Human Rights Law

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Miami Law provides our students with broad academic and experiential learning opportunities in the field of human rights. Our course offerings and our experiential learning programs – including clinics, externships, fellowships and summer programs – provide students with the opportunity to develop their knowledge and skills working on human rights issues, both in the U.S. and abroad.

Academic & Experiential Learning Opportunities
Courses & Seminars
International Moot Court Program
Human Rights Lecture Series and Conferences
Faculty
Student-Run Activities
Conference

Academic & Experiential Learning Opportunities in Human Rights

Miami Law Clinics: Our 10 clinics give students practical, hands-on lawyering experience, while also helping needy and under-represented individuals and groups in Miami and across the nation and the globe. Learn more.

Human Rights Clinic: The Human Rights Clinic exposes students to the practice of law in the international and cross-cultural context of human rights litigation and advocacy through a seminar and hands-on experience working on active human rights cases and projects. Projects include:

• Working on landmark women's and immigrants' rights cases against the United States before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
• Engaging in advocacy before the United Nations
• Supporting initiatives to implement the human rights norms developed through this advocacy at the local and national levels

H.O.P.E.: Helping Others through Pro bono Efforts (HOPE) is our public interest resource center and the home to many opportunities to do human rights work nationally and internationallyl. HOPE also regularly hosts information sessions on landing a job, fellowship or internship in the public interest and in human rights. Opportunities include:

• Scholarships granted to students with outstanding academic achievements and commitment to public service.
• HOPE Fellowship Program, which provides summer stipends to students to create their dream jobs in human rights and public interest anywhere across the globe.
• Public Interest Leadership Board a student-run board comprised of a dynamic group of Miami Law students dedicated to public service, including human rights.

Career Development Office: The Career Development Office (CDO) is committed to assisting students and graduates of Miami Law with employment placement. The CDO supports human rights law placements, advises students looking for human rights-related work, and provides information on Post-Graduate Followships.

• Externship Program: The Externship Program gives second and third year students an opportunity to gain practical legal experience. Through the program, UM students have had externship placements at regional and international human rights bodies and courts and organizations, including at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Anti-Defamation League and the Florida Justice Institute.
• Legal Corps: Legal Corps postgraduate fellowship program places recent law graduates in public sector organizations, including human rights organizations nationwide and across the globe. Students have been placed in their dream jobs including:
• Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance Center, Cairo, Egypt
• American Civil Liberties Union in Michigan, North Carolina and Florida
• Americans for Immigrant Justice, Miami
• America Samoa office of the Attorney General, Samoa
• State of Connecticut Office of Protection and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities
• Disability Rights in Oregon
• National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, Washington, D.C.
• World Intellectual Property Organization, Geneva, Switzerland

Human Rights Courses & Seminars

Every semester the law school offers a range of human rights-related courses and seminars taught by our world-renowned faculty and visiting faculty from across the globe. Recent courses and seminars have included:

• American Indian Law
• Bias and the Law
• Children and the Law
• Civil Rights, Economic Justice and Independent Media
• Children & the Law
• Comparative Constitutional Law
• Constitution, Rights & Territory in American History
• Cultural Property and Heritage Law
• Democracy, Constitutionalism and Human Rights
• European Union Law; Feminism and the First Amendment
• Guantanamo Seminar
• Human Rights Advocacy in Latin America
• Human Trafficking; Immigration, Ethnicity and Public Policy
• Immigration Law
• International Economic Law
• Inter-American System of Human Rights
• International Family Law
• International Criminal Law
• International Human Rights Law
• Minority Rights
• Power: Ideals and Reality
• Law of War & Human Rights
• Race & Class in American Public Education
• Sexuality and the Law
• Torture and the Law
• Voting Rights and Election Law Seminar

Click here for current course listings

International Moot Court Program

In the International Moot Court Program, students represent the University of Miami School of Law in legal competitions around the world while obtaining course credit. Many of the competitions are focused on human rights or include human rights issues.

Human Rights Lecture Series and Conferences

Renowned human rights scholars, lawyers and advocates from around the world regularly visit Miami Law, giving public lectures, attending conferences and meeting with students and faculty. Our own faculty and students also contribute to these series and conferences on human rights issues. Over the past two years, our Human Rights Clinic and our Immigration Law Clinic have hosted major groundbreaking conferences on timely human rights issues.

The Louis Henkin Lecture Series on Human Rights: Louis Henkin, the prominent law professor at Columbia University School of Law, was one of the founders of the academic study of human rights. He helped educate a whole generation of human rights lawyers, scholars, and activists, including some of Miami Law's professors, who were greatly influenced by his teaching and writing.

• Rights at War: The Interface between Human and Constitutional Rights and the Laws of Armed Conflict: Lecture by Sarah H. Cleveland, the Louis Henkin Professor of Human Rights and Constitutional Law at Columbia University Law School. Click here to watch the September 13, 2012 lecture.
• Law & Terrorism: Lecture by Professor Owen Fiss, Sterling Professor of Law, Yale University. Click here to watch the February 17, 2011 lecture.
• Obama's War on Terror: Change We Can Believe In?: This first lecture was by David D. Cole, the John Carroll Research Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and prominent civil liberties lawyer, scholar and frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books. Click here to watch the November 11, 2010 lecture.

The International Law Lecture Series is run by the International Graduate Law Programs which regularly teams up with the Human Rights Clinic (HRC) to host lectures on human rights and international law. Watch videos of past lectures which have included:

• U.N. Independent Expert on the Situation of Human Rights in Haiti, Mr. Michel Forst
• Prof. Sandra Babcock from Northwestern Law School on Law, Politics and Morality of the Death Penalty in the United States
• Prof. Monisha Bajaj from Columbia University on Human Rights Education in India
• Jessica Lenahan (Gonzales), international human rights advocate and plaintiff in Town of Castle Rock v. Jessica Gonzales, on Domestic Violence as a Human Rights Violation
• Steve Hitov, General Counsel, Coalition of Immokalee Workers on Farmworker Justice, Fair Food, and Organizing

Immigration Speaker Series: These presentations in the Spring 2012 included, amongst others, Roxana Bacon former chief counsel of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service and Esther Olavarria, Department of Homeland Security, on immigration reform; and Lee Gelernt and Judy Rabinovitz of the American Civil Liberties Union, on immigrants' rights and the federal courts.

Student organization sponsored lectures are offered throughout the year by our dynamic and ever-growing student-run organizations.

Recent human rights lectures have included:

• Controversy over Contraception - sponsored by Law Students for Reproductive Justice and Student Organization for Human Rights, discussed access to contraceptives as a human right.
• When Diplomacy Fails: The Syria Dilemma - a seminar sponsored the International Law Society, Muslim Law Students Association, National Security and Armed Conflict Law Review, Criminal Law Society, Military Law Society, and Student Organization for Human Rights
• National Security and Armed Conflict Law Review Symposium: Child Soldiers and International Law - featured Tchicaya Missamou, former Congolese child soldier, and was sponsored by the Student Organization for Human Rights among others.
• The Future of the Death Penalty in America – was held in 2012 and was sponsored by Miami Law Review.
• Domestic Violence Panel discussion

Conferences

Miami Law hosted two major human rights-related conferences over the past two years. Immigration Law and Community - The Immigration Clinic held this symposium in October 2010 on the themes of undocumented immigration and community, immigrant women, and Haiti and our Haitian community.

Gender Justice in the Americas: A Transnational Dialogue on Sexuality, Violence, Reproduction & Human Rights: Our Human Rights Clinic, along with the Human Rights Center of the University of Diego Portales (Chile), the Center for Reproductive Rights, and the Human Rights Institute of Columbia Law School, hosted this conference on February 23-25, 2011. Professor Caroline Bettinger-Lopez, Director of Miami Law's Human Rights Clinic, organized this unique convening which brought together the hemisphere's leading scholars and advocates from over 20 countries.

Faculty

Miami Law is home to many world-renowned faculty who teach human rights courses, include human rights issues in their curriculum and/or are conducting human-rights related research.

Faculty in the area of Human Rights:

• David Abraham, Professor of Law
• Caroline Bettinger-Lopez, Associate Professor of Clinical Legal Education
• Donna K. Coker, Professor of Law
• Mary Anne Franks, Associate Professor of Law
• Elizabeth M. Iglesias, Professor of Law
• JoNel Newman, Associate Professor of Clinical Legal Education
• James W. Nickel, Professor of Philosophy and Law
• Bernard Oxman, Richard A. Hausler Professor of Law
• Bernard P. Perlmutter, Associate Professor of Clinical Legal Education
• Ileana Porras, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs
• Alejandro Portes, Professor of Sociology and Law
• Edgardo Rotman, Senior Lecturer in International and Comparative Law
• Stephen J. Schnably, Professor of Law
• Rebecca Sharpless, Associate Professor of Clinical Legal Education
• Kele Stewart, Associate Professor of Clinical Legal Education
• Irwin P. Stotzky, Professor of Law
• Markus Wagner, Associate Professor of Law
• Paula Arias, Lecturer in Law, Director International Moot Court Program

Visiting Faculty, Adjunct Faculty, and Staff working in the area of Human Rights:

• Jessica Carvalho Morris, Director of International and Foreign Graduate Programs

A complete faculty list and detailed bios can be found in our faculty directory.

Student-run activities

Law journals: Our students run many law journals addressing human rights issues. Our law journals include:

• Business Law Review
• Inter-American Law Review
• International and Comparative Law Review
• Miami Law Review
• National Security & Armed Conflict Law Review
• Race and Social Justice Law Review

Many of these journals take interest in the area of human rights. For example, the Miami Law Review in the Spring 2011 ran a special symposium issue on the law school's groundbreaking global conference on Gender Justice and Human Rights in the Americas, publishing articles and essays from world-renowned advocates and academics in the field of women's rights. Miami Law Review's 2012 annual symposium was on the death penalty and life without parole.

The Inter-American Law Review hosted symposia on the Inter-American human rights system and on the situation of human rights in Haiti. Its 2012 symposium titled, The Haitian State: Creating Sustainability Growing Forward, addressed the political and legal situation in Haiti pre and post earthquake. Its previous symposium, The Human Element: the Impact of Regional Trade Agreements on Human Rights and the Rule of Law, focused on human rights and featured distinguished guests from around the world.

Student Organizations: Miami Law has over 50 dynamic and diverse student organizations. Many include domestic and international human rights concerns in their work. Organizations such as the Student Organization for Human Rights, American Constitution Society, Law Students for Reproductive Justice and International Law Society place a heavy emphasis on human rights issues.