Law School Initiative

Courts around the world, as well as United Nations and regional human rights bodies, are increasingly recognizing that a woman's rights to reproductive healthcare and self-determination are basic human rights that must be protected. The Center for Reproductive Rights has played a key role in securing these legal victories and works with a wide range of lawyers and law scholars around the world to establish human rights norms on reproductive health. Yet this emerging body of transnational law is not widely taught in U.S. law schools, nor is it widely incorporated in legal scholarship.

The Law School Initiative invigorates scholarship and teaching around this growing body of law and trains the next generation of lawyers to think about reproductive health in the human rights framework. The increased attention in the legal academy on international and comparative law, as well as the recent adverse decision from the U.S. Supreme Court in Carhart II, are generating significant interest in new approaches and make this an apt time for the Initiative. As the first and only global legal organization dedicated to advancing women's reproductive rights in the U.S. and around the world, the Center is ideally positioned to lead the effort.

The Center for Reproductive Rights and American University Washington College of Law are co-editors of Reproductive Justice, Law and Policy, an interdisciplinary e-Journal covering a range of issues, both domestic and international, related to reproductive rights, gender, human rights, sexuality, medicine, race and class. Subscribe here.