Diversity Courses

This seminar examines the civil rights movement that began in the years before Brown v. Board of Education and continued throughout the 1950's and 1960's.  This examination is based on the PBS video series "Eyes on the Prize" and additional readings.  The videos and the readings provide social, cultural, and historical perspectives on the civil rights movement and the legal developments that grew out of that movement..

This course is designed to enable students to develop a working knowledge of the procedural framework governing civil actions to enforce constitutional rights.  Students will also explore the actionable elements of many of the individual rights protected by the Constitution, as well as defenses to constitutional tort liability, including Eleventh Amendment and common law immunities.  Legal writing is an important component of the course and students are required to draft a federal court complaint and to write and orally defend a summary judgment motion brief.

This course examines how an anomalous confluence of federal environmental, administrative, and Indian law exacerbates environmental injustice in Indian country, but also offers its most promising solution. The modern environmental law paradigm of federal-state partnerships falters in Indian country where state regulatory jurisdiction is constrained by federal Indian law. A resulting void of effective environmental regulation threatens the cultural survival of American Indian tribes, who face air and water contamination from a legacy of federally encouraged natural resource development.

This course will focus on federal laws that form a regulatory framework for the management of natural and cultural resources in Indian country, other than the statutes covered in Tribal Environmental Programs.  Federal statutes covered will include the National Environmental Policy Act, national Historic Preservation Act, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, Endangered Species Act, and federal laws governing Indian agricultural and timber resources.

Examines the unique body of law governing Indian country, the geographic areas recognized by the federal government as the homelands of sovereign American Indian tribes. Major topics include the history of federal-tribal relations, tribal property rights, tribal court systems, and the balance of governmental power between tribes, states, and the federal government.

Provides an introduction to race as it relates to and is reflected in the law.  The seminar focuses on the role and experience of African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latin-Americans, and Native-Americans in American society, with attention to questions concerning critical race theory, class, family, and feminism.

A look at the way law and the legal systems affect the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people.  The class will explore domestic and international laws that sanction discrimination against the LGBT community and the struggle for equality by this community.

This course will focus on the roles of Indian tribal governments in carrying out federal environmental laws within their reservations as sovereign governments that are distinct from the states.  The course will examine the policy and practice of the EPA in the implementation of federal environmental laws within Indian reservations, ncluding statutes that have been amended to authorize treatment of tribes like states -- Clean Water Act; Safe Drinking Water Act; Clean Air Act; Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act.