SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 3, 2013 — The supervising attorney of the Workers’ Rights Clinic at the Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center at Santa Clara University School of Law has received the Unsung Hero Award from the Santa Clara County Victim Support Network.
Ruth Silver Taube, who is also a senior staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society’s Employment Law Center in San Jose, received the award Oct. 2. The Victim Support Network is an association of victim service professionals who strive to enhance the quantity and quality of services for crime victims in Santa Clara County.
The organization cited Silver Taube’s lifetime of protecting the rights of workers; her promotion of the expansion of civil legal remedies for human trafficking survivors; and her organization of a day-long human trafficking conference on criminal and civil litigation. The award also recognized her efforts to train communities including lesbian and gay workers, disabled people, Filipina domestic workers, and farmworkers on human trafficking laws that protect exploited workers in such communities.
During her tenure as supervising attorney of the Workers’ Rights Clinic, Silver Taube has enabled low-income workers in the greater San José area to receive assistance and representation and has trained law students in employment law. The California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement recently partnered with Silver Taube and her students to conduct investigations of retaliation claims filed with that agency.
For her effectiveness in improving access to legal services for organizations and communities, she received a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition Sept. 27, signed by Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, and was keynote speaker and honoree at the Vietnamese American Bar Association of Northern California’s (VABANC) dinner. The Congressional certificate was presented “in recognition of outstanding and invaluable service to the community.” VABANC honored Silver Taube for her work establishing the South Bay VABANC/KGACLC clinic for Vietnamese-speaking clients; for training and mentorship of Vietnamese-American law students, and for her supervision of a VABANC Law Foundation fellow in San Jose, sponsored by the Legal Aid Society’s Employment Law Center.
Melissa Hagg, US Attorney for the Northern District of California and one of the speakers at the Unsung Heroes Awards event, noted that winners of this award “do not seek recognition or other forms of compensation; rather, they go home every day with the quiet satisfaction of knowing that they have made a difference, something truly wonderful in somebody’s life.”
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Deborah Lohse | SCU Media Relations | dlohse@scu.edu | 408-554-5121
