Bernardine Dohrn

The Center, in partnership with the National Juvenile Defender Center, is conducting an assessment of juvenile defender practices in Illinois, and is coordinator of the Illinois Coalition for Fair Sentencing of Children, documenting the realities of Life without Possibility of Parole sentences for 103 juvenile offenders in the state. Dohrn serves on the Boards of Directors of the W. Haywood Burns Institute, the Juvenile Justice Initiative, the Midwest Coalition for Human Rights, the Public Square, and the Children’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. She is a member of the Local School Council of the Nancy B. Jefferson School, the steering committee of the Illinois Family Violence Coordinating Committee, and co-chair of the National Children’s Law Network. She is an author and co-editor of two books: A Century of Juvenile Justice (2002) and Resisting Zero Tolerance: A Handbook for Parents, Teachers and Students (2001) and the author of "Somethin’s Happening Here: Children and Human Rights Jurisprudence in Two International Courts", UNLV L.Rev. Summer 2006, All Ellas: Girls Locked Up in Feminist Studies (Summer 2004) and Look Out Kid/Its Something You Did! Zero Tolerance for Children in The Public Assault on Americas Children: Poverty, Violence, and Juvenile Injustice (2000). She writes and lectures on international human rights law, torture, juvenile justice and extreme sentencing of youth, family violence and school law. Dohrn teaches juvenile justice, torture, children’s human rights and international law at Northwestern. She is annually a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Human Rights Program and Leiden University faculty of law in the Netherlands. Ms. Dohrn is a graduate of the University of Chicago College and the Law School.