CENTER FOR LEGAL STUDIES

This course introduces students to the social, political, legal, and cultural history of immigration in the United States. In addition to exploring the history of southern and eastern European immigrants, it uses a comparative framework to integrate Latin American and Asian migrants into our understanding of immigration since the late nineteenth century. The course is an exploration of major themes in immigration history rather than a comprehensive examination. Issues students will consider include immigration law, acculturation, community, racial formation, victimization vs. agency, the transnational and international context of immigration, and competing notions of citizenship, among others.

Constitutional Law II: Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

This course examines how the United States government has defined, expanded, and constricted the rights and liberties of U.S. citizens (and non-citizens) dating from the Founding era with a heavy emphasis on the Progressive Era to today. While we will examine how the U.S. Supreme Court has defined these rights and liberties, we will not confine ourselves to reading only Supreme Court opinions. We will also be interested in how other political actors (e.g., Congress, the executive branch, the states, and the mass public) have argued about, imagined, and effectuated limits on government power.

Crucially, this is not a constitutional law class or a “preview” of what a constitutional law class in a law school might be like. Instead, we will be focused on thinking about civil rights and liberties from a political and developmental perspective. To give just one example, the meaning and scope of First Amendment’s “free speech” clause has dramatically changed over time, especially within the past 100 years. In order to understand how and why our rights and liberties have been politically constructed and expanded (or truncated) we will situate the debates about our rights and liberties within the political, social, and intellectual environments in which they occur(ed). Thus, the material covered is organized chronologically rather than thematically.

Passed by Congress in 1866 and ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment revolutionized citizenship and equal rights in the United States. The amendment continues to shape how Americans understand hot-button issues like affirmative action, birthright citizenship, and same-sex marriage. This class explores the history and impact of the amendment - from its origins in the abolitionist movement and the Civil War and Reconstruction to major Supreme Court cases of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. The quarter concludes with an exploration of the possibilities but also the limitations of rights claims in the present.

Attorneys are central to American life and popular culture, but the profession is undergoing dramatic change. For years, the supply of lawyers has vastly outstripped the demand for legal jobs and the resulting lawyer bubble has grown. Meanwhile, those who land law jobs have different challenges: recent surveys report many attorneys' growing disenchantment with their work and dissatisfaction with their lives. This seminar will examine the profession's multidimensional crisis. What changes occur in attorneys, both individually and systemically, emerging from law schools and finding their roles in the legal realm? Why is working within the most lucrative big firms now regarded by many as the pinnacle of private practice? What other options are available? It will explore life after law school, examining the disparate places law graduates might find themselves. The course invites prospective law students to consider their potential places, as individual lawyers, in what remains a noble profession. It also invites those students in other undergraduate disciplines who may be curious about trajectories open to them in this post-graduate academic and, ultimately, career field.