Child, Parent, and the State (3109) This course discusses the legal relationship between children, parents, and the state, specifically dealing with statutory and constitutional rights of children and families in the juvenile justice system, civil proceedings of abuse and neglect, and education. It further examines federal and state governments’ regulation of families and children in the context of various cultures, and explores the notions of parens patriae and strict scrutiny and whether there are situations in which the government extends its reach too far. This course will offer students an opportunity to review and discuss the notions of “children’s rights” and “best interests” from various perspectives. Grading: Letter graded Credits: 3 Offered: Irregularly Subject Areas: Child and Family Law, Constitutional Law and Civil Rights Civil Rights (3460) This course will cover various substantive areas of civil rights law, including discrimination in housing, education, public accommodations, employment, voting, and law enforcement. The course will also explore tactical and theoretical considerations that are important to civil rights lawyers. Grading: Letter graded Credits: 2 Offered: Irregularly Subject Areas: Constitutional Law and Civil Rights, Criminal Law, Employment Law Clinic: Economic Inclusion (4032) The Economic Inclusion Clinic is designed to give students experience in both transactional law and with some exposure to litigation as it pertains to preparation and evidence gathering for economic discrimination cases brought by impact litigation co-counsel. The EIC would focus various areas where there are disparities in access to opportunities, including but not limited to the following: · Financial Literacy Segment. This area would focus on the legal aspects of financial literacy. While I have found multiple organizations providing financial literacy covering what banks are looking for, I have yet to find materials that focus on the legal perspective, i.e., what banks are allowed to actually do and what many claim they are required by law to do. Students would provide financial literacy either in the form of one-on-one legal counsel, or community Know Your Rights workshops, in tandem with community-based partners who would organize workshops with grassroots partners that would recruiting the attendees and clients. Students would also draft model legislation. All deliverables would be combined and shared on the EIC’s website. Students would learn Dodd-Frank laws and regs, get client experience teaching legal workshops, and legislative experience drafting statutes and working with lobbyists and legislatures. · Mortgage Discrimination litigation. The DOJ recently announced a campaign to tackle racial discrimination in mortgage lending. The clinic could work in tandem with this campaign to counsel clients and assist in fact gathering. This would give the students experience both in litigation and transactional law. · Social Entrepreneurship counseling and support. This piece would focus on working with potential existing social enterprises in structuring deals, or those needing legal counsel who are interested in undergoing B-labs certification, state benefit corporation incorporation, or forming as another hybrid business org structures with a double bottom line. Essentially, it would provide the students transactional legal experience working for businesses or nonprofits with a double bottom line of being financially sustainable while addressing an important community-based issue. Grading: Letter Credits: 3 Offered: Subject Areas: Public Interest Law, Banking, Business and Commercial, Civil Litigation, Constitutional Law and Civil Rights Constitutional Criminal Procedure: Investigation and Interrogation (1204) Provides an introduction to federal constitutional limitations on governmental power to investigate crime, including stopping and detaining people, arrest, frisks, searches and seizures, custodial interrogations, right to counsel, identification procedures, and confrontation. Grading: Letter graded Credits: 3 Offered: Fall/Spring Categories: Bar Courses Subject Areas: Academic Support and Bar Preparation, Civil Litigation, Constitutional Law and Civil Rights, Criminal Law Constitutional Liberties (2421) Teaches advanced legal reasoning in the context of the federal constitutional limitations on the national and state governments including substantive due process, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and equal protection. Grading: Letter graded Credits: 3 Offered: Spring Categories: Bar Courses, Required Subject Areas: Academic Support and Bar Preparation, Constitutional Law and Civil Rights Constitutional Powers: Advanced Legal Reasoning (2410) Covers powers of national government including judicial review and limitations on judicial power, separation of powers, Congress' commerce power, taxing and spending power, and power to enforce civil rights; reserved power of states to regulate and tax commerce; standing of parties and ripeness of disputes. Grading: Letter graded Credits: Variable Offered: Fall Categories: Bar Courses, Required Subject Areas: Academic Support and Bar Preparation, Constitutional Law and Civil Rights Education Law (K-12) -- Contemporary Issues In Public Education (5302) This course is intended to introduce law students to the law and policy relating to public education (K-12) in the United States. The course will examine the authority of the state to compel attendance, regulate the contents of curriculum, the control and discipline of students and teachers, the relationship between public schools and religion, freedom of expression, tort liability, maltreatment of minors, equal education opportunity under Title IX, Title VI, bilingual education statutes and the educational rights of disabled children. Grading: Letter graded Credits: 2 Offered: Irregularly Subject Areas: Government Practice, Torts, Constitutional Law and Civil Rights LGBTQ Health: Law, Policy, and Advocacy (7114) LGBTQ+ identities have never not been controversial in our society, and that controversy extends to the ongoing evolution of health law and policy affecting LGBTQ+ individuals and communities. This course will explore the history of medicalization of LGBTQ+ identities and the ongoing effects of this approach – for better and worse. We will examine the legal and policy implications of such topics as the HIV epidemic, gender-affirming care, “conversion therapy,” access to care in prisons and similar settings, approaches to intersex individuals, and other current relevant topics. Students will be introduced to an array of contract, administrative, statutory, and constitutional principles, as well as non-governmental policy (e.g., health insurance) analyses, which can and have been brought to bear on these subjects, with a (non-exclusive) emphasis on circumstances in Minnesota. Finally, we will discuss some of the real-life considerations legal advocates make as they develop their advocacy strategies. Grading: Letter Credits: 1 Offered: Subject Areas: Administrative and Legislative Process, Constitutional Law and Civil Rights Marshall Brennan Seminar (3009) Law students selected to be Marshall-Brennan Fellows are placed in St. Paul public high schools in pairs to teach constitutional law to 11th and 12th graders. Following a base curriculum, Fellows plan lessons, conduct classes, and grade assignments. Fellows teach in the high schools five days a week for approximately nine weeks. Coinciding with their high school placement, Fellows participate in a weekly seminar taught by law school faculty. The weekly seminar focuses on constitutional cases of particular interest and relevance to high school students. During the seminar, Fellows learn about the constitutional law cases they will be teaching and develop teaching strategies and lesson plans. The semester concludes with a moot court competition in which all the high school students are encouraged to participate. One credit counts toward the outside the classroom limit. Grading: Letter graded Credits: 4 Offered: Fall Subject Areas: Constitutional Law and Civil Rights Seminar: Election Law (3031) This course will examine constitutional and statutory regulation of the electoral process. We will explore topics including the right to vote and the right to an equally-weighted vote; representation, districting, and partisan gerrymandering; minority vote dilution, the Voting Rights Act, and racial gerrymandering; election administration, vote-counting, voting technology, and voter identification; and campaign finance laws and reform. The final grade will be based on class participation, an exam, and preparation of a paper on a topic selected by the student and approved by the professor. With the professor's prior approval, students may prepare a "long paper" to satisfy the Advanced Research and Writing requirement. You will get three credits if you write a long paper (which you may do even if you’ve already satisfied the long paper requirement) and two credits if you write a shorter paper. This is a seminar course with limited enrollment. Grading: Letter graded. Credits: 2 or 3 Offered: Spring Categories: Long Paper Subject Areas: Government Practice, Public Interest Law, Constitutional Law and Civil Rights Seminar: Evolution and Constitutional Law (4631) This seminar is intended to introduce students to key concepts in evolutionary biology (pre-adaptive and vestigial uses, punctuated equilibrium, path dependence, speciation, etc.) and to explore the extent to which these concepts are useful in thinking about constitutional law and how it evolves. The seminar is also intended to give students an opportunity to pull together on a macro-level multiple concepts that have already been encountered in constitutional law classes as well as in other required courses. Students will be given an opportunity to think "outside-the-box" in considering different philosophical and interpretive approaches to constitutional law as well as to the role of law in society. Grading: Credits: 2 or 3 Offered: Irregularly Categories: Long Paper Subject Areas: Jurisprudence and Legal History, Constitutional Law and Civil Rights Seminar: First Amendment (4102) An intensive course in First Amendment jurisprudence and theory, focusing on the Freedom of Speech and Press Clauses. Grading: Credits: 2 or 3 Offered: Spring Categories: Long Paper Subject Areas: Constitutional Law and Civil Rights Seminar: Law and Religion (2440) This seminar will focus on contemporary issues at the intersection of law, religion, politics, and society. Topics will vary each semester, but may include U.S. court decisions on establishment of religion and religious liberty of individuals and religious bodies, comparative approaches to religious liberty issues, theological, and religious law approaches to legal issues, and jurisprudential issues such as the proper role of religion in politics, lawmaking, and the practice of law. Grading: Letter graded. Credits: 2 or 3 Offered: Irregularly Categories: Long Paper Subject Areas: Constitutional Law and Civil Rights Seminar: Media Law (3530) This class is about the First Amendment and the Free Press. We will discuss a selection of the legal issues generated by the activities of the mass media. We will consider regulations of print, broadcast, and electronic media, including laws that govern obscenity and pornography, laws aimed at balancing free press and fair trial rights, and laws meant to preserve multiple voices in a market. We will explore publication-related issues such as libel and invasion of privacy, and newsgathering-related issues such as the extent of the reporter's privilege and restrictions on access to information. We will examine common law, regulatory law including Federal Communications Commission regulations, and statutory law including the Freedom of Information Act, but the primary focus of the course will be on how the First Amendment limits governmental control over the media. The final grade will be based on class participation, an exam, and preparation of a paper on a topic selected by the student and approved by the professor. With the professor's prior approval, students may prepare a "long paper" to satisfy the Advanced Research and Writing requirement. You will get three credits if you write a long paper (which you may do even if you’ve already satisfied the long paper requirement) and two credits if you write a shorter paper. This is a seminar course with limited enrollment. Grading: Letter-graded Credits: 2 or 3 Offered: Fall Categories: Long Paper Subject Areas: Government Practice, Intellectual Property, Public Interest Law, Constitutional Law and Civil Rights Seminar: National Security Law (9910) This course analyses the Supreme Court cases, the federal statutes, and the regulations and policies necessary for addressing terrorism, and other major threats to American safety and well-being. Grading: Letter graded Credits: Variable Offered: Fall Categories: Long Paper Subject Areas: Government Practice, Constitutional Law and Civil Rights Seminar: Race and the Law (4945) Explores the many ways in which race and the law have interacted historically and continue to interact. Students read and discuss a wide variety of materials, presenting a variety of viewpoints. Materials include historical, social-scientific, critical race theory, and feminist writers, as well as current legal materials. The goal in the seminar is to assist each participant to develop his or her own thinking on this important current issue. Grading: Letter-graded. Credits: Variable Offered: Spring Categories: Long Paper Subject Areas: Jurisprudence and Legal History, Constitutional Law and Civil Rights Seminar: Race, Health Equity & the Law (4028) The Institute of Medicine defines public health as "what we, as a society do collectively to assure the conditions for people to be healthy." Unlike health care, which focuses on medical interventions to improve the health of individual patients, public health takes a broader look at the wide-ranging determinants of population health. Although various interventions have been devised to protect health at the population level, disparities in health outcomes persist, with marginalized communities--racial and ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, low socioeconomic status people--bearing a disproportionate amount of negative health outcomes. These inequitable health outcomes are largely products of structural and institutional factors that are grounded in the law. This course will adopt a critical approach to law--along the axes of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual identity, and class--to examine how the law creates, sustains, and legitimizes inequitable health outcomes. This critical approach will be used to analyze the legal dimensions of current public health issues, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the obesity epidemic, tobacco control, healthcare access, natural disasters & climate change, and socio-political determinants of health to challenge students think beyond the traditional paradigms of legal reasoning. Grading: Letter Credits: Variable Offered: Irregularly Categories: Long Paper Subject Areas: Health Law, Public Interest Law, Constitutional Law and Civil Rights, Environmental Law Seminar: Second Amendment (4103) This seminar will explore a unique constitutional provision. Although the Second Amendment is hotly debated, the United States Supreme Court has only considered Second Amendment claims in a handful of cases. After 70 years, a new decision was rendered in D.C. v. Heller (2008). The seminar will explore the history of the Second Amendment beginning with its English antecedents and the constitutional debates over the militia and the armed population. Seminar members will explore the extensive law review and historical literature related to the Second Amendment; cases from state Supreme Courts ruling on analogous provisions in state constitutions, legislative determinations concerning the Second Amendment, the legislative history of the Fourteenth Amendment as it relates to the Second Amendment and the five US Supreme Court decisions that have pronounced on the Second Amendment. Contemporary issues implicating the Second Amendment will also be explored. Active class participation is expected and students are expected to do a substantial paper and discuss their research in class. Grading: Letter graded Credits: Variable Offered: Spring Categories: Long Paper Subject Areas: Constitutional Law and Civil Rights Sexual Orientation and the Law (3350) Sexual behavior is an essential part of human existence. The species could not survive without it. Similarly, the law as an institution is central to modern ordered society. One might thus expect the interface between the law, as elemental definer of society, and sexuality, as essential part of human life, to be not only fascinating, but also much explored. Although indeed fascinating, the subject has only now, since the end of the 20th century, begun to attract serious academic inquiry. We will investigate a series of key issues in sexuality from various legal and jurisprudential perspectives, including contraception, abortion, homosexuality, prostitution, sexual violence and pornography. Limited Enrollment. Grading: Letter graded. Credits: 2 or 3 Offered: Irregularly Categories: Long Paper Subject Areas: Constitutional Law and Civil Rights Slavery & Human Trafficking (3184) Slavery & Human Trafficking combines a detailed analysis of the Atlantic Slave Trade and the evolution of Civil Rights Law in the United States with an exploration of modern-day human trafficking and the various legal means for combating modern-day slavery. Ten quizzes and two (6-8 page) papers required. No exam. Grading: Letter Credits: 2 Offered: Irregularly Subject Areas: Constitutional Law and Civil Rights Transgender Identity: Rights and Challenges Locally and Globally (4106) There are many under-represented, targeted, or marginalized groups in our communities that face challenges of discrimination and inequity in various areas of public life, among them the transgender community. Although an increasing number of U.S. law schools offer courses on LGBTQ issues or on the intersection of law, sexuality, and identity more generally, very few schools offer courses that focus specifically on the rights and challenges to transgender people. In 1975, Minneapolis became the first city in the United States to pass trans-inclusive civil rights protection legislation. In the nearly half-century since that landmark legislation, transgender rights have moved forward but have also faced a significant backlash both locally and globally. This course examines these two competing trajectories. We will examine global, national, state, and municipal legislation and policies that affect all areas of a transgender person’s life: education, health care, housing, criminal justice, employment, sport, arts, marriage and family, the legal system, and personal safety. Grading: Letter graded Credits: 2 Offered: Irregularly Subject Areas: Constitutional Law and Civil Rights
