Class of 2007-08 Assistant Professor University of Florida Levin College of Law PO Box 117621 Gainesville, FL 32611-7621 Email: rebouche@law.ufl.edu

Profile:

Rachel clerked with South African Constitutional Court Justice Kate O’Regan and worked for Ibis Reproductive Health.  At Harvard Law, she was Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Journal of Law & Gender and an editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal.  She created a clinical program on women’s rights and worked in Kenya on the African Charter’s Protocol on Women’s Rights.  Rachel earned an LL.M. in International Human Rights Law at Queen’s University in Belfast.  With the Human Rights Centre, she compared how lawyers and judges adapted to changes in human rights and civil rights law in various countries.  She also worked at the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission drafting a Bill of Rights.  Rachel received her B.A. from Trinity where she was student body president, co-founded the first women’s interest group, and began a program for student volunteers at a women’s shelter.  She received the Harry S. Truman Scholarship for Public Interest Graduate Study, Harvard Alumni Fellowship for Women’s Rights Work, and Dean’s Award for Community Leadership.

Rachel was a Fellow with the National Women’s Law Center, working in the family economic security section and on judicial nominations.  She played an instrumental role in the Center’s Care Tax Credit Project, researching and summarizing proposed legislation related to the issue and analyzing the impact of different state tax credit programs.  As part of her research, she examined how tax credits aimed at improving quality child care have fared in various states to date, and interacted with state advocates across the country to find out how the credits work in practice.  Armed with the insight provided by her findings, Rachel helped draft language for a credit tied to improvements in child care and also wrote a memorandum examining how proposed regulations would affect the federal Care Tax Credit.  Rachel worked on a project addressing the unionization of home-based child care workers.  For example, she updated and revised a report that describes the approaches taken in states that have authorized union contracts with home-based child care providers.  Rachel also undertook a lead role in the Center’s involvement with monitoring nominations to the federal bench and other appointed positions.  She investigated the nominees’ opinions, briefs, articles, memoranda and other records, including on candidates such as Attorney General Michael Mukasey.  Based on her findings, she advised the Center’s Board of Directors on the position that the Center should take, and coordinated outreach with other groups who monitor the nominees and their records on social justice issues.  In addition, she attended the Congressional hearings at which the nominees testified.  As another responsibility, Rachel updatedWomenstake, the blog of the National Women’s Law Center, commenting on recent court cases that affect women’s rights. For example, she covered the Mendelsohn decision concerning employment discrimination that she and the other WLPPFP fellows observed at the Supreme Court earlier this year.  Moreover, in addition to her fellowship duties, Rachel taught a comparative law course at the Washington College of Law, incorporating materials on governance, feminism, family law, and international women’s rights.

Rachel presiously worked as an Associate Director of the Adolescent Health Program at the National Partnership for Women and Families.  She participated in a panel discussion of Young Women's Access to Reproductive Health at the Cardozo Journal of Law & Gender's 2009 Symposium and spoke at the University of Baltimore School of Law's Center on Applied Feminism’s 3rd Annual Feminist Legal Theory Conference. She also spoke at the Law Students for Reproductive Justice Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference at George Washington University School of Law in March 2010.

In the fall of 2010, Rachel joined the faculty of the University of Florida Levin College of Law, where she is teaching family law courses.