711 - 720 of 873 results for: LAW

This reading group of five evening meetings over the quarter will explore Native peoples' encounters with U.S. law as recounted in novels, documentaries, essays, and other material, emphasizing indigenous perspectives and voices. The class is intended as a complement to LAW7030: Federal Indian Law; students enrolled in that course will receive priority in admission, but all students are welcome, space permitting. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Class Participation. CONSENT APPLICATION: To apply for this course, students must complete and submit a Consent Application Form available on the SLS website (Click Courses at the bottom of the homepage and then click Consent of Instructor Forms). See Consent Application Form for instructions and submission deadline.

This course will familiarize students with major, and/or emerging legal and constitutional issues concerning the U.S. Senate. In so doing, it will examine: 1) the Senate's nature as a complex legal institution, and 2) the issue of the Senate's legitimacy in the context of the current and largely unprecedented criticism of the Senate from all parts of the political spectrum. This first portion of the course will consider institutional-legitimacy issues facing the Senate, including the appointment of senators to fill vacancies as well as disputes concerning Senate rules and procedures such as the filibuster and holds. The second part of the course will explore how the Senate interfaces with the Constitution and the Supreme Court. It will examine how senators should regard the issue of constitutionality in voting on legislation, be it campaign-finance reform, internet decency, or health care. This part of the course will also consider how senators should approach proposed constitutional amendments. The final portion of the course will review the wide range of issues that have emerged in recent years regarding the constitutional relationship between the Senate and the Executive Branch, including the increasingly acrimonious issue of the standard to apply to executive appointments under the advice and consent power. Particular emphasis on this part of the course will be given to issues that have gained greater prominence since 9/11, including the relationship between enacted, constitutional legislation and the presidential assertion of Article II powers, as well as the Senate's abdication of its Article I war-declaration power. After the term begins, students accepted into the course can transfer, with consent of the instructor, from section (01) into section (02), which meets the R requirement. Elements used in grading: Class participation, attendance; and final exam or final research paper.

This is a seminar for students with some background and interest in immigration and administrative law based on prior coursework, clinic enrollment, academic study, or other experience who want to engage in an examination of the administrative process for pursuing reform. The course will examine some of the current contested immigration policy changes and consider the mechanisms for achieving positive reform in light of administrative law and practice. The goal is to identify strategies and mechanisms for future reform that would further the protections of non-citizens during a period of global hostility to migrants. One significant part of the course will be contributing to a project that tracks and catalogues all the immigration policy changes of the Trump administration. Students will also develop proposals for future non-legislative reform through administrative action. The seminar will examine the federal administrative process from a theoretical, doctrinal, and practical perspective based on selected readings, guest speakers, and the instructor's experience as senior immigration policy advisor in the Obama administration at the Department of Homeland Security and as founder and former director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project. Requirements: Some prior exposure to immigration law or practice in a work, clinical, professional, academic, or other setting. Elements used in grading: Grades will be based on class attendance, class participation, and either writing assignments (Section 01) or, with the instructor's permission, an independent research paper (Section 02). A very limited number of students may be permitted to write the long research paper for R credit but only with the prior specific approval of the instructor. Students accepted into the course may be eligible to transfer from section (01) into section (02), which meets the R requirement, with consent of the instructor. CONSENT APPLICATION: To apply for this course, students must complete and submit a Consent Application Form available on the SLS website (Click Courses at the bottom of the homepage and then click Consent of Instructor Forms). See Consent Application Form for instructions and submission deadline.

This seminar explores the legal and historical dimensions of the American constitutional amendment process as well as its current and potential role in our political system and public debate. The principal focus will be on Article V of the Constiution but we will also briefly examine the way in which the Constitution is said by some to be "amendable" (and to have already been "amended") through alternate means apart from Article V. The seminar will enable students both critically to evaluate the myriad aspects of constitutional amendments and conventions using proper source material and to develop their own proposals for potential amendments. The first part of the course will first explore the origins of Article V, including background on the comparative amendability of other written constitutions, the adoption of the Bill of Rights, and the apparent unamendability of the provision in Article V requiring equal representation of the states in the Senate. We will then review the history of efforts--both successful and unsuccessful--to amend the Constitution, such as the early corrective amendments to the post-Civil War Reconstruction amendments, the Progressive Era amendments (e.g., the switch to the direct election of Senators), and the modern voting-related amendments. This section will also consider views about when and how it is proper or "appropriate" to amend the Constitution, the standard that members of Congress should employ in voting on proposed amendments, and the history of calls for constitutional conventions to amend the Constitution. The second part of the course will explore the current possibility of a constitutional convention or conventions being called independently of Congressional initiative including the question of whether the scope of such a convention could be limited. We will then examine the relatively recent and current proposals and advocacy for and against constitutional amendments across the political spectrum. For this portion of the course, we will particularly consider the balanced budget amendment, the state veto amendment, the victims' rights amendment, and the elimination of the direct election of Senators, from the conservative side of that spectrum. We will then particularly highlight the movement to overturn Citizens United by amendment, the elimination of the electoral college amendment, the proposal to overturn Heller (right to bear arms) by amendment, and the current effort to revive and ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, all mostly associated with the progressive or liberal side of the spectrum. For the final seminar, students will be asked to give in class their opinion of Article V and whether it is too easy or difficult (or just right) in terms of allowing amendments. Each student will also be asked briefly to propose and defend an amendment that that student believes should be added to the Constitution. After the term begins, students accepted into the course can transfer, with consent of the instructor, from section (01) into section (02), which meets the R requirement. Elements used in grading: class attendance, participation, class presentations, and final paper.

This course will examine the legal regulation of the parent-child relationship. The law used to be much simpler than it is today. The law treated marriage as the near exclusive setting for the rearing of children, defining the woman who gave birth to the child was the mother, and the man to whom she was married as the father. In recent decades, that simple legal principle has collapsed under the weight of social and technological change. The central social change is the reconfiguration of marriage and the multiplicity of settings in which children are raised. The advent of same sex marriage and same sex couples undermine longstanding assumptions about the legal definition of parent. And the fact that 4 in every 10 children are born to unmarried couples, and that nearly half of all married couples will divorce (often with either or both partners remarrying) introduce a dizzying array of possible family configurations. Advances in genetic testing complicate matters further, by allowing biological parents to be identified with near certainty. Thus, there is less reason to treat a woman's husband as her child's father. Many couples use reproductive technologies involving the donation of sperm, the donation of eggs or even the use of a surrogate mother to gestate the child. The use of such technologies can result in many adults having some form of tie to the child, a situation that has prompted some jurisdictions to recognize the possibilities of more than 2 parents! In sum, nonmarital, nonbiological, and same-sex parenting have become central, rather than peripheral features of the familial landscape. These changes highlight provocative and fundamental inquiries: What, exactly, does, and should, make one a parent in the view of the law? And how should the state allocate rights and responsibilities, related to custody, financial support and visitation, as families fracture and reconfigure? Elements used in grading: Participation, Exam.

This course will cover contemporary issues in regulation of the Internet. Topics will include disinformation, polarization, privacy, competition, transparency, advertising, security, and algorithmic ranking. Guest speakers from academia, NGOs, and industry will present on these topics in each class session, followed by a discussion. Students will be responsible for one-page papers each week on the readings and a research paper to be turned in at the fall paper deadline. This class is crosslisted in the university and undergraduates are eligible to take it. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Written Assignments, Final Paper. Cross-listed with Communication ( COMM 153B/253B) and International Policy ( INTLPOL 323).

The Race and Law Workshop will meet once each week. The broad theme of the workshop is to probe the relation of law and justice with respect to race and inequality. Most weeks will feature a speaker who will present a draft of a paper. Students will have read the paper, and often, additional materials related to the subject matter of the paper, and will write responses to the paper, which will be shared with the speaker before the session. The session will consist of discussion of the speaker's paper and the students' responses. The aim of the workshop is to expose students to current scholarship about race and law, to improve the speaker's paper, and to deepen student's thinking about the relationship between law and racial justice (and injustice). Elements used in grading: Written Papers.

Introduction to the constitutional protections for freedom of speech, press, and expressive association. All the major Supreme Court cases dealing with issues such as incitement, libel, hate speech, obscenity, commercial speech, and campaign finance. There are no prerequisites, but a basic understanding of American government would be useful. This course is crosslisted in the university and undergraduates are eligible to take it. Elements used in grading: Law students will be evaluated based on class participation and a final exam. Non-law students will be evaluated on class participation, a midterm and final exam, and nonlaw students will participate in a moot court on a hypothetical case. Non-law students will also have an additional one hour discussion section each week led by a teaching assistant. Cross-listed with Communication ( COMM 151, COMM 251), Ethics in Society ( ETHICSOC 151), and Political Science ( POLISCI 125P).

This course examines legal issues involved in the formulation and implementation of U.S. policy and actions with respect to the use of armed force, with emphasis on recent and current conflict situations. It will explore these issues from the point of view of international legal norms and obligations, U.S. law and practice, and the policies and actions of recent U.S. Administrations. Among the areas that will be explored are the following: (1) law and practice relating to the resort to armed force; (2) limits on means and methods of warfare; (3) the treatment of detainees; (4) the treatment of the civilian population; and (5) the punishment of international crimes. Elements used in grading. Grades will be based on a paper exploring these issues in the context of a specific current conflict or situation (75%), and class participation (25%).