Academics

The Civil Rights Movement - LAW 612

This course examines central themes, institutions and legal and political events surrounding the Civil Rights Movement.  The course will examine the Civil Rights Movement in three parts.  Part I will consider the major judicial decisions related to the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments leading up to the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education.  Part II will focus on the Civil Rights campaign between 1955 and the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.  Part III will consider the legal legacy of the Civil Rights Movement.  Themes discussed within this study will include the relationship between civil rights and the federal courts, and the interaction of formal legal rules, informal social attitudes, and organized political action.