Stephen Rosenbaum

Stephen Rosenbaum, JD, MPP, is an Othering & Belonging Institute Visiting Researcher Scholar (Disability Studies Cluster). He has taught professional skills courses on social justice, mental health, civil rights and Spanish language and cultural competency at Berkeley Law, where he was awarded the title of Frank C. Newman Lecturer. He has also taught law and policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy, as well as disability rights and justice courses at Stanford Law and University of Washington (UW), where he is an Affiliate in the Disability Studies Program and periodic Lecturer-Part Time. Rosenbaum is also a BIMI (Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative) Research Affiliate and In 2021, he assumed the interim directorship of the San Joaquin Delta College Paralegal Studies Program. In 2023, he co-piloted a course at Jigme Singye Wangchuck Law School in Bhutan on procedural access to justice for disabled persons and taught a Classrooms Without Walls virtual course on human rights norms to Afghan girls and women.

While a Visiting Senior Lecturer at UW, Rosenbaum co-founded a business and human rights clinic, and taught human rights advocacy and a clinical tutorial for Afghan and Indonesian LLM candidates. He taught introduction to legal systems and ADR at American University of Phnom Penh and helped develop the start-up university’s law curriculum. As a State Department grantee, Rosenbaum has lectured to legal professionals, journalists and activists in francophone Africa. He was a Visiting Scholar at University of Auckland Faculty of Education (NZ) and ABA Rule of Law Initiative Legal Education Advisor in Egypt and Qatar. Before the military coup d’état in Myanmar, Rosenbaum led an international access to justice team, strengthening legal education (with EU and British Council support) and, during the pandemic, he has taught law students virtually in Indonesia, Iran, Togo and Trinidad and Tobago.

Rosenbaum is also La Raza Centro Legal’s pro bono counsel. Previously, he was a litigator with California Rural Legal Assistance for many years, eventually serving as a regional director of Central Valley and Central Coast offices. Before that, Rosenbaum was a senior litigation attorney with Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, associate managing attorney with Disability Rights California, associate professor and supervising attorney in Golden Gate University’s Women’s Employment Rights Clinic, and Of Counsel to the Law Offices of Michael Sorgen. His scholarship is on disability, special education, lay advocacy, international human rights and legal education.

Rosenbaum is the recipient of a Harvard Law Wasserstein Public Interest Fellowship and Eleanor Swift Award for Public Service. His curriculum vitae can be found here.