Co-Founder and Executive Director
Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice
University of California, Berkeley
School of Law
452 Law Building
Berkeley, CA 94720-7200
Tel: 510-642-8567
Fax: 510-643-7095
Email Address: j.adams@berkeley.edu
Jill E. Adams, J.D., is the co-founder and first executive director of the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at Berkeley Law (CRRJ), which propels law and policy solutions by bridging the academic-advocate divide. Through the work of the Center, Adams seeks to realize reproductive rights and advance the reproductive justice agenda by bolstering law and policy advocacy efforts, furthering scholarship, and influencing legal and social science discourse. CRRJ’s strategic initiatives focus on improving limited-income people’s reproductive experiences through expanded access to care, legal protections, and public benefits.
Adams is the founding chief strategist of the SIA Legal Team, which aims to ensure that people in the U.S. can experience non-clinical abortions with dignity and without the threat of arrest. She currently serves as president of the California Coalition for Reproductive Freedom, board member of Cambridge Reproductive Health Consultants, and steering committee member of the Coalition to Expand Access to Mifepristone. She is active on the advisory boards of Feminist Judgments Series: Rewritten Reproductive Justice (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), Reproductive Justice Book Series (University of California Press, ongoing), If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice, Nursing Students for Sexual and Reproductive Health, and other organizations.
Adams teaches Topics in Reproductive Justice (Berkeley Law, Spring 2018) and is executive editor of Cases on Reproductive Rights and Justice (Foundation Press, 2015), the first legal textbook on the subject. She co-authored “A Travesty of Justice: Revisiting Harris v. McRae”(William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law, 2014) and of “And Damned if they Don’t: Prototype Theories to End Punitive Policies Against Pregnant People Living in Poverty ” (Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law, 2017). In 2016 she was selected for the inaugural cohort of the Rockwood Fellowship for Leaders in Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice. The year before, Adams was featured as one of 37 Soldiers of Social Change in San Francisco Magazine’s annual power issue. She is the youngest person to have received the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Fellowship for nonprofit leadership in the award’s 25-year history. She is licensed by the State Bar of California.
Education:
J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law
B.J., University of Missouri, Columbia, School of Journalism