UC Law lecture to examine impact, legal paradigm shift of overturning Roe v. Wade

Rachel Rebouché, Dean of Temple University Beasley School of Law and the James E. Beasley Professor of Law, will discuss the topic “The Legal Landscape After Roe’s Reversal” at her upcoming College of Law lecture. This event, the 2024 Robert S. Marx Lecture, will be held at 12:15 p.m., Friday, Feb. 23, in Rm. 160 at the College of Law (2925 Campus Green Drive).

The lecture is free and open to the public. However, registration is appreciated. Attendees can register via the registration button below. 

CLE: 1 hr of CLE credit has been approved for KY. 1 hr of CLE credit is pending in OH. Approval is expected.

About the Lecture

This lecture examines the paradigm shift that is occurring now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. Returning abortion law to the states will spawn perplexing legal conflicts across state borders and between states and the federal government. This lecture emphasizes how these issues intersect with innovations in the delivery of abortion, which can now occur entirely online and transcend state boundaries. The interjurisdictional abortion wars are coming, and this lecture provides the roadmap for this aspect of the aftermath of Roe’s reversal. 

Judges and scholars, and most recently the Supreme Court, have long claimed that abortion law will become simpler if Roe is overturned, but that is woefully naïve. In reality, overturning Roe will create a novel world of complex, interjurisdictional legal conflicts over abortion. Some states will pass laws creating civil or criminal liability for out-of-state abortion travel while others will pass laws insulating their providers from out-of-state prosecutions. The federal government will also intervene, attempting to use federal laws to preempt state bans and possibly to use federal land to shelter abortion services. Ultimately, once the constitutional protection for previability abortion disappears, the impending battles over abortion access will transport the half-century war over Roe into a new arena, one that will make abortion jurisprudence more complex than ever before. 

About the Lecturer

2021_09_02 LAW Rachel Rebouche

Dean Rachel Rebouché

Rachel Rebouché is the Dean of Temple University Beasley School of Law and the James E. Beasley Professor of Law. Prior to her appointment as Dean, she served as the Associate Dean for Research. She is also a Faculty Fellow at Temple’s Center for Public Health Law Research.

Dean Rebouché is a leading scholar in reproductive health law and family law. She is an author of Governance Feminism: An Introduction and an editor of Governance Feminism: Notes from the Field. She is also the editor of Feminist Judgments: Family Law Opinions Rewritten, published by Cambridge University Press, and an author of the sixth edition of the casebook, Family Law. In addition, she will join the fifth edition of the casebook, Contracts: Law in Action and recently co-edited a collection of essays for Law & Contemporary Problems on the pandemic’s effects on contract law.

She has served as a co-investigator on two grant-funded research projects related to reproductive health, one housed at the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health and another funded by the World Health Organization.. Dean Rebouché’s recent research also includes articles in law reviews and in peer-reviewed journals on abortion law, relational contracts, gestational surrogacy, prenatal genetic testing and genetic counseling, collaborative divorce, parental involvement laws, and international reproductive rights. She has been published in the Stanford Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Washington and Lee Law Review, the Journal of Law and Biosciences, and the Journal of Healthcare Law and Policy, among others.

Dean Rebouché received a JD from Harvard Law School, an LLM. from Queen’s University, Belfast, and a BA from Trinity University. Prior to law school, she worked as a researcher for the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Human Rights Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast. After law school, Dean Rebouché clerked for Justice Kate O’Regan on the Constitutional Court of South Africa and practiced law in Washington, D.C., where she served as an associate director of adolescent health programs at the National Partnership for Women & Families (formerly, the Women’s Legal Defense Fund) and as a Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow at the National Women’s Law Center.

Lead photo: istockphoto.com; profile photo:provided

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