Prof. Rana R. Lehr-Lehnardt is a Teaching Professor of Law at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law, where she has taught since 2009. She teaches or has taught International Human Rights Law, Global Legal Systems (comparative law), Professional Responsibility, International Law, Spanish for Lawyers and Multicultural Lawyering, Film and Human Rights, and Common Law, Legal Analysis & Writing for international LL.M. students. She is the secretary of the Kansas City chapter of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society (JRCLS), is a member of the national Women in Law Committee of the JRCLS, and is the chair of the Professors Section of the JRCLS. She is also a member of the American Society of Comparative Law.
Prof. Lehr-Lehnardt traveled to Dilley, Texas in November 2019, with other members of the JRCLS and UMKC alumni, to provide pro bono legal services to asylum seekers in Dilley, Texas. Over the past several years, Prof. Lehr-Lehnardt has become interested in asylum issues and has presented several times on the changing laws in this area. She is also interested in tensions between competing human rights, the intersection between women’s rights and religious rights, and the use of comparative legal approach to better understand the recognition of rights and the development of the law.
Prof. Lehr-Lehnardt earned her LL.M. with an emphasis in international human rights and comparative law from Columbia Law School, where she graduated as a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar and received the Parker School Certificate in foreign and comparative law. She earned her J.D. from BYU J. Reuben Clark Law School, where she graduated as magna cum laude and was inducted into the Order of the Coif. Prof. Lehr-Lehnardt was editor in chief of the Journal of Public Law, president of the Women’s Law Students Association, and recipient of the National Association of Women Lawyers Outstanding Law Student Award for exhibiting motivation, tenacity, and academic achievement and for contributing to the advancement of women in society.
Prof. Lehr-Lehnardt was an associate at Ballard, Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll for a short stint before accepting a clerkship with Judge Terrence L. O’Brien on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Prof. Lehr-Lehnardt was the legal advisor and coordinator for the Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief at the American Civil Liberties Union. She was a researcher for the Human Rights Institute at Columbia University and for the Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion and Belief. Her human rights experiences are diverse, including interviewing inmates convicted as juveniles without possibility of parole, working on a complaint against the United States that was submitted to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, creating a domestic violence program with a Bosnian NGO, and promoting the family in United Nations documents.
