51 - 60 of 873 results for: LAW

Decades of cuts to local government have wreaked havoc on communities left behind by the modern economy. Some of these discarded places are rural, others are urban. Some are conservative, some are progressive. Some are the most diverse communities in America, others are segregated. All are routinely trashed by outsiders for their poverty and their politics. Mostly, their governments are just broke. When a high-poverty city or county has run out of services to cut, properties to sell, bills to defer, and risky loans to take, what should its elected leaders do to ameliorate the harms of concentrated poverty? In this discussion group, students will engage readings, documentaries, and visual media about these topics. Each session, they will read one place-based chapter from Professor Anderson's forthcoming book, The Fight to Save the Town, which focuses on local networks of leaders and residents who are facing these challenges. Students will leave the course with a richer sense of the lived experience of poverty and its governance, as well as a broader picture of "law" that includes local administrative proceedings, municipal codes, civil and criminal law enforcement practices, elected public leadership, state and local taxation, and local budgets. Elements used in grading: Full attendance, reading of assigned materials, and active participation. The seminar will meet four times during the Fall quarter. Class meets 4:15-6:15pm, September 15, September 29, October 20, November 3.

What is conflict? When is it constructive or destructive? How is it prevented, managed and resolved? As lawyers, we commit to representing clients in an array of formal and informal processes, over discrete violations of law as well as long-ranging breaches of social norms, in local, state and international jurisdictions, in-person and on-line. In this seminar, we will examine different kinds of conflict and different kinds of processes, who designs those processes and who selects the specific process to use in a given instance. Examples include a corporate general counsel's management of consumer disputes; process options for Stanford students facing disputes with the University, other students, faculty, or staff; initiatives to address racial inequity and injustice through San Francisco's African American Reparations Advisory Committee of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission; and the role of technology as a source of disputes as well as means to facilitate resolution. Grading will be based on attendance, participation, and short comment papers on four case/background readings. Class meets 4:30 PM-6:30 PM on Sept. 27, Oct. 10, Oct. 17, Oct. 24.

In 2022, the Supreme Court will hear a blockbuster case, Brackeen v. Haaland, that raises numerous constitutional questions that go to the very heart of federal Indian Law. Are American Indians a race, a political group, or both? How much power does Congress have over the States where the State is involved in the lives of American Indian people? Etc. The case is a challenge to a federal law, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), that was passed in response to federal and state government laws and policies which led to the forced removal of countless Indian children from their families. Much like the laws that led to ICWA, Brackeen, is about more than Indian children, though Indian children are caught in the crossfire of this fight. This discussion seminar focuses on these legal questions of state power and sovereignty and how they ended up being so intertwined with child welfare, beginning with the history leading up to ICWA, moving forward through development of contemporary tribal governments and ending with this current case. Materials will be posted on canvas. Class meets 5:00 PM-7:00 PM on Sept. 29, Oct. 13, Oct. 27, Nov. 10.

This seminar explores the concept of equality of educational opportunity, how law and policy have structured inequality in schools, and the efforts to dismantle inequality and promote equal educational opportunity. We will first consider the concept of equality of educational opportunity. What does it mean to provide equal opportunity and how should educational resources be distributed in a just and fair manner? With that framing, we will consider three specific areas of educational inequality and how law and policy have both structured and can remedy those inequalities. First, we'll explore racial inequality from segregation to tracking to school discipline practices. Beyond historical de jure segregation, how do contemporary school policies structure racial inequality and how can those structures be dismantled? Second, we will consider educational finance policies and the litigation campaigns that have aimed to ensure that our schools are adequately funded and educational resources are distributed equitably. We'll ask the questions of when and how does money matter and what does it mean to provide an adequate education? Finally, we will wade into the ideologically charged, conceptually complex, and empirically murky area of school choice. Can school choice policies such as charter schools, educational vouchers, and inter-district choice promote equity or are they simply doomed to exacerbate our existing inequalities? Class meets 5:30 PM-7:30 PM on Sept. 21, Oct. 12, Oct. 26, Nov. 9.

Litigation is supposed to be a search for truth, and this search is especially important in criminal law, where outcomes involve the maximum power of the state against the individual, and the consequences of error seem intolerable. But how does criminal law determine the "truth"? Does criminal adjudication represent an epistemological system -- a system for producing knowledge? Or is it something else entirely? This set of issues necessarily implicates a wide variety of legal doctrines that you will be exploring throughout your legal education, but in this short course we will sample provocative excerpts from case law, jurisprudence, social science, and history to address several questions. First, what are the procedural standards of proof that determine the kind of truth criminal justice demands? How much more important is it to avoid wrongful conviction of innocent persons than to convict the guilty? Can statistical evidence alone ever be enough to establish guilt? And how do legal "presumptions" affect our determinations of the "facts" of a case? Second, does the criminal justice system address the many ways that witnesses, even when confident and morally honest, get the truth wrong? For example, eyewitness identifications are highly persuasive evidence -- but DNA exonerations and social science research reveal they are frequently unreliable and incorrect. How does/should the system mitigate this problem? Why does the public view seem to view "direct evidence" as more persuasive than "merely" circumstantial evidence? What does social science research tell us about the phenomenon of people falsely confessing to crimes? How confident are we in the forensic "science" testimony that expert witnesses may offer? Third, in what way is the "truth" as determined by our criminal justice system shaped and sculpted by the government? Does the system do anything to mitigate the natural effects of "tunnel vision" -- or does it instead exacerbate it by aiming for satisfying narrative coherence at the risk of falsehood? Does the Miranda rule obviate coerced confessions? Why are police officers allowed to lie to suspects? Should prosecutors be allowed to offer a person leniency in exchange for testimony against others? Finally, how good are American juries at truth-finding, and does our system have any controls in place for correcting factual error? Can jurors accurately detect deception in witnesses? What types of biases might afflict honest jurors and how can the law deal with them? Does our system have adequate ways of correcting factual errors after an adjudication? How should that goal be balanced with an interest in finality and other values? Class meets 6:00 PM-8:00 PM on Sept. 28, Oct. 12, Oct. 26, Nov. 9.

Our rapidly changing climate demands that we act quickly and decisively to decarbonize the economy, protect remaining functional ecosystems, and promote human health and well-being. Faced with both exigency and complexity, how do we create a "just transition" that does not merely replicate -- or worse yet, exacerbate -- the inequities of the past? In this discussion seminar, we will examine a few examples of the tensions, challenges, and opportunities that society faces as it navigates the path forward to a more sustainable future. Elements used in grading: Full attendance, reading of assigned materials, and active participation.

In the early 2010s, the Bay Area spawned a movement of thinkers obsessed with cognitive biases and "Bayesian reasoning," a way of using statistics and probability to inform beliefs. This group--that later came to be known as "rationalists"--insists on subjecting all spheres of life to scientific scrutiny and probabilistic reasoning. Rationalist takes are often contrarian and challenge mainstream ways of thinking about topics that include everything from science and medicine to philosophy and politics to the rise of artificial intelligence. Rationalist writings in blogs and books can be controversial. For example, some rationalists have discussed the genetics of depression or intelligence. Since 2015, however, rationalism has become a brand in Silicon Valley and hugely influential among pundits and executives. Members of the rationalist movement also overlapped with the growing community of "effective altruism," an effort to remake charity donations by focusing on, and calculating, the actual impact of every dollar on human lives. And the movement is full of quirks and, well, weirdness: a fear of AI armaggedon, polyamory, and group living near Berkeley is common. Politically, rationalists are mostly center-left, but they range from "communist to anarcho-capitalist." What brings them together, however, is that they are careful thinkers, quantitatively-oriented, and contrarians. In this seminar we will explore what the Rationalist movement is all about--what and how they think. We will take both a critical but also inquisitive view. What is to be gained from rationalists? Can their way of thinking improve political debates? We will read several books, including James Scott's "Seeing like a State," Julia Galef's "Scout Mindset," Philip Tetlock's "Superforcasters," blog posts from a website called "Less Wrong," and a series of blog-posts by the psychiatrist-cum-polymath Scott Alexander on drug arrests, crime spikes, and medical regulations, among others. Class meets 5:30 PM-7:30 PM on Sept. 28, Oct. 12, Oct. 26, Nov. 9.

This seminar will look at the legal issues coming up in the context of the 2022 election. It will cover issues surrounding election administration and voting rights, as well as any other unexpected controversies leading up to and following the election. Class meets 6:30 PM-8:30 PM on Sept. 20, Oct. 4, Oct. 18, Nov. 1.

This seminar will explore how to accommodate efforts to promote inclusion and belonging for students with diverse identities and viewpoints and academic freedom and freedom of expression. We will test the hypothesis that it is possible to serve these important interests without compromising any of them. Our substantive goal is to contribute to the solution of actual contemporary problems in American universities. Our procedural goal is for the seminar to model productive critical discourse about difficult issues. Needless to say, the seminar will address controversial topics involving participants' identities and ideological beliefs, and calls for active listening, empathy, humility, and charity on everyone's part. We will begin by examining the purpose of the university, the differences between faculty members' academic freedom and students' rights to free expression, and the limits of both. With respect to academic freedom, we'll consider proceedings by the University of Pennsylvania Law School to discipline a faculty member for "intentional and incessant racist, sexist, xenophobic, and homophobic actions and statements." One of the major reasons for protecting students' free expression is to create an environment in which they can engage in the core educational practices of critical inquiry and discourse. Critical discourse requires that students feel free to express ideas without fear of being ostracized. We will ask how to create such an environment without infringing on faculty's academic freedom (e.g., by mandating trigger warnings) or students free expression (e.g., by mandating the Chatham House rule, which prohibits attributing statements made in class to particular students). We will then address a selection of other issues, all with a problem-solving attitude: How can universities support the inclusion and participation of socially marginalized students and students with views across ideological and political spectrums in ways that avoid institutional orthodoxy and encourage open discourse?; How can universities prevent and remedy harmful attacks on community members' identities and beliefs in ways that are consistent with academic freedom, free expression, privacy, and due process?; How, consistent with principles of academic freedom, can a university ascertain whether a candidate for promotion or for a faculty position will engage in behaviors that promote inclusion? The seminar will be held over four dinners at the home of Paul and Iris Brest on the Stanford campus. Meets 6:00 PM-8:00 PM on Oct. 4, Oct. 18, Nov. 1, and Nov. 15. Elements used in grading: Full attendance, reading of assigned materials, and active participation.