Dorothy E. Roberts

Roberts, Dorothy E.

Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law

Phone: (312) 503-0397
E-mail: d-roberts@law.northwestern.edu

| Curriculum Vitae (pdf)



Related Links: Joint Center for Poverty Research | Center for Legal Studies | Institute for Policy Research

Dorothy Roberts joined Northwestern's faculty in fall 1998 with a joint appointment as a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research. She is a frequent speaker and prolific scholar on issues related to race, gender, and the law and has published more than 75 articles and essays in books and scholarly journals, including Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, and Stanford Law Review, authored 2 award-winning books, and co-edited 5 casebooks and anthologies. Her latest book, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century, was published in July 2011. Roberts received fellowships and grants from the National Science Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Searle Fund, Hastings Center, Fulbright Scholars Program, Harvard University Program in Ethics and the Professions, and Stanford Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and as a visiting professor was the recipient of the Outstanding First-Year Course Professor Award for 1997-98. She serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Black Women’s Health Imperative and is currently conducting research on the effects of child welfare agency involvement in African-American neighborhoods and on race-based biotechnologies.

Areas of Expertise

  • Women and the Law
  • Family Law
  • Criminal Law
  • Civil Rights
  • Juvenile Law

Courses

Selected Publications

  • Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century (The New Press, 2011).
  • Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and The Meaning of Liberty (Pantheon, 1997).
  • Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic Books, 2002).
  • Spiritual and Menial Housework in 9 yale journal of law & feminism 51 (1997).
  • The Genetic Tie in 62 university of chicago law review 209 (1995).
  • The Social and Moral Cost of Mass Incarceration in African American Communities in 56 stanford law review 1271-1305 (2004).
View Additional publications

Joint Appointments

Education

  • BA magna cum laude, Yale University
  • JD, Harvard University

Prior Appointments

  • Visiting Professor, spring 1998, Stanford Law School
  • Visiting Associate Professor, spring 1994, University of Pennsylvania Law School
  • Professor of Law, Associate Professor of Law, 1988-1998, Rutgers University School of Law-Rutgers
  • Fellow, 1994-1995, Harvard University Program in Ethics and the Professions
  • Associate, 1981-1988, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison
  • Law Clerk, 1980-1981, Hon. Constance Baker Motley, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York

Recent Consulting Activities

  • Member, Braam Panel, monitoring foster care reform in Washington State
  • Member, Lexis/Nexis Advisory Board
  • Member, Advisory Board, Program on Reproductive Health and Rights, Open So
  • Member, Board of Directors, National Black Women’s Health Imperative
  • Member, Board of Directors, National Coalition for Child Protection Reform