LAW PUBLIC POLICY AND SOCIAL CHANGE (2) (UCI 400)

Professor Udi Ofer

Law, Public Policy and Social Change will challenge students to consider the various roles that lawyers play in movements for social change and the political nature of litigation, judicial decisions, and social change. Students will study past and present examples of lawyers working to advance public policy, including the work conducted by lawyers to end legal segregation of the public schools, organize the Montgomery bus boycott, build the post-September 11, 2001 civil liberties movement, and organize the growing movement to reform education and public safety policies that contribute to the school to prison pipeline.

The course will combine traditional law school pedagogy—reading and critical analysis—with non-traditional instruction. Students will learn about the legislative process, statutory drafting and interpretation, public policy campaign planning, organizing techniques, and media advocacy. They will meet with advocates in New York City currently working on public policy campaigns, and attend legislative hearings in the City Council. By the end of the course, students will be expected to have a framework for understanding a lawyer’s role as lobbyist, organizer, educator, and activist, as well as litigator.

Students will be required to produce two papers. The first will be an analysis of a legislative hearing they will be expected to attend. As a final project, students will produce an advocacy plan on a current public policy issue. They will choose a topic, analyze the relevant legal issues, and produce an advocacy plan to achieve their public policy goal. For example, a student may choose to analyze the issue of whether same sex marriage should be legal in New York State. The student will provide a legal analysis of the issue, and then produce an advocacy plan for making same sex marriage legal in New York, or for maintaining the status quo.