To ensure that students are ready to work in the real and constantly changing legal world, Columbia's course selections address public interest topics from the full spectrum of legal perspectives, from trial practice to legal philosophy. Columbia has an ongoing commitment to hiring professors who meet students' need to learn about the areas in which they will practice law against an evolving cultural backdrop. Today, the Law School is a particularly vibrant place for learning, with faculty delving into exciting new forms of public interest advocacy, such as action-oriented research, collaborative problem solving, and other alternatives to litigation.
Columbia takes advantage of its New York City location to augment its full-time faculty with adjunct professors who work "in the trenches." Lawyers from such prominent organizations as Human Rights Watch, the ACLU, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as well as working judges and leading government agency attorneys teach a variety of non-textbook-based classes. Through their personal experiences, students learn about the practice of law as it really happens. The following public interest courses are a sample of those offered recently.
Public interest education at Columbia reflects its many international law faculty members whose scholarship and practice focus on the public sphere. In classes on foreign investment and the U.N. Global Compact, for example, students think through the implications of corporate behavior on human development, the environment, and human rights. Students in the Environmental Law Clinic engage the World Bank Inspection panel while those in the Human Rights Clinic travel to Africa and the Caribbean to represent their clients. Other students study with professors who are advocates in emerging areas of law such as the intersection of international human rights law and immigration, the legal rights and status of the Guantanamo Bay detainees, and the rights of non-citizens on death row in the United States.
GENERAL FOUNDATION CLASSES • Administrative Law • Advanced Constitutional Law: 1st Amendment • Advanced Constitutional Law: Equal Protection • Advanced Constitutional Law: Freedom of Expression • Advanced Constitutional Law: Religious Liberty • Advanced Seminar on State Attorneys General • Children's Rights • Civil Liberties and National Security • Civil Liberties and the War on Terror • Civil Rights • Constitutional Law • Human Rights • Human Rights/Constitutional Rights • Human Rights Law and Development Workshop • Ideas of the First Amendment • Immigration Law and Aliens' Rights • Juvenile Justice • Federal Civil Rights Law • First Amendment and the Institutional Press • Foundations of the Regulatory State • Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments • Legal Education in the Community • Legislation • Law and Educational Institutions: Equity Issues • Multi-culturalism, Society, and the Law • New Forms of Public Interest Advocacy • Non-profit Institutions • Privacy Law • Professional Responsibility Issues in Public Interest Practice • Public Benefit Law in Changing Times • Rights and Rights Discourse • Selected Issues in Children and Law
ENVIRONMENTAL AND HEALTH LAW • Access to Health Care • Business and the Law of Health Care • Environmental Collaborative Decision-Making Project • Environmental Justice • Environmental Justice and Sustainable Development • Environmental Law • Environmental Litigation • Health Law • Health Policy • International Environmental Law • Land Use • Mental Health Law • Protection of Natural Resources
IMMIGRATION • Immigration Law and Policy • Law, Culture, and Citizenship • Legal and Illegal Migration: Economics, Ethics, Law • Refugee Law and Policy
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS • European Convention of Human Rights • Globalization and Human Rights • Human Rights & the Question of Culture • Human Rights Reparations—Domestic and International Law • International Human Rights Advocacy • International Human Rights and the U.N. Treaty System • International Human Rights Law, Politics, and Relevance • Prisoner Abuse and Global War on Terror • Transitional Justice • Transnational Business and Human Rights
LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT LAW • Employment Discrimination Law • Employment Law • Employment and Social Welfare • Labor Law • Labor Rights in a Global Economy • Sex and the Workplace • Theory and Practice of Workplace Equity
POVERTY • Equality and Disparity • Law and Policy of Homelessness • Poverty and the Administrative State • Race and Poverty Law • Welfare Law, Entitlement, and the Poor
WOMEN'S RIGHTS • Abortion: Law in Context • Domestic Violence and the Law • Family Law • Feminist Legal Theory Workshop • Gender Justice • Lawyers, Social Change, and Dev. Sexuality and Gender Law • Meanings of Motherhood • Perspectives on Family and Gender • Reproductive Health and Human Rights • Sexual Harassment in Employment: Policy and Practice
OTHER • Animal Law • Asian Americans and the Law • Authors, Artists, and Performers • Federal Indian Law • Law of Indigenous People • Regulation: Decentralization and Globalization • Religious Minorities Supreme Court Litigation • Topics in Law and Sexuality • United Nations Peacekeeping
