Professor Jenny Rivera, CUNY School of Law

Professor Rivera is a Professor of Law at CUNY School of Law, in New York and the Director of the Law School’s Center on Latino and Latina Rights and Equality. She teaches Administrative Law, Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Property, Wills and Trusts, Antidiscrimination Theory, and Latinos and Latinas and the Law. Before joining the CUNY faculty, Professor Rivera taught at Suffolk Law School in Boston, Massachusetts, and practiced law as a civil rights lawyer in New York.

Professor Rivera recently served as Special Deputy Attorney General for Civil Rights for New York State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo. In this position she assisted in the development and implementation of the Attorney General’s civil rights agenda, supervised the Civil Rights Bureau and organized and held statewide outreach sessions on civil rights issues.

Professor Rivera rejoined the Law School faculty in fall 2007 and currently serves as the Director of the School’s Center on Latino and Latina Rights and Equality (CLORE). The mission of CLORE is to promote law reform scholarship, public education, and litigation in support of expanded civil rights related to issues impacting the Latino community in the United States. As Director, Professor Rivera designs and implements all CLORE programs, including symposia, speakers series, scholarship and curricular development, and community education. She also supervises the CLORE Law Student Fellows and works with the Law School’s library to maintain the CLORE Special Collection on Latinos.

Professor Rivera’s scholarship has been published in legal anthologies and she has authored several articles on civil and women’s rights, including “An Equal Protection Standard for National Origin Subclassifications: The Context that Matters,” “Extra! Extra! Read All About It: What a Plaintiff ‘Knows Or Should Know’ Based On Officials’ Statements and Media Coverage of Police Misconduct for Notice of a § 1983 Municipal Liability Claim,” “The Violence Against Women Act and the Construction of Multiple Consciousness in the Civil Rights and Feminist Movements,” “Domestic Violence Against Latinas by Latino Males: an Analysis of Race, National Origin, and Gender Differentials,” and “Puerto Rico’s Domestic Violence and Intervention Law and the United States Violence Against Women Act of 1994: The Limitations of Legislative Responses.” She is also the author of a 1997 study and a 2003 follow up study on the availability of domestic violence services for Latinas in New York State.

Professor Rivera received her A.B. in History from Princeton University and her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was an editor for the Annual Survey of American Law, a Root Tilden Scholar, and served as co-chair of the Latino Law Students Association. In 1993, Professor Rivera received her LL.M. from Columbia University School of Law, where she concentrated on Constitutional and Feminist Theory.

After graduating from NYU, Professor Rivera worked as a Pro Se Law Clerk in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. She then joined the Homeless Family Rights Project of the Legal Aid Society where she represented homeless families in federal and state class actions and administrative hearings. In 1993, Professor Rivera clerked for then District Judge Sonia Sotomayor, prior to Judge Sotomayor’s appointment to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. From 1988 to 1992, Professor Rivera was an Associate Counsel for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, a national civil rights organization. During her tenure at PRLDEF, Professor Rivera’s work included education and employment discrimination cases, equity and testing issues, gender equality issues and language rights discrimination.

Professor Rivera is a former Administrative Law Judge of the New York State Division of Human Rights, and was the first Latina in this position. She is also a former member of the New York City Commission on Human Rights.

Hispanic Business named Professor Rivera one of the Elite Women of 2005, and El Diario/la prensa named Professor Rivera one of the outstanding Latinas of 2000. The Puerto Rican Bar Association presented her with the President’s Award in 2007 and the New York City Chapter of the National Conference of Puerto Rican Women honored her in March 2000, for her service to the Latina community. In 1995, Professor Rivera received the Felipe Torres Award from the Puerto Rican Bar Association for her work on women’s rights. She is a 1991 recipient of the Manhattan Borough President’s Citation in Recognition of Work in the Field of Civil Rights.

Professor Rivera is a member of the Bars of the State of New York, the Supreme Court of the United States, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and the district courts for the Southern District and Eastern District of New York.