Supporting the U.S. Legal Community | Human Rights Institute

Lawyers and advocates in the United States increasingly use human rights principles to name and respond to inequality, connect and mobilize impacted communities, and demand accountability. The Human Rights Institute (HRI) builds the capacity of U.S. lawyers to engage in human rights advocacy through trainings and convenings, strategic coordination, and resource development.

Project News

Project Publications

HRI calls on federal actors to shift course and protect historically marginalized communities that are bearing the brunt of the health impacts and economic harms of COVID-19.

Even as COVID-19 reveals deep inequities, the Trump administration continues to downplay the significance of economic and social rights, writes JoAnn Kamuf Ward, Director of Human Rights in the U.S. Project.

JoAnn Kamuf Ward and Sarah Alshawish publish an article for Just Security on state and local human rights efforts in the United States

Catherine Flowers, a long-standing project partner drawing attention to sanitation crises in the US, publishes an article in The Grist featuring JoAnn Kamuf ward, Director of the Human Rights in the US project.

JoAnn Kamuf Ward, CREEJ, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, PHRGE, and the US Human Rights Network assert that the U.S.' efforts to unilaterally redefine international human rights principles.

JoAnn Kamuf Ward co-authors and submits a paper to UN Special Rapporteurs on the connection between COVID-19 and rural access to sanitation in the United States.

HRI and IAOHRA testimony on impacts of federal policy on the right to housing gets quoted in U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report.

HRI co-hosts a talk titled "From Detention to Detention: Resisting the School-to-Prison Pipeline," featuring Seann Riley and Dekaila Wilson, Directors of the NYU Suspension Representation Project.

Economic and social rights are essential for equality and racial justice explains a joint submission to the Unalienable Rights by HRI and the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice.

HRI joint submission to the U.S. State Department Commission on the Unalienable Rights emphasizes the centrality of economic and social rights to human rights and equality.

JoAnn Kamuf Ward, HRI's Director of Human Rights in the U.S. Project, writes about human rights lessons from COVID-19, highlighting that equality requires economic and social rights protections.

HRI to host the Bringing Human Rights Home Lawyers’ Network’s (BHRH) Annual Human Rights in the U.S. Symposium/CLE on May 1st, entitled “Racial Justice, Restoration, and Inclusion: Human Rights Principles and Local Practice.”

Racial Justice Symposium Explores Strategies to Secure Reparations and Restorative Justice in the U.S.

It is vital to ensure that upcoming UN human rights reviews evaluate government responses to the current pandemic, stresses JoAnn Kamuf Ward in a Just Security blog.

The Human Rights Institute responds to the impacts of COVID-19.

JoAnn Kamuf Ward writes on the relevance of human rights in the era of #MeToo, and how CEDAW can advance gender equality at the local level. This builds upon the Gender Equality Toolkit that HRI developed with the Leadership Conference and UNA-USA to…

Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba shares his people-centered approach to economic justice in Jackson, MS in candid conversation with Columbia Law School students.

Latest report co-authored by the Human Rights Clinic details the sanitation crisis facing rural U.S. communities, and provides human-rights-based solutions

This year's 16th CLE Symposium on Human Rights in the U.S. brought top lawyers, academics and advocates together in NYC to address 'Securing Fundamental Human Rights & Challenging Criminalization of Poverty.'

Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute Symposium Explores the Criminalization of Poverty and Efforts to Secure Fundamental Human Rights in the United States

U.S. Secretary of State launched the Trump administration’s new “Commission on Unalienable Rights.” The commission is more likely to promote an anti-rights agenda, warns article co-authored by HRI Co-Faculty Director Sarah Knuckey.

“It is difficult to keep up with all that the new administration is doing that threatens human rights,” New Yorker article quotes Human Rights Law Review's "Trump Human Rights Tracker," which provides regular updates on the Administration’s actions.

The State Department’s new commission [on unalienable rights] represents a right-wing attack on America’s human rights traditions, warn HRI Faculty Co-Director Sarah Knuckey, and co-authors Margaret Sattherwaite and Jayne Huckerby.

HRI joins more than 400+ foreign policy, human rights, civil liberties, and faith leaders, scholars, and organizations in sounding alarm over new Trump Administration Commission on Unalienable Rights, calling for its dissolution.

JoAnn Kamuf Ward publishes new chapter in A Practical Guide to Using International Human Rights and Criminal Law Procedures.

The Institute hosts a meeting with UN Special Rapporteur on Migrants, Felipe Gonzalez, and members of the Bringing Human Rights Home Lawyers’ Network.

JoAnn Kamuf Ward and Catherine Flowers call attention to the threat on racial, economic, and social justice by the Trump Administration's Commission on Unalienable Rights.

HRI co-hosts a panel on "The Politics and Rights of Trans and Gender-Nonconforming People," featuring Katherine Franke, Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Columbia University; Alejandra Caraballo, Staff Attorney, Transgender…

HRI co-hosts Nancy Hiemstra, Associate Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Stony Brook University, for a talk about her book Detain and Deport.

2018

Are Rights a Reality? Evaluating Federal Civil Rights Enforcement

2017

Tell Data Brokers: Do Not Help Build a Muslim Registry or Facilitate Mass Deportations

2016

Using Thematic Hearings at the Inter-American Human Rights Commission to Advance U.S. Human Rights Accountability: A Resource for the Bringing Human Rights Home Lawyers' Network

2015

Engaging U.N. Special Procedures to Advance Human Rights at Home: A Guide for U.S. Advocates

2015

Primer on Recommendations from the Inter-American Human Rights Commission & the United Nations

2015

Access to Counsel in Civil Cases

2014

Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute Joins Delegation at United Nations for Review of U.S. Human Rights Record

2014

Access to Justice: Ensuring Meaningful Access to Counsel in Civil Cases, Syracuse Law Review

2014

Equal Access to Justice: Ensuring Meaningful Access to Counsel in Civil Cases, Including Immigration Proceedings

2013

Access to Justice: Ensuring Meaningful Access to Counsel in Civil Cases

2013

United States’ Compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

2010

The Road to Rights: Establishing a Domestic Human Rights Institution in the United States

2010

State and Local Human Rights Agencies: Recommendations for Advancing Opportunity and Equality Through an International Human Rights Framework

2007

Bringing Human Rights Home: A History of Human Rights in the United States

Bringing Human Rights Home Lawyers’ Network

HRI leads the Bringing Human Rights Home (BHRH) Lawyers’ Network, which brings together more than 900 lawyers and advocates from domestic civil rights and human rights organizations, legal services, academia, and private practice to strengthen the human rights field by sharing information and strategies, and developing joint responses to human rights developments, particularly around socioeconomic, gender, and racial justice. We foster partnerships and cultivate community through periodic in-person meetings, an active listserv, and Continuing Legal Education programs. BHRH members have access to the HRI’s U.S. Human Rights Online Library and can join the network’s working groups.

Legal Education

HRI builds the capacity of the BHRH Lawyers’ Network members through continuing legal education programs that advance critical conversations on human rights in the United States. Recent topics include engaging with UN human rights mechanisms, addressing criminalization of poverty, and advancing racial justice through reparations and restorative justice.

U.S. Human Rights Online

The U.S. Human Rights Online Library serves as an online clearinghouse of resources for members, including sample briefs, pleadings, and other materials.

Join Us

For more information on the BHRH Lawyers' Network, to join the listserv, or to access the U.S. Human Rights Online Library, please contact us at [email protected].

Partners

BHRH Lawyers’ Network

Penn Law Transnational Legal Clinic

US Human Rights Network

Partners for Dignity and Rights

HRW, LatinoJustice PRLDEF

ACLU Human Rights Project

Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Center for Reproductive Rights

Center for Constitutional Rights