Course Section | Columbia Law School

Section Description Provided by Instructor

U.S. lawyers are increasingly integrating human rights law and strategies to advance their domestically-focused advocacy efforts. Domestic implementation of human rights, including engagement with international human rights mechanisms, use of international human rights and comparative foreign law in United States? courts, and broader activism such as documentation, organizing and education, provides an arsenal of cross-cutting strategies and highlights the interdependence and indivisibility of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights. Indeed, the human rights paradigm is reframing social justice advocacy in the United States.

This seminar will contextualize and explore the growing movement to incorporate international human rights strategies into domestic advocacy and law, while preparing students to thoughtfully utilize these tools in their own practice of law. We will begin by exploring the question of whether there is presently a human rights culture in the United States. We will then turn to the United States? role in the development of international human right norms and institutions after World War II, alongside the U.S. ?exceptionalist? posture, and gain a firm grounding in the relevant international human rights standards and the historical context of the contemporary U.S. human rights movement. Next, we will examine the ways in which advocates have sought, in recent years, to incorporate human rights discourse and practice into their domestic efforts to advance rights defense and promotion in general and institutional responses to those efforts. Through course materials and discussion, students will explore the promise of domestic human rights strategies, as well as related challenges and limitations.