means of preventing human rights abuses by disciplining the use of military force (Mamani v. Berzain). Sasha’s other matters have included litigating complex transnational disputes; successfully representing asylum seekers; conducting internal investigations in multiple countries; and advising clients on a variety of legal and policy matters ranging from territorial disputes, transitional justice mechanisms, and sovereign and diplomatic immunity, to assessing United Nations Security Council policy reform opportunities. Sasha has also served as an instructor on trial advocacy and investigative skills relating to wildlife protection in Kenya and Tanzania, and helped to develop trial advocacy curricula on the prosecution of former child soldiers and use of expert witnesses for the International Criminal Court.
Sasha holds graduate degrees from Georgetown University’s Law Center and Walsh School of Foreign Service, where she focused her studies on human rights and transitional justice, including field work in Liberia and Cambodia. She is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and the State of New York.
