Honoree Profile: Rhonda Copelon

Rhonda Copelon is a founding professor at CUNY Law School and director of CUNY's widely-acclaimed International Women's Human Rights Law Clinic (IWHR). From 1971 to 1983, as a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights she was part of a groundbreaking team of civil rights and feminist lawyers.

Copelon's reproductive-rights work includes argument in the Supreme Court that restored African-American teacher-aides fired for bearing out-of wedlock children; defeat of the first "fetal rights" case; protection of poor women from abusive sterilization; and a long fight to preserve Medicaid funding for abortion culminating in her Supreme Court argument against the federal (Henry) Hyde Amendment (1977). Other early feminist work targeted NY's marital rape exception, Operation Rescue, WABC's sexism, women's jury exemptions, the death penalty for rape, and criminal sodomy laws. She co-taught one of the first Women and the Law seminars and spoke at pro-choice and women's rights rallies,meetings, and on the campuses.

After a landmark case opening federal courts to international human rights cases, Copelon cofounded the IWHR clinic in 1992, and in 1997 the Women's Caucus for Gender Justice in the International Criminal Court. Supporting activists in the U.S.and globally, IWHR has trained students and contributed to recognition of women's human rights, including rape and gender crimes as torture, war crimes,genocide and crimes against humanity; domestic violence as torture; and reproductive and sexual rights as human rights. Copelon was a member of CARASA, the National Jury Project, the NARAL Board, Feminist and Gay/Lesbian roundtables, and Human Rights Watch, Women's Rights Advisory Board. She remains a member of the National Lawyers Guild, and on Boards of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

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