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Civil Rights Litigation Seminar
Class Term:
Spring Term 2016-2017
Catalog Number:
5648
Class Number:
27356
Class Schedule:
Wednesday
3:30 pm
5:20 pm
Room:
LAW G46
Seminar
Credits:
3 (2 Contact, 0 Field)
Graduation Requirements:
Upper-Level Writing
"W" Writing
Priority:
Seminar - 3rd Year Priority
Full Year Course:
No
Category:
Standard Courses
Additional Information
A seminar paper which will satisfy the Upper-Level Writing Requirement will comprise the major course work, but brief, two-page written reactions to each week’s required readings will also be expected. Some weeks, but not all, students will have to skim and master several hundred pages worth of historical narrative--e.g. Mark Tushnet’s Making Civil Rights Law and Richard Kluger’s Simple Justice--in addition to case opinions.
Grading Details
The seminar paper will constitute two-thirds of the semester grade, with the weekly essays and class participation counting for one-third.
Description
This seminar will be a historical consideration of civil rights litigation strategies both before and after Brown v. Board of Education (1954). We will begin by surveying both the efforts that led to Brown and the professional debates about Brown’s meaning and limitations. We will then shift to a related topic whose own litigation history, initially based upon the Brown model, shows how attorney strategies can go awry: the mid and late 1960s attempt to create federal constitutional guarantees for welfare rights. We will then return to a focus on Brown’s legacy in both the South and the North. We will conclude by examining the limitations--limitations of litigation, limitations of doctrine, and limitations of statutory enactments--that these dual legal histories of race and poverty appear to highlight. Our consistent focus will be on (1) what this history teaches us about attorneys’ litigation strategies and (2) what overarching limits there may be on attaining fundamental change through the litigation process.