This course examines the legal status of women in the United States, focusing specifically on the 20th and 21st centuries. How has the law used gender, sex, sexuality, and race to legally enforce inequality between women and men (and among women)? We will examine the legal arguments feminists have used to advocate for legal change and how these arguments have changed over time, paying specific attention to debates about whether to make legal arguments based on formal equality, substantive equality, liberty, or privacy.

This course is part of the Political Science and Legal Studies Undergraduate Research Engagement Program (UREP). When possible, student interests are paired with faculty in need of research assistance. Please visit the Political Science department website for information.

Surveillance, databases, privacy, and the production of data images are the backdrop for this course. The social and political implications of various data images, and the law's role in structuring the terrain and the ways in which data images can be manipulated and acted upon, is the focus.

The course will deal with issues that are unique to each of the respective trial courts. Case studies will address the manner in which disputes are resolved by trial or settlement. Some of the issues to be examined are sex offender registration requirements, termination of parental rights, sexually dangerous person proceedings and administrative agency appeals. The course will also focus on the equitable jurisdiction of the courts as well as an introduction into real property rights including the right, or lack thereof, to access beachfront property.

The relationship between law and social activism. The use of court decisions to effect change and mobilize support for causes. A critical look at such strategies to determine if and when they are effectve in achieving activists' goals. How sociolegal scholars should define social change and understand the role legal professionals play in structuring movement practices.

This course involves in-depth study of the topic of human trafficking, often referred to as "modern day slavery." The course will explore the definition of the crime of human trafficking in the United States and internationally, and study the debates surrounding anti-trafficking laws and policies. We will examine the similarities and differences between slavery and human trafficking in the popular imagination and the law.

Law assumes facts, creates entities, and conceals aspects of its operation in order to extend or limit the power of courts in deciding cases. Law creates and deploys fictions (e.g. corporate persons, reasonable persons, equal protection, compelling interests) in that endeavor. This social construction of law and legal phenomena may be construed as proper or improper depending upon the power of competing stories and story tellers, as well as how we the audience receives and give life to them.

From academic research on the impact of landmark court cases to the judge reading a brief loaded with social policy arguments, the study of law frequently involves empirical data. In this course, students will both learn how to digest empirical legal research and be equipped with the skills to conduct their own empirical research.

This seminar introduces students to some of the big normative questions in contemporary democratic theory. For example, what do justice and equality look like in a diverse democracy? What should participation, inclusion, and representation look like when they take difference into account? How are concepts like citizenship and membership affected by immigration and identity politics? What role do law, legal institutions, and legal statuses play in defining democracy, citizenship, justice?