The Social Justice Law Center serves to ensure that students at our law school interested in the contours of American inequality have access to top notch legal educational offerings and experiences.
For far too long, law schools around the country have failed to recognize the inadequacy of a legal education that ignores the ways that inequality is baked into the brick and mortar foundation of America’s legal structures. The Social Justice Law Center aims to meet the curricular interests of law students at Case Western Reserve University motivated to understand social inequities created and reinforced by the American legal system.
The center works to ensure that interested students have access to doctrinal curricular offerings, research and writing opportunities, hands-on experiential educational experiences, as well as intellectually honest and thought provoking legal scholars all focused on social justice legal issues. In doing so, it serves to educate and guide the next generation of lawyers in the development of solutions to rectify inequality and oppression in meaningful ways.
The Social Justice Law Center is dedicated to addressing the inequities in our legal system, hosting a pair of endowed lectures - The Dr. Maya Angelou—Professor Calvin Sharpe Interdisciplinary Lecture and the C.B. King Lecture.
We have a long history of leadership in social justice, with notable alumni including famed civil rights lawyer Fred Gray, who represented Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. Gray continues to be a frequent visitor to the law school, inspiring generations of our students to follow in his footsteps.
We provide students interested in this area with Stephanie Tubbs Jones public interest law scholarships, named for our alum who was the first African-American woman to be elected to Congress from Ohio.
With funding from the Fox Family Foundation and the Biskind Endowment, the Social Justice Law Center provides stipends for summer and semester-long public interest law internships and externships to launch students’ careers in social justice while also providing impactful research opportunities to the dozen Stephanie Tubbs Jones Scholars in each class.
From our Immigration Law Clinic to our Human Trafficking Project, from our Reproductive Rights Lab to our newly endowed Burke Center for Environmental Law, we provide students a wide range of hands-on experience in the area of social justice.
Reflecting our strength in this area, preLaw Magazine, a publication of National Jurist, recently ranked Case Western Reserve University Law School the ninth-best law school in the nation for public interest law.
Student Opportunities
Dedicated Scholarships
Fellowships
Externships
Student Organizations
Law and Political Economy Society
The Law and Political Economy Society (LPES) at CWRU is a student-led education and advocacy organization concerned with the relationship between legal systems and neoliberal capitalism. LPES believes the free-market ideology embedded in the prevailing legal doctrine unjustly benefits dominant social groups to the detriment of democratic values and the people at large. In an effort to better understand this problematic relationship and how to mitigate its effects, LPES aims to cultivate discussion and build power among all those working to advance a more just society.
The Reporter - Social Justice Law Center Magazine
Social Justice Law Center News
Ayesha Bell Hardaway Receives Norman S. Minor Bar Association’s Trailblazer Award
November 02, 2022Founded in 1980 as Cleveland’s first full-fledged African American bar association, the Norman S. Minor Bar Association holds a yearly gala to recognize trailblazers who have made significant contributions to the advancement of diverse legal professionals and advancing diversity in the legal field.
CWRU School of Law Receives Two Racial Justice Initiative Grants
January 19, 2022The Case Western Reserve University School of Law recently received two $50,000 grants from the Ohio State Bar Foundation (OSBF) through its Racial Justice Initiative.