About

Sarah E. Burns is a Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, where she has been a faculty member since 1990. Her areas of research include advocacy for underrepresented groups, the application of social psychology in law and policy, civil rights law, innovations in legal education, and public policy. She supervised the Reproductive Justice Clinic, which represents clients across the United States in litigation and policy projects centered on reproductive decision making. Burns was also the executive director of Washington Square Legal Services, overseeing most NYU Clinical Law Programs, and co-founded and managed the Mediation Clinic and the Litigation, Organizing & Systemic Change Clinic, conducted in partnership with Make the Road NY and the Center for Popular Democracy. Her work combines law with social science to develop effective solutions for institutional and community problems. Burns specializes in experiential learning pedagogy, developing simulation and clinical courses in litigation, negotiation, mediation, policy advocacy, and systemic change. Her early legal practice included working as a litigating attorney at Covington & Burling in Washington, DC, where she represented industry associations in federal regulatory matters, gaining experience in interest-based and advocacy legal practice. She later engaged in public interest civil rights litigation, legislative, and policy advocacy work nationwide, advising on cases and initiatives in federal and state courts. Burns holds a JD from Yale Law School, where she edited the Yale Law Journal, and has earned master's degrees from Stanford University in sociology and the University of Oklahoma in human relations.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Law
• Criminology

Selected publications

• A Review and Look Ahead at Criminalizing Pregnancy in the Name of State Interest in Fetal Life

  SMU Law Review · 2023 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Law

  Across the United States, and especially in communities that are highly policed and in places hostile to abortion, pregnant people are dying, suffering, being separated from their children and families, and going to jail and prison in purported service of the state interest in fetal life recognized in Roe v. Wade and expanded in Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania v. Casey. This Article focuses on two common practices that cause these harms: criminalizing pregnant people and denying them medical decision-making authority. While these practices are not new, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is accelerating them. With abortion returned to the states without a U.S. constitutional floor, the state interest in fetal life can go largely unchecked with respect to all pregnant people, not just those who need abortions. In this Article, we look back at several cases from the 1990s and early 2000s involving denials of medical decision-making authority and criminalization of pregnant people for substance use during pregnancy. We also discuss contemporary instances of these phenomenon, focusing on Alabama’s Child Chemical Endangerment Act and 1997 Wisconsin Act 292, both of which are currently and fervently used to punish pregnant people for actual or suspected substance use and which fail entirely to advance fetal or parental well-being. Based on our survey of these past and present cases, we reflect on several legal arguments and strategies to demand and restore full personhood for pregnant people. We link pregnancy criminalization to legally cognizable animus, observing that hallmark features of such animus abound when substance use during pregnancy is criminalized. We link environmental injustice to pregnancy criminalization, observing that it is irrational to punish and jail people for “polluting” the micro-environment of the womb in service of an interest in fetal life when all people—particularly the most policed—are perniciously, macro-environmentally exposed to toxins that impact reproduction and pregnancy. We reiterate that informed consent to medical treatment is the bedrock guarantee of healthcare and bodily autonomy—and pregnancy demands rather than diminishes this guarantee—and that drug tests without consent that lead to law enforcement consequences violate both this and the Fourth Amendment. We also very briefly emphasize that mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse or neglect based on a positive drug test fails to protect anyone and that mandatory reporters can challenge this obligation where it frustrates core professional duties. Together, all of these threads intersect to show that criminalizing pregnancy and denying pregnant people medical decision-making authority is about the social control and exclusion that punishment accomplishes. The impulse to control and exclude surely varies intersectionally, corresponding to the expectations and stereotypes about parenting applicable to the punished person or community. But in the end, in every case, no fetal life, no parental life, no family life, and no constitutional right or medical objective is protected or furthered when pregnancy is criminalized and pregnant people are denied medical decision-making authority.

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Gordon Hanson

  3 shared

• John Whitley

  2 shared

• Bryan W. Roberts

  London School of Economics and Political Science

  2 shared

• Samuel Bazzi

  2 shared

• Sarah S. Wheeler

  Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Schefelman Distinguished Lecturer, University of Washington…
• Dyson Distinguished Lecturer, Pace University School of Law…

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