Programs and Centers
As the only law school started by women, Washington College of Law is a leading center for feminist legal scholarship and teaching. The school proudly supports a program on Women and the Law that brings in speakers, hosts conferences and creates courses that involve students in advocacy for women’s rights and gender equality.
The program's goals are broad and ambitious:
- to contribute to research and advocacy concerning women and the law;
- to further awareness of the way that the law affects women's lives and women's positions within the institutions of the legal system;
- to address the experiences of women within the WCL community; and
- to change legal education to incorporate fully the experiences of women into all aspects of the law school.
The program's founder and director, Professor Ann Shalleck, is a noted authority and frequently speaks and writes on gender and the law.
Women & International Law Program
The Women & International Law Program (WILP) supports the work of legal scholars, women's rights advocates and law students around the world seeking to integrate fully women's human rights into legal education, practice and doctrine.
Through workshops, trainings, and educational programs, WILP collaborates with women's rights advocates and scholars around the world to reform the law, legal education, and legal institutions to further women's rights and fosters analysis of the relationship of gender to the operation of law and legal institutions. WILP is currently collaborating on gender and legal education initiatives in India and Latin America.
WILP also works with WCL students to enhance their studies of gender and the law, sponsors gender-related programming at the law school, and works closely with the LL.M International Legal Studies Program: Specialization in Gender & the Law, one of the only such programs in the world.
The Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law
The Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law was founded in 1990 to provide a clearinghouse for the wide scope of activity at WCL concentrated on human rights and humanitarian law. The Center works with students, faculty and the international legal community to provide scholarship and support for human rights initiatives around the world. The Center is dedicated to creating opportunities for students, practitioners and activists through training, complementary education, outreach, workshops & conferences, and research & publication. Hadar Harris, Executive Director, has extensive experience promoting women's human rights internationally. For more information, contact the Center at (202) 274-4180 humlaw@wcl.american.edu, or visit the Center's website at http://www.wcl.american.edu/humright/center/.
The Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law
The Academy is an intensive three-week education program providing specialized training courses to scholars and activists on international human rights law. The Academy offers a broad spectrum of courses spanning the field of human rights law, taught by world renowned experts in the field. Open to both law students and practicing attorneys who are interested in human rights issues, participants may receive either law school credit or a certificate of attendance. Those who are not legal experts in human rights may also participate in the Academy to expand their understanding of this complex field. Each year the Academy offers a course devoted to women's rights, Women and International Human Rights Law, which in 2005 was taught by Rebecca Cook, Professor and Faculty Chair in International Human Rights at the University of Toronto.
In 2005, more than 150 practitioners and students from all over the world attended the Academy. In 2006, the Academy will again offer an attractive and exciting program of new courses and faculty as well as extracurricular activities and on-site visits. For information on the 2006 Academy, please contact hracademy@wcl.american.edu or visit the website at http://www.wcl.american.edu/humright/hracademy.
The core mandate of the War Crimes Research Office (WCRO) is to promote the development and enforcement of international criminal and humanitarian law through the provision of legal research assistance to international criminal courts and tribunals. The WCRO was initially established in 1995 to provide the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR) with legal research and analysis in the areas of humanitarian and international criminal law. In 2005, the WCRO provided assistance to the International Criminal Court, Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Special Panels for Serious Crimes in East Timor. WCRO staff have also been involved in preparatory work relating to the establishment of a court with jurisdiction over those most responsible for Khmer Rouge-era atrocities in Cambodia. Through its contributions, the WCRO aims to ensure that evolving jurisprudence responds to the realities of an increasingly globalized world. This means, among other things, ensuring that emerging law reflects the gender-specific nature of certain crimes - a concept not uppermost in the minds of the drafters of the treaties that initially codified the laws of war. For example, the WCRO made extensive contributions in the prosecution of the Kunarac, Kovac and Vukovic ("Foca") case decided by the ICTY, which recognized for the first time in history that certain crimes of sexual assault constitute the crime against humanity of enslavement. Please see the WCRO website at http://www.wcl.american.edu/warcrimes/.