Description: Current Civil Rights Controversies in Federal Court: Understanding and Tracking Legal Change. In his second term, President Trump has sponsored an avalanche of legal change in the federal government. Many challenges to this change have been filed in federal courts across the country. And the Trump Administration is affirmatively seeking court ratification of its initiatives, trying to leverage court intervention in its favor, as well as reversing course and focus in preexisting civil rights lawsuits involving the federal government. Many of these cases address civil rights, broadly construed: they touch on immigration rights, “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” gender identity, labor rights of employees, environmental justice, and other topics. Other lawsuits by and against the administration address the basic distribution of powers between the three branches of government. Students in this class will learn about these controversies as they play out, studying both substance, procedure, and dynamics of the interaction between executive actions and the judicial fora in which they are contested. The class will also cover how to read, understand, and summarize legal dockets and court filings for publication. In addition to learning about current civil rights lawsuits, class members will help inform the public about them, contributing to the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse (https://clearinghouse.net). Students will monitor ongoing litigation and will bring the cases into and up-to-date in the Clearinghouse, a website used by many thousands of people each week that allows the public to search for and read about lawsuits and access the underlying filings. Demand for information about these cases is widespread, and the Clearinghouse is a key national resource. Every student will be responsible for at least 5 hours per week of outside-of-class work contributing to the shared class projects. There will be no exam. This class is open to students whether or not they have previously worked on the Clearinghouse. There will be a mandatory training session for all class members to learn to use/add to the Clearinghouse on a weekend day early in the semester, probably August 29 or 30 from 10-3 (confirmation of training day TBA as soon as possible). Prior enrollment in Law 992: Research Projects - Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse is not required, nor does prior participation exclude students from enrollment eligibility.