Founded in 1998, the Human Rights Institute serves as the focal point of international human rights education, scholarship and practice at Columbia Law School. The Institute fosters the development of a rich and comprehensive human rights curriculum and builds bridges between theory and practice, between law and other disciplines, between constitutional rights and international human rights, and between Columbia Law School and the world wide human rights movement.
The Institute currently focuses on a number of key themes: fostering international human rights norms and strategies at 'home' in the United States, ensuring human rights compliance in the 'war on terror,' strengthening the Inter-American system of human rights, and promoting ‘economic justice’ around the world. The Institute hosts a wide array of symposia, lectures and other events to bring practitioners and scholars together. It runs an active speakers’ program during the academic year and cooperates closely with student groups on other program activities. In addition, through the affiliated Human Rights Clinic, students gain hands-on experience working on active cases and projects with Columbia Law School faculty and leading human rights organizations in the United States and abroad.
The Institute works closely with the Graduate Legal Studies Program to select Human Rights Fellows for the LL.M. program, and with the Center for Public Interest Law to select fellows to work in human rights after graduation. The Institute works closely with the University-wide Center for the Study of Human Rights. For a listing of curriculum offerings in the area of Human Rights, please see our curriculum page.
Join us on November 12 from 7 - 8:30pm for an evening panel featuring a selection of our human rights LLM students. The panelists will discuss their work before coming to Columbia and reception will follow the panel. For more information, please see our events calendar.
HRI's Deputy Director, Caroline Bettinger-Lopez, and our client Jessica Lenahan were recently featured on Telemundo as part of Domestic Violence Awareness month. To view the broadcast, visit the Telemundo website. To read more about Jessica's case, visit our case web page.
HRI is pleased to announce that our Faculty Co-Director, Professor Sarah Cleveland, has been appointed Counselor on International Law in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. State Department. In this capacity, Sarah will advise the State Department and the executive branch on international law issues, and will help develop the State Department's position in U.S. litigation involving international and foreign relations law issues, including human rights cases in U.S. courts. She also will serve as the liaison between the Legal Adviser's Office, the Office of the Solicitor General, the Department of Justice, and the White House Counsel's office on these issues. A press release from Columbia Law School is available here.
HRI is pleased to announce the publication of"State and Local Human Rights Agencies: Recommendations for Advancing Opportunity and Equality Through an International Human Rights Framework."This report highlights ways in which an international human rights framework can advance the critical work of state and local human rights agencies and recommends reforms at the national level to create a better system of accountability around the United States’ domestic and international human rights obligations and to coordinate and support state and local efforts. The report was produced under the auspices of the Campaign for a New Domestic Human Rights Agenda, and is a joint project of HRI and the International Association of Human Rights Officials, in conjunction with the Campaign’s subcommittee on state and local government coordination. See the Campaign's press release. See Columbia Law School's press release.
HRI's Deputy Director, Caroline Bettinger-Lopez, has recently published a Primer on the Inter-American Human Rights system in the Clearinghouse Review of Law and Poverty available here.
HRI hosted a full day CLE conference on Human Rights and State Law on April 17th at Skadden in New York City. We hope to post the video of the training on our website. To request a copy of the day's materials, please see our CLE webpage.
HRI's Executive Director, Risa Kaufman, serves as a co-coordinator of The Campaign for a New Domestic Human Rights Agenda, which is working to build human rights into the baseline of government. See the Campaign's recent letter supporting a U.S. Commission on Civil and Human Rights, published in the New York Times on January 27,2009.
