Created by Professors Charles Sabeland James S. Liebman, this course examines new strategies for reforming public institutions through law, and investigates prior and current practices of "public interest" lawyers and the limits of and alternatives to litigation and other adversarial practices by such lawyers. Its fundamental assumption is that the same pressures that are leading to the partial dismantlement and decentralization of many parts of public administration in the U.S. and abroad are also creating new opportunities for citizens and communities to participate in the redirection and constitution of government, and for lawyers to facilitate that process in new and imaginative ways. In its investigations of alternatives to litigation, this course briefly addresses alternative dispute resolution, but rejects it in favor of a related but more comprehensive reform of democratic institutions arguably in progress. Students are of course invited to criticize this view and to develop their own positions.
This research seminar examines the new challenges that affect the role of the law, lawyers, and legal organizations in addressing workplace discrimination as more complicated and interactive forms of bias yield more subtle and complex legal theories of employment discrimination. Students explore new ways of addressing problems of bias within the workplace while learning to conduct, and then to critically assess, participatory field research on workplace equity.
Recent experience has demonstrated the limitations of traditional dispute resolution for addressing complex environmental issues, which often involve multiple parties and vast amounts of information. This seminar examines the new processes and lawyering skills required to enable potential adversaries to participate together in processing information and developing flexible responses to problems. In addition to reading and attending classes, students participate in actual large-scale, multiparty processes addressing important environmental and land-use issues in the New York City area.
