Fordham Law
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Policy & Legislative Advocacy: Civil Rights and Poverty Clinic


Prof.  Elizabeth Cooper
Associate Professor of Law
Policy & Legislative Advocacy Clinic
Faculty Director
Feerick Center for Social Justice & Dispute Resolution 		IN FORDHAM'S POLICY & LEGISLATIVE ADVOCACY: CIVIL RIGHTS AND POVERTY CLINIC, students work outside the courtroom to develop creative solutions for New York City's poor and disenfranchised.  Legal Interns work in partnership with community-based organizations to advocate for social change in the legislature, and with city and state officials.

To be effective policy advocates, clinic students:
  • interview clients and other interested parties
  • conduct extensive legal and social science research
  • draft policy papers as well as legislative and regulatory solutions
  • meet with community leaders and elected officials

STUDENTS ARE ACTIVE LEGAL AND POLICY ADVOCATES every step of the way, creating innovative, systematic solutions to the dilemmas faced by the clients of the organizations with whom the clinic works.

Ultimately, students are creating new paths to social justice. By learning how to be change agents, advocating for creative legal and policy-based solutions in legislative and governmental offices, clinic students learn valuable lessons in lawyering and bring the voices of the excluded to the corridors of power.

The clinic's advocacy partners and projects include:

 We Act for Environmental Justice
      •  raising awareness about the dangers regularly found in cosmetics and seeking ways
         to improve their regulation
      •  increasing rider membership and voting rights on transit boards throughout NYS
      •  improving regulation of bus depots in NYC

 New York Civil Liberties Union
      •  working to enact GENDA, the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, to combat 
         discrimination against transgender and gender non-conforming individuals

 Lawyers for Children
      •  enhancing stability for youth in foster care by advocating for numerous pieces of 
         legislation that have been enacted by the state legislature

 New York State Anti-Trafficking Network
      •  develop legislative agenda for human rights coalition that seeks to end sex and labor 
         trafficking 

 Center for HIV Law & Policy
      •  determining the sex education and services available to teens in foster care and in the 
         juvenile justice system in Washington, D.C.

Servicemembers Legal Defense Fund ("Don't Ask, Don't Tell")
      •  drafted essential report on how the integration of women into the military can inform the 
         effective integration of openly gay men and lesbians into our armed forces