In the 1970s, the Section began to provide leadership within the ABA to address emerging concerns of the new decade, including a panoply of civil and human rights issues facing persons of color, women, lesbians and gay men, persons with disabilities, and the poor, as well as civil liberties issues confronting the criminally accused.

At the same time, the Section also began to address international human rights issues. In fact, it was a 1970 human rights resolution supporting ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide that was the first of many Section recommendations to generate heated debate on the floor of the ABA House of Delegates. Supporters saw the resolution as a means of carrying out the ABA's commitment to the rule of law. Opponents thought the Convention could jeopardize the lives of American soldiers abroad who might find themselves subject to a foreign government's interpretation of what constitutes "genocide" under the treaty. Initially, the opponents prevailed; the resolution was defeated the first time it was brought to a vote. In 1976, however, the Section of International Law and Practice, with IRR Section support, successfully sponsored a resolution calling for the Convention's ratification.

Similarly, the Section's 1970 resolution supporting the enactment of income supplement and food stamp programs to increase efforts to eliminate hunger and malnutrition sparked one of many discussions on the role of the ABA in addressing what some characterize as "social and political" issues. The food stamp resolution was portrayed by opponents as a social and political commentary on American society that made it an inappropriate matter for ABA policy. Other House delegates, recognizing the connection between hunger and poverty and violence versus order in society, supported the proposal and the ABA's involvement in the issue. The House eventually adopted a revised resolution that did not address the issue of implementing specific programs, but the debate was an early illustration of the kind of discussion that the Section's work and charge has provoked since its inception concerning the ABA's role in addressing broader questions of social justice.

In fact, during the 1970s, the Section cemented its growing reputation as the "conscience" of the ABA, in part as a result of several projects that the Section initiated to evaluate the opportunities in the legal profession available to African American lawyers and law students. The Section had concluded that if lawyers were to advocate credibly and successfully for equal protection under the law for society as a whole, the ABA and other bar associations would have to take steps themselves to ensure equality within their own profession. The Section's Committee on Civil Rights sought to determine the extent of discrimination in law schools and in national, state, and local bar associations by developing several surveys regarding law school enrollment levels of African American students; discrimination in bar associations; and the degree of non-participation of African American lawyers in bar association activities. The Section also worked with the National Bar Association to help provide African American lawyers with opportunities in the legal profession by co-sponsoring a conference on equal opportunities in employment. This early Section activity laid the groundwork for later ABA-wide efforts to address equal opportunity for people of color and diversity within the legal profession, particularly after the establishment of the ABA Commission on Opportunities for Minorities in the Profession in 1987.