Christopher N.J. Roberts

Associate Professor

Christopher Roberts

450 Mondale Hall
229–19th Ave. South
Minneapolis, MN 55455

612-624-2947

cnr@umn.edu

University of California, Los Angeles, B.A.
University of Southern California Gould School of Law, J.D.
University of Michigan, Ph.D.

Professor Christopher N.J. Roberts joined the Law School faculty in the summer of 2011 as an associate professor. He brings an interdisciplinary law, sociology, and public policy perspective to human rights and international law.

Professor Roberts completed his B.A. in anthropology in 1997 at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his J.D. in 2000 at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law, where he received the Joseph M. Shaw Memorial Scholarship. In 2010, he completed the joint doctoral program in public policy and sociology at the University of Michigan.

He was a visiting scholar in the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, Boalt Hall, in 2008-10.

In 2002-08 he received the Rackham Merit Fellowship at the University of Michigan and in 2008 was awarded a doctoral research grant from the Nonprofit & Public Management Center. While at Michigan, he also received the Shapiro/Malik Award and research grants from the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Rackham Graduate School, the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and the Department of Sociology. He was a graduate student instructor of criminology in the Department of Sociology in 2003-04.

Professor Roberts received the University of Michigan’s ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award for his examination of the development of the modern international human rights concept from 1944-66. His current research focuses on the substantial and often-overlooked opposition against the formation of the International Bill of Human Rights. His work shows how those who opposed human rights and the creation of new categories of rights holders actually helped shape the very foundations of the modern international system of human rights. Because this opposition was absorbed into the framework of the emerging concept, he argues, for more than 60 years human rights have been encumbered by “internal contradictions” that continue to constrain implementation. Publication of this work is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press under the title The Contentious History of the International Bill of Human Rights.

The article “Toward a New Sociology of Rights: A Genealogy of ‘Buried Bodies’ of Citizenship and Human Rights” appears in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science (with Margaret R. Somers, 2008).

Professor Roberts’ research interests include human rights, citizenship, tort law, international law, legal history, social theory, and law and society, and he continues to study the International Bill of Human Rights.

For further information on Professor Roberts, please see his curriculum vitae.

PUBLICATIONS

Books

The Contentious History of the International Bill of Human Rights (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2012)

Book Chapters

The Sociology of Law, in The Handbook of Sociology and Human Rights (David L. Brunsma, Keri E. Iyall Smith & Brian K. Gran, eds., Paradigm Publishers, forthcoming June 2012)

Journal Articles

The Dynamics of Health Care Reform: Bitter Pills Old and New, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law (forthcoming Nov. 2012)

Toward a New Sociology of Rights: A Genealogy of "Buried Bodies" of Citizenship and Human Rights, 4 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 385-425 (2008) (with Margaret R. Somers)

COURSES

Administrative Law
Civil Rights: Citizenship & Human Rights
Torts