Equality Concentration

Students work in a variety of public interest and civil rights practices that give them an experiential base to enhance their thinking about the doctrinal, theoretical and lawyering issues raised in the course. For example, some students working for civil rights law firms investigate discrimination complaints and apply the doctrine learned in class. They conduct extensive factual inquiries and prepare for trial. These tasks involve the lawyering skills of research, analysis, interviewing, mediation, as well as other forms of fact investigation such as depositions.

Other students work in national legal defense organizations where legal research and writing is the exclusive work of the semester. The students' actual casework creates concrete situations for the discussion of several issues: the allocation of scarce resources within civil rights firms, the programmatic decisions that are made as a result of scarce resources, the effectiveness of passing legislation to address inequality, and the role that public interest lawyers can play in promoting equality.