The second quarter will combine additional modules in substantive law and research methods with the initiation of student research projects. The first four weeks will continue with two meetings a week. The last five weeks class will meet once a week as a group led by the faculty and once a week in tutorials of five students each with Graduate Teaching Fellows. The purpose of the tutorials is to track the development of student thesis projects.

Weeks One to Five - Module on the Death Penalty. Presentations by Dwight Conquergood (Communication Studies), Leigh Bienen (Law), Larry Marshall (Law), Paul Robinson (Law), and Janice Nadler (Law and Psychology). Readings: Sarat, When the State Kills; Baldus, Woodward, and Pulaski, Equal Justice and the Death Penalty; Zimring and Hawkins, Capital Punishment and the American Agenda; selected death penalty cases: Furman, Gregg, McCleskey, Payne. Additional session taught by Legal Communications staff on legal analysis: the parts of a case, reasoning by analogy, etc. employing the death penalty material. Assignment: 10 page paper using some combination of legal and disciplinary material.

Weeks Six to Nine - Module on Affirmative Action in Higher Education. Combine background reading from proponents and opponents of affirmative education, selected cases concerning affirmative action in college and law school admissions, and empirical materials relating to the cases (including material on test bias, stereotype threat, career effects of affirmative action, etc.).
Readings: Bowen and Bok, Shape of the River; Phillips and Jencks, Black-White Test Score Gap, Steele and Aronson, "Stereotype Threat;" Kidder, "Does the LSAT Mirror or Magnify Racial and Ethnic Differences in Educational Achievement;" cases on affirmative action: Bakke, Hopwood, the two University of Michigan cases (Grutter and Gratz). Exercise: Students will write a one-page reaction to each week's reading and bring it to class.

Thesis writing benchmarks: Students will turn in two drafts of their research plan and the results of their literature search by the end of the quarter in consultation with their tutorial instructors. They will receive a "k" grade for the quarter. Faculty and Graduate Fellows will provide comments on the plan and literature review.