| LW.12261 / LW.12262 Professor Sarah Burns Open to 2L and 3L students Maximum of 16 students |
Fall semester |
Introduction
The purpose of this clinic is to train students in the legal knowledge and skill required to secure fundamental liberty, justice and equality for each person regardless of her gender, sexuality, reproductive or family circumstance.
Course Description
Reproductive justice describes a world in which all people have the social, political, and economic power and resources to effect healthy decisions about gender, bodies, sexuality, reproduction and families for themselves and their communities. This cutting edge course will focus on how legal advocacy can be used to advance reproductive justice and women’s equality.
This seminar will consider the constitutional and statutory law that currently exists and what legal theories, strategies, and other actions might be needed to achieve or advance reproductive justice, women’s rights and related individual rights to liberty, equality and personal autonomy. This class will also address procedural mechanisms involved and the core legal advocacy skills needed in obtaining and enforcing the legal rights and remedies that are central to achieving reproductive justice and equality. The seminar will address history and empirical research that explain the challenges in this area of law. The course will be organized to support the learning needed for students to provide top quality legal work on the pending fieldwork.
Fieldwork
Working in conjunction with major reproductive justice, women’s rights and other equality and justice organizations, the clinic faculty and students will primarily work on litigation and legislative campaigns. Outreach and planning for fieldwork is currently underway for fall 2013. Constitutional challenges to state actions which infringe the liberty, autonomy and equality of pregnant women and women of child-bearing age by granting legal person status to eggs, embryos and fetuses are the present focus for developing fieldwork.
Application Procedure
Students who are interested in applyingshould submit the standard application, resume and transcript online via CAMS. Applicants should submit as lengthy a response to Question 4 of the standard application as they feel necessary and should ignore the 300 word limit. If you have any questions regarding the application process, please contact Mr. Ray Ivey at 212-998-6474 or ray.ivey@nyu.edu. Applicants will be contacted by Mr. Ivey during the clinic application period with instructions concerning a face-to-face meeting with Professor Burns required to complete the application process.
Student Contacts
This is the first year in which this clinic is being offered. Accordingly there are no student contacts for this particular clinic.
* 5 credits includes 3 clinical (fieldwork) credits and 2 academic seminar credits for the semester.
