The Law School has launched the nation’s only comprehensive online database of human trafficking cases, and hosted a major academic symposium on the phenomenon of modern-day slavery.

The confluence of the two events last week reinforces one of the Law School’s traditional strengths: the marriage of the theoretical and the practical. While scholars and policymakers studied the problem and planned future strategies at the symposium, the database now is online and ready to help journalists, academics, lawmakers and law enforcement agencies track U.S. cases and spread information about what Bridgette Carr, director of the Law School’s Human Trafficking Clinic, calls the world’s second-largest industry: slavery.

The database provides immediate access to the details of more than 150 human trafficking cases gathered so far by the Human Trafficking Law Project. The searchable listings contain the stories of children tricked into leaving their homes in West Africa, then forced to work without pay in American hair-braiding shops; girls and young women prostituted on American streets; and workers who toiled against their will on American farms.

“The University of Michigan’s human trafficking database is a critical advance in the fight against modern slavery,” says Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, who leads the State Department’s efforts against human trafficking and who delivered the keynote speech at the symposium. “Whether a practitioner or a policy maker, an advocate or academic — the work of all modern abolitionists will benefit from this compendium.”

Each database entry is carefully screened and researched by law students, recent law graduates and other volunteers who flesh out the initial results of LexisNexis searches. The researchers then make entries into such individually searchable fields as name, state and category of offense. To ensure reliable data, each entry is reviewed by a program manager before it becomes visible to the public.

“The database was a huge undertaking for the clinic, and we’re so grateful for the support of the Law School and the hard work of the students and graduates who brought the project to fruition,” Carr says. “Its launch is a major step toward the clinic’s goal of not just representing individual victims, but also being a resource for other educators and practitioners involved in the fight against human trafficking.”

Both the symposium, organized by the Michigan Journal of International Law, and the database are natural outgrowths of Michigan Law’s leadership in combating slavery. In 2009 the school established, under Carr’s guidance, the nation’s first clinical law program dedicated solely to fighting human trafficking. Carr, who graduated from Michigan Law in 2002, for several years has closely worked with CdeBaca, ambassador-at-large in the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and a 1993 Michigan Law graduate.