Activism
- Bella Abzug (1947), social rights activist and a leader of the women's rights movement
- Mark Barnes (LL.M. 1991), advocate for public healthcare law at the state and national levels, co-founded the first AIDS law clinic
- Edward Bassett (1886), one of the founding fathers of modern day urban planning
- Lee Bollinger, advocate for affirmative action, defendant in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger
- Robert L. Carter (1941), civil rights activist, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund general counsel, in which capacity he argued Brown v. Board of Education II (1955)
- Julius L. Chambers (LL.M. 1964), civil rights leader, attorney, and educator; third President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
- Felix Cohen (1928), advocate for native American rights, fundamentally shaped federal native American law and policy
- Roy Cohn (1947), conservative lawyer who became famous during the investigations of Senator Joseph McCarthy into alleged Communists in the U.S. government
- Robert Cover (1968), civil rights and international anti-violence activist, professor at Yale Law School
- Albert DeSilver (1913), a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
- William Dudley Foulke (1871), reformer, one of the principal reformers, New York State and the federal civil service systems; early president, American Suffrage Association
- Marvin Frankel (1949), founder, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, served as its chairman for many years; also helped establish sentencing guidelines for the federal courts
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg, women's rights advocate, co-founded the Women's Rights Law Reporter; co-authored the first law school casebook on sex discrimination; as chief litigator of the ACLU's women's rights project, she argued six(?) cases before the U.S. Supreme Court
- Richard Gottfried, leading advocate for patient autonomy and for universal access to quality, affordable health care
- Jack Greenberg (B.A. 1945, LL.B. 1948), second President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; argued 40 civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
- Arthur Garfield Hays (1905), civil liberties activist, general counsel for the ACLU, notable trials included Scopes Trial, trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, and Scottsboro case
- Charles Evans Hughes, one of the co-founders of the National Conference of Christians and Jews to oppose the Ku Klux Klan, anti-Catholicism, and anti-Semitism
- Steve Kelly, legal advocate for litigants who could not afford an attorney and for public housing tenants; consumer advocate
- Caroline Kennedy (1988), principal fund raiser of private funds for the New York City public schools, co-founder of Profiles in Courage Award, a director of the Commission on Presidential Debates and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, one of three co-chairs of President-elect Barack Obama's Vice Presidential Search Committee (2008), adviser to the Harvard Institute of Politics
- John Marshall Kernochan, advocate for artists' intellectual property rights
- William Kunstler (1948), civil rights and human rights activist, director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) (1964–1972); co-founded the Center for Constitutional Rights
- John Brooks Leavitt (1871), reformer, author
- Peter Lehner, lawyer and environmentalist; Executive Director, Natural Resources Defense Council
- Charles K. Lexow, first attorney for the Legal Aid Society of New York City; brother of Clarence Lexow (class of 1872)
- Li Lu (1996), leader of the Tiananmen Square Protests (1989), first student at Columbia to simultaneously receive B.A., M.B.A., and J.D. degrees
- Louis B. Marshall (1886–1877), mediator and Jewish community leader who worked to secure religious, political, and cultural freedom for all minority groups; conservationist
- Vilma Socorro Martínez, served for almost ten years as president and general counsel of Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
- James Meredith (1968), American civil rights movement figure, first African American student at the University of Mississippi
- Constance Baker Motley (1946), attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (1945–64); Manhattan Borough president (1964–66); first African American woman appointed to the federal bench (1966–86)
- Marshall Perlin (1942), civil liberties lawyer, defended Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
- Anika Rahman (1990), president and CEO, Ms. Foundation for Women (2/2011)
- Paul Rapoport (1965), co-founder of the New York City Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Services Center and the Gay Men's Health Crisis
- Michael Ratner (1969), human rights activist on national and international level, current president of the Center for Constitutional Rights (co-founded by William Kunstler in 1969), the National Law Journal named him as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the United States (2006)
- Isaac Rice, U.S. chess patron
- Paul Robeson (1923), civil and human rights activist, international social justice activist, writer, Spingarn Medal
- Theodore Roosevelt, progressive reformer, conservationist, a leader of the Republican Party and the Progressive Party
- Herbert L. Rosedale (B.A. 1953, LL.M. 1956), one of the foremost anti-cult activist in the United States
- Menachem Z. Rosensaft (1979), a leader of the Second Generation Movement of children of Jewish survivors
- Brad R. Roth (LL.M. 1992), social and human rights activist, critic of torture policies in the administration of George W. Bush
- Charles Ruthenberg (1909), founder of the Communist Party of America (1919)
- Mikheil Saakashvili (LL.M. 1994), founder and leader of the United National Movement in Georgia (country), leader of the bloodless "Rose Revolution"
- Theodore Shaw, civil rights leader, attorney, and educator; former 5th President and Director-Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
- Clive Stafford Smith, British lawyer; recipient Gandhi International Peace Award (2005) for representing Guantanamo detainees and campaigning against extraordinary rendition
- Judith Vladeck (1947), civil rights advocate, particularly on behalf of women; helped set new legal precedents against sex discrimination and age discrimination
- Charles Weltner (1950), advocate for racial equality, second individual to receive the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award
Read more about this topic: List Of Columbia Law School Alumni