Dorothy
Roberts
Dorothy
Roberts is a professor at Northwestern University School of Law, with joint
appointments as a faculty affiliate in the Department of Sociology, a faculty
fellow of the Institute for Policy Research, and a faculty affiliate of the
Joint Center for Poverty Research. She was named Class of 1940 Research
Professor for 1999-2000.
Prof.
Roberts received her B.A. from Yale College and her J.D. from Harvard Law
School. Professor Roberts has written and lectured extensively on the interplay
of gender, race, and class in legal issues concerning reproduction and
motherhood.
She
is the author of Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic Civitas
Books, 2002) and Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning
of Liberty (Pantheon, 1997), which received a 1998 Myers Center Award for
the Study of Human Rights in North America, as well as the co-author of
casebooks on constitutional law and women and the law.
Prof.
Roberts has published more than fifty articles and essays in books, scholarly
journals, newspapers, and magazines, including Harvard Law Review, Yale Law
Journal, University of Chicago Law Review, Social Text, and The New York
Times. Her influential article, "Punishing Drug Addicts Who Have
Babies: Women of Color, Equality, and the Right of Privacy" (Harvard Law
Review, 1991), has been widely cited and is included in a number of
anthologies.
Professor
Roberts has been a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania and
Stanford, and a fellow at Harvard University's Program in Ethics and the
Professions. She serves as a consultant to the Center for Women Policy Studies
in Washington, D.C., and as a member of the board of directors of the Public
Interest Law Center of New Jersey and the National Black Women's Health
Project.
She
has delivered several endowed lectures, including the James Thomas Lecture at
Yale Law School. She was elected twice by the Rutgers School of Law graduating
class to be faculty graduation speaker, and was voted outstanding first-year
course professor by the Northwestern School of Law class of 2000. She received
the Radcliffe Graduate Society Medal in June, 1998. Her current projects
concern race and child welfare policy.