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.
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 Institute for the Study of Human Rights. For a listing of curriculum offerings in the area of Human Rights, please see our curriculum page.
