The Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic of the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School in New York City was established in 2007 through a generous donation from Jim Leitner ('82).
The newly renamed Vivian Leitner Global South LL.M. Scholars Program offers generous scholarships and stipends to enable graduate students from the developing world to enroll in Fordham’s Master of Laws (LL.M.) in International Law and Justice.
Unique among American law schools, the Crowley Program's Annual Human Rights Fact-Finding Project provides law students with the opportunity to participate in an overseas human rights investigation and prepares them for a career in international human rights.
In the new Millennium, poverty and inequality around the world are still widespread. Over 1 billion people live in extreme poverty on less than $1 a day. Nearly 100 million school-age children are not in school. One billion people do not have access to clean drinking water and 2.6 billion are without adequate sanitation.
This one-semester clinic exposes students to the realities and challenges of development work, through their very own hands-on development project. Fordham teams are partnered with law students in Sub-Saharan Africa to study international development law and policy and then research, design and implement their own proposal for a small-scale, sustainable legal project to promote development in Africa.
The International Law and the Constitution Initiative, directed by Professor Catherine Powell, explores the relationship between internationalism and constitutionalism. The Initiative hosts public events and provides research and policy opportunities for scholars and students.Examples of projects the Initiative has supported are posted below.
Professor Thomas H. Lee has established a new center to analyze and to articulate effective regimes for the international and domestic legal regulation of armed conflict in the twenty-first century and beyond.To that end, the Center invites speakers, convenes conferences, and commissions and drafts reports, with a particular eye on the challenges from the perspective of the United States.
The Leitner Center, and before it the Crowley Program in International Human Rights, long have had a substantial interest in the promotion of fundamental rights and the rule of law in East Asia. Most members of the Center have a special interest in particular regions and sets of issues despite being generalist.
The Tolan Fellowship is a post-graduate Fellowship that will fund a Fordham Law School graduate to work for an international human rights organization for one year. The Fellowship is intended to allow Fordham Law School graduates with a demonstrated commitment to international human rights and an interest in working in the field to gain practical work experience with an international human rights non-governmental organization or inter-governmental organization.
In April 2005, the Leitner family pledged $2 million dollars to Fordham Law School to establish a chair in international human rights. The gift was the second largest non-bequeathed gift that the Law School has ever received.
The Leitner Center organizes human rights colloquia, which brings leading scholars of international law and political theory from around the world to discuss their current work with Fordham Law faculty and students throughout the semester.
The Leitner Center annually honors one of the activists with whom the Crowley Program worked during the prior year's human rights fact-finding project with a $1000 prize. The Center flies the recipient to New York to attend the Annual Leitner Dinner and meetings with non-governmental organizations and national and international officials.
The Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers is comprised of lawyers outside China wishing to support lawyers in China in their quest-and the Chinese government's own commitment-to establish the rule of law. The Committee's mission is to (1) develop information about the situation of lawyers in China and track cases of individual lawyers who are the subjects of persecution or intimidation because of the clients or causes they represent ...
Fordham Law School offers an LL.M. in International Law and Justice, during which lawyers gain an advanced understanding of human rights protection and promotion at the international, regional and domestic levels, from its historical evolution to the forefront of cutting-edge scholarship and debate. The LL.M. Program seeks to enroll international students, particularly from Asia, Africa and Latin America, in the hopes that the Program may contribute to diversity in the student-body and enrich classroom experiences for all Fordham Law School students.
