Lawyering for Social Justice explores the role of the law and of lawyers in social justice movements. We are conditioned to think of the law as a rational and apolitical framework, and public interest lawyers as crusading heroes for justice. But a closer examination suggests a more complicated dynamic. Legal systems and legal strategies, if pursued in isolation, can also disempower client groups, reinforce harmful hierarchies, and impede structural transformation. In Lawyering for Social Justice, students will engage in critical analysis of the relationship between law and social justice and investigate an evolving movement lawyering model that promotes greater lawyer accountability to community-led movement organizations, emphasizes power-building strategies, and looks to movement activism as the basis for legal and political transformation, while holding a specific and important role for lawyers and legal tactics.
The unique co-requisite course design is structured like a law school clinic and allows students to both engage in a weekly seminar (POLS 340) and work as interns with community-based public interest legal organizations (POLS 260). In the POLS 340 weekly seminar, students will: (1) consider how lawyers and legal strategies have historically contributed to and impeded movements for social justice in the past; (2) explore concepts and theories of legal liberalism, rebellious lawyering, community organizing, and law and social movements; (3) assess contemporary case studies of “community lawyering” or "movement lawyering" practices in Los Angeles; and (4) learn core skills and tactics to align legal strategies with community power-building goals. Through a guest speaker series, students will have the opportunity to learn directly from movement lawyers working in Los Angeles about their work and their path to this mode of legal advocacy. In the companion POLS 260 Community Law Internship, students work directly with lawyers and community groups supporting social justice movements and campaigns in L.A. County. Instructor permission required. Can be repeated once for credit. Public Law Subfield