Rhonda Copelon papers
Scope and Contents
Papers include Legal documents and research, correspondence, teaching materials, published writings, panel presentations, notes, and audio and video recordings documenting Copelon's legal activism and teaching. Major topics include reproductive rights, domestic violence, international women's rights, AIDS legislation. Audio recordings include her course lectures for Women and Law, Law and Family, and Constitutional Law.
Dates of Materials
- Creation: 1971-2006
Creator
- Copelon, Rhonda (Person)
Language of Materials
English
Conditions Governing Access
This collection is open for use without restriction beyond the standard terms and conditions of Smith College Special Collections.
Conditions Governing Use
The Sophia Smith Collection owns copyright to the unpublished works of Rhonda Copelon within this collection. Copyright to materials authored by others may be owned by those individuals or their heirs or assigns. Permission must be obtained to publish reproductions or quotations beyond "fair use." It is the responsibility of the researcher to identify and satisfy the holders of all copyrights.
Biographical / Historical
Rhonda Copelon was born in New Haven, the daughter of Herman and Katherine Copelon. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1966 and earned her law degree at Yale, graduating in 1970. She worked as an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) for a dozen years, particularly regarding cases involving reproductive rights. She successfully defended the right of African American unwed mothers to work as teacher's aides in Mississippi but lost in the challenge to the Hyde Amendment which cut Medicaid funding for abortions. After leaving the CCR in 1983, she would remain a board member the rest of her life. She was also a founding board member of the National Economic and Social Initiative, an Advisory Board member of Human Rights Watch, Women's Rights Watch, and Legal Advisor to and founder of Women's Caucus for Gender Justice. By the early 1980s, Copelon had come to realize the importance of establishing international rights as a way of protecting women's rights. She joined the faculty of the CUNY Law School at Queens College when it opened in 1983 and co-founded the International Women's Human Rights Clinic there in 1992. She would lead the fight, assisted by her captivated students, in establishing rape during war as a crime of genocide and torture. She filed countless amicus briefs in cases heard by the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and published widely on the need to treat rape during armed conflicts as a war crime.
After a four year fight against ovarian cancer, Rhonda Copelon died at her home in Manhattan. As her long-time colleague and friend, Peter Weiss, wrote in "The Nation" (5/31/10) after her death, Copelon "was the warmest of friends to her large entourage and the steeliest adversary to establishmentarians who did not recognize basic human rights.... She accomplished the impossible: she made justice look easy."
Extent
16.25 linear feet (15 containers)
Abstract
Lawyer. Papers include Legal documents and research, correspondence, teaching materials, published writings, panel presentations, notes, and audio and video recordings documenting Copelon's legal activism and teaching. Major topics include reproductive rights, domestic violence, international women's rights, AIDS legislation. Audio recordings include her course lectures for Women and Law, Law and Family, and Constitutional Law. [NOTE: The contents list for this collection is not online. Contact the Sophia Smith Collection if you would like one sent to you.]
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The papers were donated to the Sophia Smith Collection by Catherine Albisa in 2012.
Processing Information
Accessioned by Kathleen Banks Nutter, July 2012
Subject
- Human Rights Watch (Organization)
- Women's Caucus for Gender Justice (Organization)
- International Women's Human Rights Clinic (Organization)
- Copelon, Rhonda (Person)
- National Economic & Social Rights Initiative (U.S.) (Organization)
Genre / Form
- Case files
- Court cases
- Legal files
- Notes
- Trial proceedings
- Videotapes
- Writings
- correspondence
- syllabi
Topical
- AIDS (Disease) -- Law and legislation
- Abortion -- Law and legislation -- United States
- Abused women -- Services for -- United States
- Anti-rape movement
- Audiotapes
- Calendars
- Domestic violence -- United States
- International cooperation
- International criminal courts
- Jewish women
- Lawyers
- Rape
- Reproductive and sexual health
- Research
- Sex discrimination against women
- Sexual abuse victims -- Law and legislation -- United States
- War crime trials -- Rwanda
- War crime trials -- Yugoslavia
- Women (International law)
- Women -- Crimes against
- Women -- Legal status, laws, etc
- Women lawyers -- United States
- Women's rights
- Women's rights
- Women's rights -- Algeria
- Yugoslav War, 1991-1995 -- Atrocities
- Title
- Rhonda Copelon papers
- Subtitle
- Finding Aid
- Date
- 2014
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Revision Statements
- 07/26/2017: This resource was modified by the ArchivesSpace Preprocessor developed by the Harvard Library (https://github.com/harvard-library/archivesspace-preprocessor)
- 2017-07-26T17:48:21-04:00: This record was migrated from InMagic DB Textworks to ArchivesSpace.
- 2018-12-04: Archived website added
- 2020-06-30: Added legacy container inventory
Repository Details
Part of the Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History Repository
