CIVIL RIGHTS SEMINAR
LAW 6936
Professor Nancy Dowd
Fall Semester 2003
Course Description
Tuesdays 9-11
am, Room 354
Office: Room 312E Holland Hall
Office phone: 392-2236; email dowd@law.ufl.edu
This seminar focuses on conceptualizing and implementing equality through past, present and potential civil rights strategies grounded in Fourteenth Amendment guarantees. The seminar will begin with an examination of various definitions and visions of equality and concrete strategies for implementation. The seminar will then explore specific applications of equality in the areas of education, housing and families. Lines of inequality to be considered include race, gender, sexual orientation and class. After the initial reading phase, we will take a research break before presentations of individual or group projects.
We are going to concentrate on two questions:
What is our vision of equality?
How can that vision be accomplished?
Our goal is to focus on concrete ways in which equality can be realized through social justice lawyering. The seminar will act like a "think tank," a strategizing session, to evaluate and test out the lessons of the past or the possible theories of the present and future, in terms of ideologies and strategies.
Your obligation is to read and think critically, and actively participate every week. Readings are concentrated in the first part of the course. The latter weeks of the course will focus on your projects, which will be the subject of student presentations and critical analysis of theories and strategies, and a final paper. Both individual and group projects are permissible, although each student must write and submit their own paper (or alternative to a paper). You may do a conventional or unconventional research paper, or some other project (e.g., researching and evaluating advocacy organizations; analysis of test case litigation; fact gathering and strategy for a local, state or national issue; interdisciplinary research as a basis for advocacy; comparative models from other countries; etc.).
You are expected to do the following during the seminar:
1. Reading: Complete all assigned reading and be prepared to discuss it during the seminar. (Course Materials: Selected excerpts from Social Justice: Professionals, Communities and Law -- Cases & Materials West, 2003 (Mahoney, Calmore & Wildman, eds.), available at Law School Bookstore by 8/14/03.)
2. Journal: Keep a weekly journal during the reading weeks of the course. You may write your entry before or after class discussion in the reading weeks. Please write a one- to two-page entry weekly, preferably typed, on the readings or presentations in light of our two core questions, your particular project, or another focus that you select. The journal should not be descriptive of what you have read; rather, it should be critical, analytical, creative and/or challenging. Your journal must be submitted each Thursday after we meet, by 5pm, to Professor Dowd or her secretary.
3. Participation in class discussion, with a group assigned to lead the
discussion each session. This should work out so
that you are in the lead group once during the reading portion and once during
the presentation portion of the seminar.
4. Presentation (20-30 minutes).
5. Critical (in a positive sense) feedback on other students'
presentation (and draft paper if available), either oral (2-5 min. in class)
or written (1-2 pages).
6. Final paper or project: A
seminar paper or project based on substantial research.
Suggested length, 25 pages typed, double-spaced, not including footnotes. The quality and quantity of research should be what you
would expect from a student note or comment in a law review article, but
the substance should be less descriptive and more analytical, and therefore
more like a lead article in a law review. Your paper
or project need not follow the law review article format; this point of reference
is simply that, a point of reference.
Deadlines
for papers:
On or before September 9, 2003: Detailed written proposal for topic submitted and approved; preliminary bibliography preferred (the more detailed, the better!)
September 23, 2003: Bibliography submitted
September 29-October 10, 2003: Individual meetings on research, rough draft, outline
November 18, 2003: Rough draft due (as close to completed paper as possible)
December 12, 2003: Final paper due on or before 5pm the last day of final exams to Professor Dowd or to Career Services.
Grades:
Your grade for the seminar will be based on your seminar paper or project,
in conjunction with your satisfactory completion of all other seminar requirements. Strong participation in all other required parts of the
seminar, as listed above, will be taken into account should your final grade
be on the borderline between two grades. The failure
to meet all course requirements at a satisfactory level will result in a
deduction from the final grade. If you fail to meet
any single course requirement, you may be dropped from the seminar.
You are expected to attend all seminar meetings, and are allowed only two absences. If you are late, it will be treated as an absence. If you are absent more than twice, you will be dropped from the course, unless there are extenuating circumstances.