WGST-4910 : Law and Social Movements

This course will critically examine the relationship between law and social movements, specifically engaging texts and materials that interrogate law’s role in both criminalizing and coopting social movements. Often in the legal profession and in legal academia, as well as in popular culture, we hear of the relationship between law and social movements primarily in terms of the use of legal strategies such as litigation and policy reform to secure rights and freedoms for oppressed and excluded groups. Many people come to law school with the aim of utilizing legal skills to support and bolster the equality claims of marginalized populations. The materials used in this course will problematize the assumption that the primary role of law with regard to social movements is to support emancipatory progress. We will instead take the opportunity to look broadly at the meanings of key concepts such as discrimination, freedom, liberation, power, governance and violence as they relate to the stories that lawyers, movement activists, governments, and the media tell about the role of law in movements for social change. Our examination will engage 'law' beyond strictly jurisprudence and look at the construction of legality and illegality with regard to dissent. Our inquiry will aim to cultivate deeper understandings of the current parameters and possibilities within social movements given the incentives and disincentives provided by various technologies of legal intervention over the past half century