Civil Rights in Federal Courts: 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. A large portion of the resulting cases address civil rights, broadly construed: they touch on immigration rights, “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” gender identity, labor rights of employees and other topics. Others 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 judicial fora in which they are contested.
The class will also cover how to read, understand, and summarize court filings for publication. In addition to learning about legal change, class members will help inform the public about it, contributing to the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse (https://clearinghouse.net). Students will monitor various compilations to find when litigation is filed, and will bring the cases into 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 very widespread; the Clearinghouse is a key national resource. Every student will be responsible for at least 7 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 who have previously worked on the Clearinghouse (and in fact, you’re encouraged to enroll). 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, [Date TBA, but probably Sept. 6 or 7] from 10-3.
Prior enrollment in Law 992: Research Projects - Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse is not required, nor does prior participation exclude students from enrollment eligibility.