The Center for Reproductive Rights Seeks Staff Attorneys — Application deadline: 1 June 2012
Founded in 1992 and headquartered in New York City, the Center for Reproductive Rights is a non-profit organization that promotes women’s equality worldwide by securing reproductive rights in constitutional and international human rights law. Its mission is straightforward and ambitious: to advance reproductive health and rights as a fundamental right that all governments are legally obligated to protect, respect and fulfill. The Center is unmatched as a reproductive rights organization in its expertise on U.S. constitutional law, comparative law, and international human rights law.
The U.S. Legal Program encompasses litigation on a large and diverse docket of cases; a nimble state legislative program that provides the first line of defense; human rights strategies to hold the U.S. government accountable; and a well-respected Law School Initiative to promote teaching and scholarship on reproductive rights. The Center’s preeminent litigation team has helped millions of women and their families. During the past 19 years, Center attorneys have been counsel in virtually every major U.S. Supreme Court case about reproductive rights. In the last two years, the Center litigated over 20 cases on a range of reproductive rights issues. The Center’s state program is actively engaged in strategic state- and local-level advocacy across the country. At the same time that the Center is defending women’s reproductive rights in courts and legislatures, it works toward the long-term goal of promoting reproductive rights and health as a fundamental human rights issue. By incorporating a human rights framework in its U.S. work in communications, legal arguments (e.g., in amicus briefs), and tactics (e.g., fact-finding reports, U.S. obligations to U.N. human rights treaties), it seeks to bring developments in international and comparative constitutional law and litigation to bear on U.S. law and policy. The Center’s Law School Initiative – launched in 2008 – promotes legal scholarship and teaching on reproductive health and human rights to shape the thinking of the next generation of lawyers, judges, and policymakers.
The new staff attorneys will be joining the Center at an exciting time for the institution and at a critical time for the nation. As opponents of women’s rights are mounting a scorched-earth campaign to turn back decades of hard-won progress, the Center is fighting back with short-, medium-, and long-term strategies, embodied in a new strategic plan launched in early 2012, which includes a particular focus on reversing the erosion of reproductive rights protections across the U.S. and establishing the right to affordable reproductive healthcare in the U.S. To advance these strategies, the Center is expanding its staff in the U.S. Legal Program. The new staff attorneys will join a highly accomplished team of dedicated attorneys and advocates.
For information regarding qualifications, responsibilities, compensation and to apply, please visit the website.