1980: Columbia Law School, the first American law school to offer courses in Japanese law, founded the Center for Japanese Legal Studies.
1984: Columbia Law School established the Human Rights Internship Program, offering law students the opportunity to work as summer interns with human rights organizations in the United States and throughout the world. Since its inception, the more than 1,200 Human Rights Interns have been instrumental in a variety of roles, including drafting the South African Constitution, documenting human-rights abuses of gay and lesbian youth in America's prisons, and establishing the International Criminal Tribunals in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, just to name a few.
1986: Professor Barbara Aronstein Black '55 became dean of Columbia Law School. She was the first woman appointed as dean of an Ivy League law school.
1992: The Toshiba Library for Legal Research, the largest collection of Japanese legal materials outside Japan, was founded at Columbia Law School.
1993: Developed out of a student-led initiative, Columbia was the first law school to institute a pro-bono requirement of all of its law students. Since then, every Columbia law student performs at least 40 hours of pro-bono work during their law school tenure and continues to be shaped by student interests and needs as well as requests by public interest lawyers and organizations. Current pro-bono projects send students into New York City, and the rest of the world, in an effort to make a meaningful contribution for people seeking access to justice, the rule of law, and affordable solutions to critical community issues.
1993: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg '59 became the second woman, and first Jewish woman, to serve on the United States Supreme Court. Ginsburg is also a former member of the Columbia Law School Faculty.
1996: Columbia Law School underwent an extensive $140 million expansion and renewal project, including a three-story skylit lobby in Jerome L. Greene Hall, where the main staircase leads to an upper-level students commons, lounge areas, and a cafe.
1998: With the oldest comprehensive human rights program in American legal education, Columbia built on decades of research and education to found the Human Rights Institute, spearheading the training of the next generation of lawyers, educators, and human rights professionals.
