LAW 1041: Poverty Law
Fall 2024 • Section 01 • CRN 27818

Course Description

The learning goals of this class are for students to 1) gain an understanding of poverty law and policy; and 2)think strategically about ways that law can address the needs of the poor. First, students will study what poverty looks like in the US and how law addresses the needs of the poor and otherwise affects them. They will look at both laws specifically designed to alleviate poverty and its impact, like welfare, housing, and health care laws, and laws that have a disproportionate impact on the poor, like criminalization and some discrimination law. A particular emphasis will be placed on whether specific laws are in sync with policy goals. Second, students will consider what policy and litigation strategies are being tried presently to alter how things currently are and think about others that could be used. Students will be asked to design their own strategies and through several serial writing papers, will create a short white paper on the topic. This class will be run in the same semester as the Community Lawyering Clinic. Students will not need to co-register for our Community Lawyering Clinic. However, the classes will in part be run in tandem. The professor will select one poverty law issue which will be addressed simultaneously by looking at it theoretically in the class while students in our Community Lawyering clinic will work on the same issue in practice. It is imagined that students may choose to co-register for both classes, sign up for the Clinic in a subsequent semester to work on a poverty issue of interest, or suggest through their white papers their own projects they would like the Clinic to implement in future semesters.

Book List/Materials