Women & Justice, Cornell & the LII

In 2008, more than 70 judges from around the world attended the
Senior Roundtable for Women’s Justice in Washington, D.C. They expressed a desire for a permanent place where they could continue their fight to improve the status of women and girls around the world. Cornell answered the call, lined up funding from the Avon Foundation for Women, and opened the Avon Global Center for Women and Justice at Cornell Law School.

For most of the last decade, the Avon Center pursued four major initiatives in support of its mission: holding events, undertaking clinical projects; providing legal research assistance for judges; and developing an online database of relevant case law from around the globe.

Unfortunately, outside funding has come to an end, and the Center is closing.  This is where the Avon Center’s story becomes an LII story.

At the request of the outgoing Executive Director and with the approval of Law School Dean Eduardo Penalver, we will take over the operation of the Women & Justice caselaw collection.  

“We do a lot at the LII, but this one is special” says Associate Director Craig Newton.  “One of my best friends during law school was the first Avon Center Fellow, and I called her right away when I learned we might have a role in keeping the Center’s work alive.”  But, the mission is more than personal: “this is a unique and valuable collection of case law, and we are perfectly positioned not just to host it but to grow it.”

Newton plans to leverage the LII’s network of volunteers to help find and summarize additional cases for the database.  To help, please email us at LIIwomenandjusticeproject@gmail.com.

Once we have the database ported over to LII’s servers, we’ll begin organizing our work to make this important database downright essential to those in pursuing justice for girls and women on a global scale.  

If you can’t contribute your time and expertise to this project, please consider making a financial contribution that will enable and enhance our abilities to manage this and other projects in the future.