Public Interest/Civil Rights/Civil Liberties

The proposed Clinic provides Southwestern Law Students with the opportunity to learn lawyering skills and provide high quality legal assistance to a vulnerable and underserved population in a community-based learning environment. Under the close supervision of an adjunct faculty member, students will offer legal advice and counsel to clients in the area of asylum law. Students will apply the research and writing skills learned in LAWS and build on those skills by researching country conditions and other evidence required in an asylum case.

Introduces fundamentals of refugee and asylum law, policies underlying the law, and the practice of refugee and asylum law in the United States. Focus on women and children escaping gang violence and gender-based harm. Explores what leads people to flee and countries' response to those seeking refuge.

This course examines the means by which the political process, particularly the conducting of elections, is regulated in the United States.

This course explores the process of social change. To understand change of any kind, one has to understand power, because power is never easily conceded. The course therefore starts with an examination of the sources of power in society and then moves to the ways in which power is embodied and deployed. From there the course will confront and grapple with the limits of social transformation before finally considering possible points of intervention.

This course examines processes for resolving civil disputes other than by court adjudication. Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) introduces students to: (1) negotiation, mediation, arbitration and hybrid ADR processes; (2) legal, ethical and practical application issues presented by these processes; (3) ADR and dispute settlement confidentiality issues: and (4) the intersection of ADR processes and the judicial system. The course features a substantial skills development component.

This class addresses the historical and contemporary relationships between criminal and immigration law. In particular, it explores how migrants are framed as criminals, how people with criminal convictions are treated in the immigration law system, and how unique policies apply to immigrants in the criminal justice system.

The Family Law Clinic provides pro bono advice, counsel and representation to clients of the Harriett Buhai Center for Family Law (the "Center") in a variety of family law matters, including but not limited to domestic violence, division of property, visitation, custody, parentage, and child support matters. Students in this Clinic will learn lawyering skills and provide high quality legal assistance to a vulnerable and underserved population in a community-based learning environment.

This course introduces federal and state laws that address the civil rights, needs, and treatment of persons with disabilities. The course covers the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the Fair Housing Act, along with a brief overview of international disability law, specifically the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

This seminar will introduce students to Critical Race Theory, which is an academic project with potential political and legal implications. The project is to expose the interaction of race and law, in particular, the ways in which law has helped to create and define "race." It also exposes how racial subordination and privilege was a crucual context for the creation of many seemingly neutral legal concepts, such as property and liberty. Critical Race Theory will be contrasted to alternative academic-political perspectives on law, such as liberalism and traditionalism.

The course would address the growing thicket of complicated and sometimes conflicting local, state, and federal laws governing the use, possession, cultivation, transportation, and distribution of cannabis, whether for medical or recreational purposes.