Courses
Our innovative courses help prepare our students for decades of excellence in the human rights legal field and complement their law school education in cutting-edge ways.
UCLA Law offers a specialization in International and Comparative Law. Many students interested in human rights pursue this specialization because it allows them to graduate with a specialized certificate demonstrating their dedication to these fields of practice to prospective employers.
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Foundational Courses
These survey courses are designed to introduce you to the broader international legal framework.
For those seeking a thorough understanding of human rights law and hoping to practice it after graduation, these courses are foundational.
We wanted to highlight them to make sure that you consider including them in your schedule as early as possible in your law school career!
Public International Law
Note: This course and Law 273 are often listed as prerequisites for other courses.
Semester: SPRING ’25
Instructor: Kal Raustiala
This course will introduce students to the basic concepts and problems of public international law and the international legal system. The course will deal with a broad range of topics including the origins and sources of international law; U.S. foreign relations law; statehood and recognition in international law; principles of State sovereignty, territory, and jurisdiction; the law of treaties; State responsibility; State immunity and immunity of diplomats; and consular responsibility for injury to aliens; international criminal and humanitarian law; the United Nations and collective enforcement; the use of force and self-defense; terrorism; international human rights; international trade; and the law of the sea, air, and space.
International Human Rights Law
Note: This course and Law 270 are often listed as prerequisites for other courses.
Semester: SPRING ’25
Instructor: Khaled Abou El Fadl
This course serves as an introduction to the law, theory, and practice of international human rights, together with the instruments, organizations, and arrangements that affect their implementation and enforcement.
International and Transnational Criminal Law
In this course, we will study topics such as international and transnational crimes (such as crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, crime of aggression, torture, and corruption); the principles of jurisdiction that may be used to prescribe, adjudicate and enforce these crimes; enforcement mechanisms of these crimes (including the International Criminal Court and transnational prosecutions); principles of international criminal responsibility regarding international crimes; and the logistical and procedural challenges involved in the prosecution of these crimes (such as extradition and abduction).
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Advanced Courses & Seminars
These courses are much more specialized and allow you to drill into facets of human rights law.
Regional Human Rights Protection: The Inter-American System
This course provides an in-depth introduction and overview of the doctrine and practice of the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS). We will examine the instruments that protect human rights in the IAHRS, the jurisprudence of the system, and the practice of the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights. The course will also examine the engagement, challenges, and opportunities the system creates for civil society groups, victims, and advocates. It will also encourage critical thinking on the human rights frame itself.
Class sessions will consider not only the norms of the system, but also its internal dynamics. In addition, we will assess the impact of the system, evaluating implementation of decisions, as well as the general relevance of the IAHRS to human rights debates, legislation, and practice at the local and national level in countries throughout the hemisphere.
In this regard, we will consider the differing impact of the system across Latin America, and in the primarily Anglophone countries of the Caribbean and North America, including the United States. We will also evaluate the Inter-American system in comparative perspective, occasionally comparing rulings, implementation, and impact to those of regional and universal counterparts.
Critical Issues in Human Rights
Note: In the past, this class was offered as a series of three, individual short-courses in human rights. At the administration’s request, we have combined these courses into one, three-credit Critical Issues in Human Rights course.
This course now contains three sub-units which compliment one another while exploring different avenues of human rights work: litigation, developing law in international mechanisms, and sovereign State representation. Two classes are new offerings at UCLA Law, and the third is Kate Mackintosh’s Human Rights and the Environment class which was unveiled to great success last spring semester.
The sequence of classes as they will take place in Spring 2025 is as shown.
Semester: SPRING ’25
Instructor: Multiple Instructors
Representing States and Advancing Human Rights before International Fora: Arbitration, Interstate Litigation, and the United Nations
- Instructor: Christina Hioureas
This course will focus on the practice of international law and representation of sovereign States before international courts and tribunals. Drawing on the instructor’s experience as counsel for States in a wide range of international litigation and arbitration matters, the course will focus on ways to advance human rights through the practice of international law. Students will learn about the various types of international law disputes and the fora in which they are resolved, recent developments in international law jurisprudence, and the process of creating international law at the UN.
Students will also become familiar with the various types of international and inter-State disputes, and the range of judicial bodies which adjudicate different sorts of claims. They will develop or deepen their understanding of the major contemporary issues in international law, with a focus on human rights. They will hone the sort of legal reasoning and argumentation skills needed to represent States on the international stage.
Human Rights and the Environment
- Instructor: Kate Mackintosh
Curious about how the international human rights system is dealing with climate change and environmental destruction? This class will examine the potential and limitations of international human rights law and international criminal law to protect the environment, with attention to the interrelationship between human health and well-being and that of the wider ecosystem.
Transnational Human Rights Litigation
- Instructor: Cathy Sweetser
This class will focus on different types of litigation that bring extraterritorial claims in domestic courts, including ATS and trafficking cases. This module will examine how to bring home the developing norms and universal laws discussed in the previous two sections.
International Queer Rights
Note: This course runs for 6 weeks, from September 16 – October 23, 2024.
Semester: FALL ’24
Instructor: James Hathaway
The protection of sexual minorities was not on the agenda when either the UN or regional human rights systems were designed during the mid-twentieth century – much less was there interest in codifying a right to sexual liberty. The subsequent advent of movements to promote LGBTQ+ rights and related claims in many countries has thus presented a challenge to the ability of international human rights law to meaningfully respond to evolving notions of human dignity.
This course builds from an interrogation of the normative and structural foundations of international human rights and an analysis of the goals of queer advocates as they have developed over time. It then traces the advent of a largely liberal and hence partial response by the UN and regional human rights mechanisms to queer rights claims. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which the recognition of international queer rights has been shaped by a determination to preserve cultural, familial, and religious rights, leading to the emergence of a geopolitical chasm on queer rights that poses a serious challenge to the viability of international human rights systems in general.
Human Rights and War Crimes Digital Investigations
Designed to prepare students for cutting-edge work, this seminar unpacks the concepts and practices underlying digital open-source investigations. From legal requirements to practical skills, the purpose and history of these investigations, ethical considerations, identifying trauma responses when investigating atrocity crimes, and the history of open-source investigations in human rights organizations and international courts, students gain valuable skills for any legal career.
Human Rights and the Global Economy
Human rights issues have come to the forefront around the world, in courts, and legislatures, in corporate board rooms, in the corridors of the United Nations, and in international trade, and financial institutions. This emergence and universalization of human rights has arisen as the promotion and globalization of free markets through trade liberalization, flows of foreign direct investment and finance across national boundaries has intensified.
This course will examine how the growing influence of the international human rights framework is implicated in settings such as the overseas manufacturing operations of companies like Apple and Intel, in extractive industry mining activities such as those involving “blood” diamonds, and in China’s huge infrastructural projects, particularly in Africa. These case studies and more will be examined in light of the history and theoretical origins of human rights such as rights to food, housing, health, education, cultural expression, political participation, and prohibitions of discrimination and violence.
The course will examine a variety of responses to these case studies as they relate to the legal framework under major international and regional human rights treaties and standards and how international, regional, and domestic courts, (including federal courts under the Alien Tort Statute), and other actors have interpreted them.
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Clinics & Experiential Courses
These courses provide hands-on experience in the practice of human rights law, often by working with a variety of clients.
Human Rights in Action (Field Experience in Honduras)
Note: This course is four units. The Field Experience represents the equivalent of two units of work, and the semester component represents two units of work. Students must have Spanish-language competency. Max four students.
Semester: SPRING ’25
Instructor: Joseph Berra
The Human Rights in Action Clinic (HRAC) with International Human Rights Field Experience will be offered in Spring 2025 for four credits. A required component of the course is the J-Term trip to Honduras, which including travel days runs from January 4 – 20, 2025.
The HRAC-International Field Experience offers students a unique opportunity to engage in human rights work in an international context and learn from leading human rights lawyers and activists on the ground. Building on clinical work of Human Rights in the Americas Director Joseph Berra with clients and partners in Honduras, the 2025 course will give students an intensive immersion experience in the human rights struggle in Honduras.
Students will participate in various learning modules and workshops in dialog with our partners, clients, and activists, as well as conduct fieldwork in a collaborative model of human rights advocacy on behalf of our clients and in support of the litigation efforts of our partners. The students will then continue the Clinic work on projects arising out of the fieldwork during the Spring semester, meeting once a week for Clinic seminars, workshops and project rounds. Past projects have focused on work with Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, defense of territory, and resistance to extractivist industries, as well as litigation in the Inter-American System for Human Rights.
An experiential application process will take place.
Citizens of the United States, Canada, Mexico, and much of Latin America do not need a visa to travel to Honduras. International students seeking to participate should check with the Dashew Center for International Students and Scholars regarding travel abroad and return on their student visa.
Human Rights Litigation Clinic
Note: Pre- or Co-Req: Public International law, International Human Rights, or International Criminal Law
Semester: FALL ’24
Instructor: Cathy Sweetser
The Human Rights Litigation Clinic will focus on mechanisms for human rights accountability in domestic courts, including local civil rights litigation of §1983 claims for unhoused people and rights of immigrant detainees, trafficking lawsuits under the Trafficking Victim Protection Act (TVPRA), consumer fraud cases based on false claims of “sustainability” that target corporations selling goods produced with slave labor, and Alien Tort Statute cases. Students will be given the opportunity to engage in actual litigation together with law firm partners and nonprofit organizations. The clinic will also discuss professional ethics, empowering clients, working with clients with past trauma, and sustainable ways to practice the profession.
UCLA Law in The Hague
Note: *Do not wait for traditional spring semester enrollment to open in the fall, as that will be too late for the application process and meaningful preparation.*
Semester: SPRING ’25
Instructor: Kate Mackintosh
Through partnership between The Promise Institute for Human Rights and Experiential Education, students are placed at international courts and legal organizations for full-time, semester-long (15 weeks) externships, while simultaneously completing a component of the externship program called Practice of International Courts and Legal Institutions.
This exciting opportunity to travel and work with some of the world’s premier courts and international institutions does require specific conditions. Students accepted to the program must be fully prepared to travel to and live in The Hague for a semester: once you have been accepted, you cannot drop the course unless a true emergency exists. There is a separate application process for this course happening right now. If you are interested in applying, contact Kate Mackintosh now at mackintosh@law.ucla.edu.