So far this year, Columbia University Law School’s Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic has secured political asylum in the U.S. for a gay Jamaican man and for a lesbian from Turkmenistan, who feared persecution for her sexual orientation and political opinions in that mostly Muslim country. These are just two of the cases being handled by the fledgling clinic embarking on an emerging field — sexuality and gender law.

Directed by Suzanne B. Goldberg, who is renowned for her work and teaching in the area of sexuality and gender law, the clinic, which began in September 2006, is the first sexuality and gender law clinic at a law school to be staffed full time by a faculty member. “One of the goals is to encourage and prod other law schools to develop similar clinics,” says Goldberg.

Although the clinic is just over a year old, Goldberg says many of the school’s applicants say that this clinic drove their choice of law school. “They want to go into careers where they are working on international women’s rights or the rights of lesbian, gay and transgendered people or variations of these themes,” she says. “Part of what’s most exciting about teaching students in this area is it is a field in active development, which raises interesting, substantive questions.”

Says Jennifer Stark, one of eight students participating in the clinic, “I started law school with the hope of doing sexuality and gender law. The clinic has helped me figure out how I can potentially do this work in the future. This is undoubtedly an emerging field of law.”

The students in the clinic devote 21 hours per week to their clinic work and attend a two-hour weekly clinic seminar. Recent projects have included amicus briefs to the Connecticut and California supreme courts in marriage litigation and to the Iraqi Tribunal regarding prosecution of rape; development of legal manuals to support enforcement of women’s rights protocols in Africa and a transgender rights ordinance in New York City; and litigation research, planning and support on issues related to women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights and the rights of transgender individuals both in the U.S. and abroad.