Georgetown University Law Center


Georgetown University Law Center is the law school of Georgetown University, a private research university in Washington, D.C., United States. It was established in 1870 and is the largest law school in the United States by enrollment, with over 2,000 students. It frequently receives the most full-time applications of any law school in the United States. Georgetown is considered part of the T14, an unofficial designation in the legal community of the best 14 law schools in the United States.
The school's campus is less than a mile from the U.S. Capitol Building and U.S. Supreme Court. Prominent alumni include 11 current members of the United States Congress, federal and state judges, billionaires, and diplomats.

History

Opened as Georgetown Law School in 1870, Georgetown Law was the second law school run by a Jesuit institution within the United States. Georgetown Law has been separate from the main Georgetown campus since 1890, when it moved near what is now Chinatown.
The Law Center campus is located on New Jersey Avenue, within a mile from the Capitol, and a few blocks west of Washington Union Station. Georgetown Law School changed its name to Georgetown University Law Center in 1953. The school added the Edward Bennett Williams Law Library in 1989 and the Gewirz Student Center in 1993, providing on-campus living for the first time. The "Campus Completion Project" finished in 2004 with the addition of the Hotung International Building and the Sport and Fitness Center.
Georgetown Law's original wall is preserved on the quad of the present-day campus.

Controversies

In January 2022, Ilya Shapiro, the incoming executive director and senior lecturer of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, wrote in a tweet that he opposed President Biden's intent to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court, writing that because Biden would not nominate Shapiro's friend Sri Srinivasan, he was choosing a "lesser black woman". The dean of Georgetown University Law Center condemned the remarks, stating, "The tweets' suggestion that the best Supreme Court nominee could not be a Black woman and their use of demeaning language are appalling...The tweets are at odds with everything we stand for at Georgetown Law". Shapiro later deleted the tweet as well as many other tweets he had written in the past, and issued a statement calling it an, "inartful tweet." Shapiro was then placed on administrative leave while being investigated for violations of "professional conduct, non-discrimination, and anti-harassment" rules. As a result of the investigation, Shapiro was reinstated, as the school's investigators found that he was "not properly subject to discipline". Nevertheless, on June 6 Shapiro chose to resign in protest, arguing that the school had "implicitly repealed Georgetown's vaunted Speech and Expression Policy and set me up for discipline the next time I transgress progressive orthodoxy".

Academics

Admissions and costs

For the class entering in fall of 2025, the school received over 14,000 applications for 650 spots. For the class entering in the fall of 2024, 2,276 out of 11,309 J.D. applicants were offered admission, with 625 matriculating. The median LSAT score for the class entering in fall of 2024 is 171 and the median undergraduate GPA is 3.92. In the 2024–25 academic year, Georgetown Law had 2,176 J.D. students, of which 32% were minorities and 56% were female.
The total cost of attendance at Georgetown Law for the 2024–25 academic year is $113,450. The Law School Transparency estimated debt-financed cost of attendance for three years is $419,938.

Publications

Georgetown University Law Center publishes fourteen student-run law journals, two peer-reviewed law journals, and a weekly student-run newspaper, the Georgetown Law Weekly. The journals are:
  • American Criminal Law Review
  • Food and Drug Law Journal
  • Georgetown Environmental Law Review
  • Georgetown Immigration Law Journal
  • Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law
  • Georgetown Journal of International Law
  • Georgetown Journal of Law and Modern Critical Race Perspectives
  • Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy
  • Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics
  • Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy
  • Journal of National Security Law and Policy
  • Georgetown Law Technology Review
  • ''Georgetown Law Journal''

    Clinics

Georgetown's clinics are: Appellate Litigation Clinic, Center for Applied Legal Studies, The Community Justice Project, Criminal Defense & Prisoner Advocacy Clinic, Criminal Justice Clinic, D.C. Law Students in Court, D.C. Street Law Program, Domestic Violence Clinic, Federal Legislation and Administrative Clinic, Harrison Institute for Housing & Community Development Clinic, Harrison Institute for Public Law, Institute for Public Representation, International Women's Human Rights Clinic, Juvenile Justice Clinic, Intellectual Property and Information Policy Clinic, and Communications and Technology Law Clinic.
In the Winter 2017 edition of The National Jurist, Georgetown Law's Moot Court Program was ranked #4 in the country for 2015–16 and #5 among U.S. law schools that have had the best moot courts this past decade. Georgetown Law participates in moot court competitions through its Barristers' Council, which has Alternative Dispute Resolution, Appellate, and Trial divisions.

Appellate Litigation Clinic

Directed by Professor Erica Hashimoto, the Appellate Litigation Clinic operates akin to a small appellate litigation firm. It has had four cases reach the United States Supreme Court on grants of writs of certiorari. One such case was Wright v. West, 505 U.S. 277, considered in habeas corpus the question whether the de novo review standard for mixed questions of law and fact established in 1953 should be overruled. Another was Smith v. Barry, 502 U.S. 244, which reversed a Fourth Circuit determination that the court did not have jurisdiction over an appeal because the defendant's pro se brief could not serve as a timely notice of appeal.

Center for Applied Legal Studies

CALS represents refugees seeking political asylum in the United States because of threatened persecution in their home countries. Students in CALS assume primary responsibility for the representation of these refugees, whose requests for asylum have already been rejected by the U.S. government. The Center for Applied Legal Studies was founded in the 1980s by Philip Schrag. Until 1995, the Clinic heard cases in the field of consumer protection. Under the direction of Schrag and Andrew Schoenholtz, the Clinic began specializing in asylum claims, for both detained and non-detained applicants. In conjunction with their work for the Clinic, Schrag and Schoenholtz have written books about America's political asylum system, with the help of Clinic fellows and graduate students. The duo's most recent book, Lives in the Balance, was published in 2014 and provides an empirical analysis of how Homeland Security decided asylum cases over a recent fourteen-year period. The group's work in human rights law has met praise from international organizations like the United Nations Human Rights Council. Under the direction of Schrag and Schoenholtz, the clinic has also focused on more prolonged displacement situations for political refugees.

Civil Rights Clinic

CRC operates as a public interest law firm, representing individual clients and other public interest organizations, primarily in the areas of discrimination and constitutional rights, workplace fairness, and open government. The Clinic is directed by Professor Aderson Francois, who joined in 2016. Students work with CRC staff attorneys to litigate Freedom of Information Act claims, wage theft suits, and retaliation claims on behalf of employees terminated for asserting their rights under FLSA and DC Wage and Hour law.

Criminal Defense and Prisoner Advocacy Clinic

Students in CDPAC represent defendants facing misdemeanor charges in D.C. Superior Court, facing parole or supervised release revocation from the United States Parole Commission working with the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, and they also work on prisoner advocacy projects. Abbe Smith is the director of CDPAC. Former Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia lawyer Vida Johnson works with Smith in CDPAC and the Prettyman fellowship program.

DC Street Law Program

The DC Street Law Program, Directed by Professor Charisma X. Howell, provides legal education to the DC population through two projects: the Street Law High Schools Clinic and the Street Law Community Clinic. Professor Richard Roe directed the Street Law High Schools Clinic since 1983. Professor Howell became the director in 2018. In the program, students introduce local high school students to the basic structure of the legal system, including the relationship among legislatures, courts, and agencies, and how citizens, especially in their world, relate to the lawmaking processes of each branch of government.

Harrison Institute for Public Law

The Harrison Institute is one of the longest running public law clinics in the country, having begun as the Project for Community Legal Assistance in 1972. In 1980, it was renamed in honor of Anne Blaine Harrison, a philanthropist and early supporter of the institute. Over its history, the institute has been home to several clinical programs, including focuses on state and local legislation, administrative advocacy, housing and community development, and policy. In 2019, under the directorship of Robert Stumberg, the institute consists of four policy teams: Climate, Health, Human Rights, and Trade. Each of these teams involves students working to shape policy to achieve client goals.