PROGRAM OVERVIEW

The Equality Concentration examines the meaning of equality, the ways the law promotes or limits equality, and whether the professional role of the lawyer enhances equality for the client and for society. The doctrinal objective is to give a basic familiarity with specific constitutional and statutory sources for civil rights. The primary substantive area is employment discrimination, but also includes the Fourteenth Amendment, and Section 1983 actions against governmental entities, including police misconduct claims (Civil Rights Act of 1871). Issues of race and sex, such as racial and sexual harassment in the workplace, are examined in depth. In addition, issues relating to sexual orientation, disability, AIDS, and language discrimination are explored, as well as gender discrimination in education and racial justice in environmental law. The basic legal theories of discrimination, disparate impact and disparate treatment are applicable throughout civil rights law and litigation.

Students engage in this examination through both a classroom seminar, which includes simulated lawyering exercises, and working two days a week in a field placement. The field placements include such legal organizations as Center for Constitutional Rights, private civil rights practitioners, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, NOW Legal Defense Fund, the New York Environmental Justice Alliance, the New York State Attorney General Office, Civil Rights Bureau, The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund.

Highlights of the Equality Concentration

• Lawyering tasks: Students are assigned to firms of five "lawyers" for the semester and collaborate in lawyering exercises which include interviewing clients, preparing discovery plans, and conducting direct examinations.
• Expert witnesses: Each lawyer prepares and executes a plan to present the expert testimony of Dr. Rosalind Rosenberg or Dr. Alice Kessler-Harris, feminist public historians, and cross-examine the opposing experts.
• Advocacy in an Arbitration Setting: In roles as judge or attorney, students focus on a case of same-sex and religious harassment.
• Affirmative Action: Law firms present evidence and arguments concerning a claim of race discrimination in a challenge to an alleged affirmative action plan.
• Qualified Immunity: Plaintiff and city governmental attorneys argue a motion to dismiss based on the defense of qualified immunity in a claim of gender discrimination.
• Language discrimination: Students draft a federal court complaint.

FIELD PLACEMENTS

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.

ROUNDS

During weekly rounds meetings, students discuss the work they are doing in their placements. These discussions provide an opportunity for students to collaborate and generate alternative approaches to particular legal problems and consider related ethical and professional responsibility issues. Additionally, each student will teach an inter-active class concerning an issue or case on which he/she is working at his/her field placement.

EMPLOYMENT PROSPECTS

Employment law remains a growth area in the legal profession. Many Equality Concentration graduates have obtained employment practicing civil rights law, including employment discrimination. Some of our placements have hired our students and some of our field placement supervisors are CUNY Law School and Equality Concentration alumni. For example, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission New York District Office employs two graduates as trial attorneys. The Legal Director of the Michigan Civil Liberties Union and the Legislative Counsel for the New York Civil Liberties Union are graduates of the Concentration. A number of small civil rights firms have hired our students and quite a few of our graduates have started their own civil rights firms. Many of our students have sought and obtained employment in other areas of law, such as personal injury and criminal defense or prosecution. Others are teaching at law schools (two at Seton Hall and one at Cardozo). Three Equality Concentration students have been awarded Skadden Arps Fellowships and a number have received PILA fellowships. Producing high quality work through commitment and thoroughness is the most important factor in obtaining employment. References from faculty and field placement supervisors citing a student's quality of work are extremely helpful.