Dorothy Roberts

Dorothy Roberts has written and lectured extensively on the interplay of gender, race, and class in legal issues concerning reproduction and motherhood. She is the author of the recently published Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic Books, 2002) and Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty (Pantheon, 1997), which received the 1998 Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America. She is also the co-author of casebooks on constitutional law and women and the law. Roberts has published fifty articles and essays in books and scholarly journals, including Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, University of Chicago Law Review, and Social Text. Her widely cited article, "Punishing drug addicts who have babies: Women of color, equality, and the right of privacy" (Harvard Law Review,1991) is included in a number of anthologies.

Prior to joining the Northwestern faculty, Roberts was a professor of law at Rutgers University, a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University, and a fellow at Harvard University's Program in Ethics and the Professions. She serves as a consultant to the Center for Women Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. and the Open Society Institute's Program on Reproductive Health and Rights, and as a member of the board of directors of the Public Interest Law Center of New Jersey, the National Black Women's Health Project, and the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.

In 2002-2003, Roberts was a Fulbright scholar at the Centre for Gender and Development Studies, University of the West Indies, Trinidad-Tobago, where she conducted research on family planning policy and on gender, sexuality, and HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean.