Laura Rovner
Professor
303-871-6441 (Office)
Office 365E, Frank H. Ricketson Law Bldg., 2255 East Evans Ave. Denver, CO 80208
Specialization(s)
Civil Rights Clinic, Law School Clinical Program
Professional Biography
Laura Rovner received her J.D. from Cornell Law School, her B.A. magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania, and an LL.M. in Advocacy from Georgetown University Law Center. At Georgetown, Professor Rovner was a clinical teaching fellow in the Institute for Public Representation, where she supervised students on civil rights matters involving race, gender, disability and national origin discrimination. She was then awarded an Equal Justice Fellowship from Equal Justice Works (formerly the National Association for Public Interest Law) to work with a national organization representing the interests of deaf and hard of hearing people. Following this fellowship, Professor Rovner taught at Syracuse University College of Law, where she served as the Director of the Public Interest Law Firm, a clinical legal education program with a focus on civil rights and public interest litigation, and most recently, was the Director of Clinical Education and founder of the Civil Rights Project at the University of North Dakota School of Law. At the University of Denver College of Law, Rovner teaches in the Civil Rights Clinic, which represents clients in cases involving prisoners’ rights, disability rights and employment discrimination.
Degree(s)
- LLM, Advocacy, Georgetown University Law Center, 1995
- JD, Cornell Law School, 1993
- BA, Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania, 1990
Licensure / Accreditations
- Admission to practice law (S.D. IN)
- Admission to practice law (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit)
- Admission to practice law (N.D. VA)
- Law license (CO)
- Law license (DC)
- Law license (MD)
Featured Publications
- On Litigating Constitutional Challenges to The Federal Supermax: Improving Conditions And Shining a Light, 95 Denver University Law Review 457 (2018).
- “Everything Is at Stake if Norway Is Sentenced. In that Case, We Have Failed”: Solitary Confinement and the “Hard” Cases in the United States and Norway, UCLA Criminal Justice Law Review, 1(1) (2017).
- Dignity and the Eighth Amendment: A New Approach to Challenging Solitary Confinement, issue brief, American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (September 11, 2015).
- Seeking Integrity: Learning Integratively from Classroom Controversy, co-authored with Patti Alleva, 42 Southwestern Law Review 355 (2012 - 2013).
- Requiring the State to Justify Supermax Confinement for Mentally III Prisoners: A Disability Discrimination Approach, co-authored with Brittany Glidden, 90 Denver L. Rev. 55 (2013).
- Preferring Order to Justice, co-authored with Jeanne Theoharis, 61 American University Law Review 1331 (2012).
- The Unforeseen Ethical Ramifications of Classroom Faculty Participation in Law School Clinics, 75 U. CIN. L. REV. 1113 (2007).
- Disability, Equality & Identity, 55 Alabama L. Rev. 1043 (2004) (reprinted in part in EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION LAW: CASES, PROBLEMS AND CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES (Prentice Hall 2005)).
- Perpetuating Stigma: Client Identity in Disability Rights Litigation, 247 Utah Law Review (2001).
Awards
- Faculty Senate Distinguished Teaching Award, University of Denver