Northeastern Law’s new Center for Global Law and Justice (CGLJ), which employs innovative and collaborative approaches to address the most urgent global challenges of our time, is operating at breakneck speed. Led by center director Elizabeth Ennen ’08 and faculty co-directors Martha Davis and Zinaida Miller, CGLJ launched this fall with a program featuring a keynote address by Justice Natalia Ángel-Cabo of the Colombian Constitutional Court. “Welcoming Justice Ángel-Cabo to Northeastern was a true honor,” said Ennen. “Her insighful comments on the role of domestic courts in facing global challenges such as climate change were fascinating, sobering and inspiring.”

At the event, Ennen announced that, in a highly competitive process, CGLJ was selected to serve as the host for the vast collection of human rights resources currently housed at the International Justice Resource Center (IJRC) Online Resource Hub, which attracts as many as 75,000 visitors per month from more than 190 countries. Lisa Reinsberg, founder and executive director of IJRC, and the IJRC board of directors also helped secure a $550,000 grant to Northeastern to take the site to the next level. “We are honored that Lisa Reinsberg and her team are trusting us to assume responsibility for this critical resource hub,” Ennen said, “and we look forward to expanding it in novel directions.”

As one of the law school’s five Centers of Excellence, CGLJ combines scholarship and practice focused on combating global injustice and diverse forms of inequality and subordination. It is committed to promoting human rights, humanitarianism, climate justice, fair governance and democracy. This fall, the center hosted a robust lecture series covering a range of human rights and humanitarian law issues . Under the auspices of the center, co-director Martha Davis served as of counsel on an amicus brief filed in a New Mexico case, Atencio v. State.

Of the center, Dean James Hackney said, “Through Northeastern Law’s internationally recognized Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy, our leadership with the International Social and Economic Rights Project, our faculty scholarship, clinics and our student co-ops across the globe, we have long been committed to promoting justice and protecting human dignity. As a Center of Excellence, the Center for Global Law and Justice will build upon all that we have done and allow us to do much more as we advocate for universal laws and norms that protect marginalized and vulnerable populations. We welcome our graduates to participate.”