The University of Baltimore Law Review is seeking papers and panelists for our Spring Symposium on State Responses to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the Battle to Secure Reproductive Freedom. For interested authors, a select number of papers will be published in a special Symposium issue of the Law Review. We hope you will join us on Friday, March 28, 2025, at the John and Frances Angelos Law Center.
The Symposium will explore, through a reproductive justice lens, the role of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs as a catalyst for state action across the United States. Since the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022, numerous states have introduced and passed measures to protect abortion and other reproductive freedoms, often through constitutional amendments protecting the rights of persons capable of pregnancy. However, three of these amendment initiatives failed in the 2024 elections, and other states are restricting and criminalizing abortion access, and even threatening to extend their reach beyond their boundaries by policing the movement of their residents. As a result, despite the growing prevalence of state level reproductive protections, in many states access to reproductive health care, the right to procreate, and a host of other important freedoms remain contested and vulnerable.
We are seeking presentation proposals on state responses related to reproductive justice, including the role of state constitutional amendments, and the effect that these protections may have on a multitude of areas, including but not limited to access to medical care, forced sterilization laws, immigration, and criminalization. We also welcome papers that identify other state-level strategies affecting reproductive justice, as well as papers that explore the relationship between state-level protections and federal law restrictions, including threats to make abortion illegal at the federal level. The Symposium is intended to serve as a forum for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to share ideas related to the impact of the Dobbs decision.
To submit a presentation proposal, please email your CV and a 500-word abstract to ublawreview@ubalt.edu by January 3, 2025. We will notify presenters whether they were selected by January 17, 2025. Draft presentations will be due March 14, 2025. For those interested in publication, final papers should be between 7,000 and 12,000 words, and will be due later in the spring.
The Symposium is co-sponsored by the Center on Applied Feminism at The University of Baltimore School of Law.
We look forward to your submissions. If you have further questions, please contact the University of Baltimore Law Review at ublawreview@ubalt.edu.