A hallway in Jerome Greene Hall has the shadows of a grid of windows on the wall.

Research Centers and Programs

  1. Faculty and Scholarship
  2. Research Centers and Programs

Columbia Law School’s research centers and programs reflect the breadth of our faculty’s expertise and the exceptional quality of their scholarship. Through their rigorous research, faculty experts explore foundational, emerging, and interdisciplinary areas of the law. In addition to convening academics, policymakers, judges, and business leaders from around the globe, centers and programs offer students valuable opportunities to collaborate with experienced scholars and researchers.

Find a Center or Program

Davis Polk Leadership Initiative

Through the Davis Polk Leadership Initiative, Columbia Law offers courses, workshops, and research and professional development opportunities to teach students to be leaders in both the private and public sectors worldwide. Students learn not only to manage the everyday practice they will pursue, but also to rise to complex challenges throughout their careers.

Areas of Study

European Legal Studies Center

The European Legal Studies Center trains students to assume leadership roles in international and European law, public affairs, and the global economy. The center’s New York home provides students with rich research and professional opportunities, including externships at the U.N. or U.N. missions, clinical opportunities in human rights, prestigious international internships and clerkships, and international dual degree and study abroad programs. Students can also take advantage of Columbia Law School’s curriculum, which offers one of the broadest arrays of international, comparative, and foreign law courses of any law school in the United States.

 

Areas of Study

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

The Center for Chinese Legal Studies was the first organization of its kind at an American law school and has cultivated a tradition of rich scholarly exchange with the Chinese legal community for decades. It provides students with a wide range of curricular and extracurricular activities and guest speakers and equips them with the knowledge they will need to succeed in practicing within China’s rapidly changing legal environment. 

 

Areas of Study

Human Rights Institute

The Human Rights Institute draws on the Law School’s deep human rights tradition to support and influence human rights practice in the United States and around the world. The institute builds bridges between scholarship and practice in four key areas—counterterrorism and armed conflict, human rights in the U.S., the Inter-American Human Rights System, and the global economy—employing tools such as field work, advocacy, fact-finding reports, and symposia.

Areas of Study

Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership

The Millstein Center operates at the forefront of new thinking about how corporations are governed. The center engages with business leaders and board directors to create meaningful dialogue about the challenges companies face, and to be a focal point for the most innovative research into the policy solutions required to tackle those challenges. Its mission is twofold: to help corporate leaders successfully navigate challenges facing their companies and to bridge the gap between academics and practitioners by developing practical solutions to corporate ownership issues. 

 

Areas of Study

Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts

The Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts contributes to a broader understanding of the legal aspects of creative works of authorship, including their dissemination and use. It also helps students navigate the ever-changing legal dimensions of intellectual property in the digital age through courses, interdisciplinary seminars, and events on topics such as intellectual property, copyright, trademarks, the regulation of electronic media, and problems arising from new communications technologies, plus an externship on law and the arts.

 

Areas of Study

National Security Law Program

The National Security Law Program draws on the extensive government experience of Columbia Law School’s faculty to expose students to the real-world challenges facing government officials in the national security field. It supports efforts by faculty members and students to produce policy-relevant scholarship on critical issues, enriching our understanding of both the law and the role of lawyers inside government as well as global issues. The program also hosts events that engage leading government practitioners and legal scholars on contemporary national security issues.

 

Areas of Study

Program in the Law and Economics of Capital Markets

The Program in the Law and Economics of Capital Markets connects the disparate work of lawyers and economists in the field of capital markets regulation by fostering interdisciplinary scholarship. The program has four areas of focus: a capital markets course, a comprehensive study on policymaking and academic research in markets, workshops for government officials and industry experts, and two published books.

 

Areas of Study

Program on Labor Law and Political Economy

The Program on Labor Law and Political Economy is a multi-disciplinary initiative that convenes workshops, conferences, speaker series, and research groups addressing the legal and political determinants of the empowerment of working people in workplaces and the polity.  In addition to its research ambitions, the Program designs and carries out real-world projects advocating on behalf of workers’ rights in and through international organizations, legislatures, administrative bodies, and courts. These advocacy projects include the drafting of reports, advisory memoranda, amicus briefs, and legislation, as well as direct collaboration with working people and worker organizations.  Students participate in these projects under the supervision of the Program Director, Professor Mark Barenberg

Areas of Study