Columbia Law School has the first, indeed only, Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at any law school in the U.S. Students interested in the study of Gender and Sexuality law will find at Columbia a rich and diverse number of course offerings – including the nation’s first Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic, and the ability to receive certification in the study of Gender and Sexuality Law  – many faculty whose teaching and scholarship focus in path-breaking ways on an array of problems in the domains of sexuality and gender, and many student organizations and students who share an interest in the study and practice of gender and sexuality law.

Fall 2009 Events: 

September 1st:       Welcome Back Lunch
September 15th:     Feminist Theory Workshop Janet Halley, Harvard Law School, Rape At Rome: Feminist Interventions in the Criminalization of Sex-Related Violence in Positive International Criminal Law
September 29th:     Feminist Theory Workshop Katherine Franke, Columbia Law School, Ahmedinejad Comes to Columbia: Sexuality, Nationalism and Global Governance
October 16th-17th: Translating Feminisms Conference
October 19th:          Anti-Trafficking Policy and its Effects at Home and Abroad
October 20th:          Feminist Theory Workshop Unity Dow, Justice of the High Court of Botswana, Against the Order of Nature - Homosexual Conduct in Botswana
October 21st:          Rana Husseini, Murder in the Name of Honour
October 23rd:          Gender, Peace & Security Conference
October 26th:          Columbia Law Women Reading Group - Deborah Rhode, The Injustice of Appearance
October 27th:          Jessica Gonzalez v. United States of America
October 27th:          Domestic Violence in the LGBT Community
October 28th:          Bearing Witness to the Atrocities in Guinea
October 28th:          CGSL Colloquium Katherine Darmer, Distinguished Visitor in Residence,  Continuing Influence on Rights Discourse of Scalia's Dissenting Rhetoric in Romer and Lawrence
October 29th:          Addressing the Epidemic of Domestic Violence in Indian Country by Restoring Tribal Sovereignty
November 4th:        Marriage Equality in Maine: Lessons
Learned, Future Directions - streaming video here
November 5th:        Law in Transition: Legal Developments in Transgender Rights
November 5th:        Saba Mahmood Should Religious Ethics Matter to Feminist Politics?
November 6-7th:     Embodiments of Science Conference
November 9th:        Barbara Black Lecture - Lyndall Gordon, Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family Feuds
November 12th:      Feminist Interventions Carol Sanger, Barbara Black Professor of Law, Abortion and the Visual Construction of Loss
November 17th:      Feminist Theory Workshop Kerry Rittich, University of Toronto Law School, Modeling Informal Labor Markets; Exit, Exclusion and the Paradoxes of Flexibility
November 24th:      Feminist Theory Workshop Sealing Cheng, Wellesley College, Sexual Victimhood, Citizenship and Nationhood in South Korea
December 1st:         Feminist Theory Workshop Afsaneh Najmabadi, Harvard University, The State of Science and Sin
December 8th:         Feminist Theory Workshop Janie Chuang, Washington College of Law, Rescuing Trafficking from Ideological Capture:  How Prostitution Reform Debates Have Shaped U.S. Anti-Trafficking Policy

A few highlights to note for the 2009-2010 Academic Year:

• Deborah Rhode, one of the legal academy's leading scholars in legal ethics and gender equality, will be visiting this fall from StanfordLawSchool.
  
• Unity Dow, Justice of the High Court of Botswana, the first female high court judge in Botwsana and human rights activist, will be visiting this fall.
  
• In the fall Katherine Darmer from Chapman Law School will be a distinguished visitor in residence working on marriage equality issues, and in the spring Siobhan Mullally will come to us as a Fulbright Scholar on leave from the faculty of law at University College Cork and Emily Sack will join us from Roger Williams Law School as a sabbatical visitor.  Professor Mullally will be working on the limits of rights-based claims for immigrant women, and Professor Sack will be working on coverture, divorce and inequality.
  
• We'll be holding the Feminist Theory Workshop this fall with a focus on trans-national and international gender equality.
  
• On March 5th we will hold a day-long symposium honoring the contributions of Judith Butler to the fields of gender and sexuality law.  More details to come.
• Lunchtime Reading Group
  
• Our Colloquium will be in full swing in the Spring.  
  
• And of course we will have a curriculum full of courses addressing issues of gender and sexuality law.

Professors Katherine Franke and Suzanne Goldberg