POLS 249 Movement Lawyering, Politics and Social Change

This course examines United States social and political movements (e.g.,civil rights, feminist, labor, LGBT rights, domestic human rights, and conservative movement for religious liberty, economic freedom, and property)to understand their diverse influences on the construction and interpretation of law. The course pays particular attention to role of lawyers within social movements, including advocacy strategies defined under the theories of critical lawyering, movement lawyering; law and organizing; demosprudence; and cause lawyering. The course will examine the manner in which movement lawyers and the movements they support aim to alter power in a democracy and generate new normative frameworks within the United States. For example, students will interrogate how law and lawmaking is an expression of political values, identities, and institutions.