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

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.

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  • Constitutional Law

Center for Constitutional Governance

The Center for Constitutional Governance (CCG) is a nonpartisan legal and policy organization devoted to the study of constitutional structure and authority. CCG invites academics, students, government officials, practitioners, and community members to engage with major constitutional and governance issues of the day, from health care to civil rights, immigration, financial regulation, and national security. 

 

Areas of Study

Center for Public Research and Leadership

The Center for Public Research and Leadership (CPRL) aims to revitalize public education while filling substantial gaps in professional education. CPRL’s rigorous coursework, skills training, and research and consulting projects prepare graduate students in law, business, and public policy for careers in the education sector. With an eye toward improving outcomes for all children, CPRL utilizes the latest techniques in education, such as organizational design, democratic accountability, team-based problem-solving skills, and socio-emotional learning. Students can also participate in a semster-long intensive around transformational change in public education by enrolling in the Public Education Policy Lab-Seminar and Skills courses. 

 

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity

The Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (CAPI) improves the capacity of public offices and practitioners to deter, identify, and combat corruption at the municipal level of government. CAPI supports a vibrant community of leaders in the public integrity field, develops tools and resources to help governments and practitioners fight corruption, and promotes research and scholarship on important public integrity issues.

 

Constitutional Democracy Initiative

From research to teaching, institutional design to public conversations across political and other boundaries, the Constitutional Democracy Initiative investigates democracy’s crises and what democracy demands of us.

Areas of Study

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.

Galileo Center

The Galileo Center studies freedom, threats to its existence, and legal protections designed to ensure its survival.

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

Studio for Law and Culture

The Studio for Law and Culture at Columbia University (SLC) is an intellectual home for the study, research, and scholarship on the intersection of law and culture. In addition to hosting fellowships, events, and workshops, SLC supports projects that explore dual interpretations of the law—as both a strict institutional doctrine and as a regime for ordering social life, constructing cultural meaning, and shaping group and individual identities.