Prof. Dorothy E. Roberts designed her course around a reproductive justice framework, which extends far beyond access to abortion.
MacArthur Fellow Dorothy E. Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights, has dedicated much of her academic career to studying reproductive rights and justice, dating to her first law review article and pathbreaking book, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. Her popular course, “Reproductive Rights and Justice,” offers University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School students an invaluable entry into an area of law that has long been her passion, and that, according to Roberts, has only become more relevant with recent events like the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
“It’s a real privilege to be able to teach a course about the topic I’m the most interested in and passionate about,” said Roberts.
The course, Roberts explains, is about reproductive rights and justice, of course, “but also about the notion of justice going beyond what the Constitution may provide—asking what would be a just way, an equal and more humane way, of understanding and enacting policies related to reproduction.”
An acclaimed scholar of race, gender, and the law, Roberts is also the founding director of the Penn Program on Race, Science & Society in the Center for Africana Studies. Her interdisciplinarity allows her to explore the topic from several lenses—an approach her students greatly appreciate.
“Professor Roberts has so many different modes of thinking,” said Rachel Biggio L’26. “She brings sociology and history and philosophy about race and gender to really inform our discussions of the cases.”
Reproductive Justice Framework
Roberts’ course explores the law governing reproductive health and freedom in the United States from both reproductive rights and reproductive justice approaches. She emphasizes that reproductive justice isn’t limited to the human right not to have a child, but also encompasses the freedom to have and parent children. That perspective is why she designed the course around a reproductive justice framework that extends beyond access to abortion to include critical issues such as regulation of pregnancy and birth, parenting, adoption and foster care, assisted reproductive technologies, contraception, and sterilization.
“It’s a really broad scope of many, many issues that are related to our reproductive freedoms,” Roberts said.
Students reported that this expansive approach was one of the most revelatory aspects of the course.
“The reproductive justice framework is surprising in the sense that it really shows the pitfalls of an excessive focus on a rights-based model of reproductive autonomy,” said Biggio. “Reproductive justice takes a critical look at the ways that certain people, especially on the basis of race and class, have been excluded from a reproductive rights framework, by neglecting to realize the ways that this world isn’t necessarily hospitable to the families that they want to create.”
In the Classroom
Although primarily attended by 1Ls, the course is also open to upper-level students, LLM students, and even undergraduates or students from other programs interested in law. In recent years, Professor Roberts has limited the class size to 40 students to foster a more focused discussion.
Roberts’ teaching approach is highly interactive and prioritizes free and civil discourse, collaboration, and critical engagement with the materials. She expects students to come prepared to discuss the issues raised in the readings; each week, she assigns a different panel of students to help lead discussion. Roberts also shows videos relevant to the week’s topics, encouraging students to connect visual media with legal cases and frameworks.
The course structure allows for reflective exploration of reproductive justice beyond strict legal analysis, making the course not only informative but also personally resonant for many students.
“As a 1L student, we take a lot of big, lecture-based classes and we’re learning a lot of information, but there’s also a lot of space in Professor Roberts’ class to bring our lived experiences to the topic,” said Hazel Millard L’26. “And, given that we’re talking about something as meaningful and personal as reproductive freedom, that’s been a really enriching experience in her course.”
Her dedicated and motivated students are indeed among Roberts’ favorite aspects of the course. Many of the first-year students who enroll, she said, are thinking about careers that advocate for greater reproductive freedom and related social justice issues, making for a deeply engaging and purpose-driven classroom environment.
“I’m really excited to take the introspection that Professor Roberts taught me in this class into the way that I’m arguing things in the future,” said Charlie Ferguson SP2’23, L’24, who is pursuing a career in civil rights impact litigation. “I think I’m going to be a stronger litigator because I understand nuances that are happening underneath the surface and the way judges are approaching civil rights cases.”
Critical Thinking About Constitutional Law
In addition to providing students with a solid foundation in reproductive rights and justice, the course also gives them a broader, early experience in constitutional law. The cases covered include interpretations of critical constitutional provisions such as the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses and explore profound questions about humanity and freedom, enriching students’ understanding of historical and contemporary issues in American law.
“I frequently joke with my first-year students who are taking this as an elective, that they’re going to be experts in constitutional law before they get to those topics in their course study because we delve so deeply into these great, important Supreme Court cases like Buck v. Bell, Loving v. Virginia, Roe v. Wade, and the Dobbs decision,” said Roberts. “So many of them touch on these deep issues about what it means to be human, what it means to be free in this nation.”
Beyond legal knowledge, Roberts wants her students to become critical thinkers about the law.
“One of the things I want students to take away from the course, in addition to understanding these legal decisions that are so fundamental to our liberties and freedoms, is to be able to be critical of the law,” Roberts said.
To illustrate this point, Roberts cites Buck v. Bell, which upheld eugenic sterilization laws. The course traces the history of sterilization abuse in the United States during the eugenics era through 1970s and explores some of the ways these principles continue today in law and policy.
“I encourage [my students] to be critical of laws that we have that are unjust, and also to think positively about how they can change the law,” she said. “I encourage the students to think about how dissenting opinions can be the basis for advocating for change, and that we have to think positively about the ability of lawyers to work for positive change in our law for a more just society.”
Original source can be found here.