In addition to the core Immigration Law course that is taught every year, the program frequently offers advanced courses, including Refugee Law and Policy, Citizenship and Membership, and other related seminars. Students who want hands-on experience in working with immigrant clients can take the Immigration Clinic, which is also offered annually.
Core Courses
Numbers in parentheses indicate which academic year(s) the courses were offered: 2005-06 courses are coded (6); 2006-07 courses are coded (7)
Citizenship and Membership (6)
Immigration Law (6,7)
Immigration Law Clinic (6,7)
Refugee Law and Policy (7)
Related courses
Administrative Law (6,7)
Antiterrorism, Law, and the Role of Intelligence (6)
Comparative and International Administrative Law (7)
Human Rights Advocacy (7)
International Human Rights (6,7)
International Human Rights Law Clinic (6,7)
International Law (6,7)
International Litigation of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (7)
Nationalism and Cultural Identity (7)
Presidential Powers (6)
Descriptions
All courses are three credits except where noted, below.
ADMINISTRATIVE LAW Much federal law that governs private behavior is the product of administrative agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. This course is an introduction to the special body of law that governs such agencies at the federal level, including the constitutional and statutory constraints on their actions.
ANTI-TERRORISM, LAW, AND THE ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the Bush Administration’s doctrine of pre-empting such future attacks on U.S. soil by striking potential terrorist actors before they can strike us, this seminar examines the current posture of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) to supply the intelligence information on which a decision to launch a pre-emptive strike must be based. We shall examine the IC’s performance in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and the proposals for change that have come out of the two conflicts plus the “intelligence failure” to predict the 9/11 attacks. We shall further examine the impact of 9/11 on U.S. law—criminal, immigration, and under the U.S. Constitution; and the constraints, if any, of international law on the designations of unlawful or enemy combatant; and of President Bush’s decision to constitute special military tribunals to hear the cases of non-U.S. citizens captured outside the United States. Specifically, we shall examine the USA Patriot Act; the Creppy Memorandum closing special immigration proceedings to the press and public; the U.S. military order creating military tribunals; and the Odah, Padilla, and Hamdi cases, currently making their way to the U.S. Supreme Court. We shall also look at the problems presented to American jurisprudence by the Zacarias Moussaoui and John Walker Lindh trials. The seminar will attempt to define a meaningful role for both law enforcement and intelligence faced with the threat on U.S. soil of terrorist acts by sub-national groups, armed with weapons of mass destruction (WMD); and it will sketch what may be a changing role for the courts in dealing with the legal and constitutional disputes that a ceaseless war against an “ism” will present.
CITIZENSHIP AND MEMBERSHIP (1) This short course provides an overview of U.S. citizenship law, including acquisition at birth, naturalization and denaturalization, loss of citizenship, dual nationality, and the history of U.S. doctrine, including the increasing importance of constitutional protections. The course looks briefly at selected international and comparative law issues, including citizenship questions that arise from the breakup of states, and considers deeper questions involving the concept of citizenship and the meaning of membership in a nation.
Comparative and International Administrative Law This seminar focuses on two broad topics. First, it acquaints students with administrative law in other nations and regions (such as the European Union). That study demonstrates the many different ways a nation might organize its bureaucracy and the mechanisms to control that bureaucracy. In the study of the European Union, students encounter a still-evolving system of supranational administrative law that must, among other things, confront difficult questions about the relationship between the union and the nation states. Second, the seminar focuses on international administrative law—looking at questions about delegation, process, and transparency as they arise in the context of international organizations.
HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCACY This seminar explores a range of approaches to human rights advocacy, domestic and international, from the perspective of human rights methodology. Students examine diverse tactics, strategies, and venues selected by human rights lawyers and other advocates pursuing similar objectives. We consider the obligations and options of various stakeholders, including states, corporations, NGOs, and individuals. The seminar focuses on strategic choices, including litigation; legislation and policy advocacy; advocacy before the U.N., transnational, regional and national human rights bodies; investigation and documentation; and global human rights campaigns.
IMMIGRATION LAW This course introduces the complex provisions of U.S. immigration laws and the procedures used to decide specific immigration-related issues. Considerable attention is given to underlying constitutional and philosophical issues, to selected questions of international law and politics, and to the interaction of Congress, the courts, and administrative agencies in dealing with major public policy issues in the immigration field.
IMMIGRATION LAW CLINIC This semester-long clinic is offered in conjunction with the Legal Aid Justice Center. Students are assigned several clients and handle at least one complex case involving extensive client interviewing, factual investigation, and legal briefs. Female victims of violence are a priority at Legal Aid. Students may also work with clients appealing denials of applications for status, appealing for special categorization or procedures, or clients who have cases complicated by past criminal or immigration histories. Students are expected to keep office hours at LAJC for half a day per week. Spanish-language ability is a plus. The clinic meets for a weekly seminar for much of the semester. The clinic also covers basic ethics and professional responsibility issues, and skills such as eliciting information from abuse victims and working through cultural and language differences.
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW This course introduces the theory and practice of international human rights law, with particular emphasis on the ways in which human rights law is made and used. Topics to be covered include: an introduction to key principles of international law; the philosophical foundations of universal human rights; core international human rights norms and their foundations in the U.N. Charter and other treaties, how states incorporate human rights principles domestically; recent human rights-based challenges to the idea of state sovereignty; the increasing overlap between human rights law and international humanitarian law; human rights and development, and international systems and procedures for the protection of human rights.
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW CLINIC Students gain first-hand experience in human rights advocacy under the supervision of international human rights lawyers. Projects are designed to give students the practical experience necessary to be effective human rights lawyers and to integrate the theory and practice of human rights. Class sessions provide the opportunity to discuss human rights law concepts and lawyering practice, and the legal, strategic, ethical, and theoretical issues raised by the project work. The clinic also provides instruction in international human rights law research and writing skills. The clinic may have one or more adjunct instructors. There is no live-client representation in this clinic.
INTERNATIONAL LAW This course is the basic offering in international legal studies. The emphasis is on the interaction between international legal rules, on the one hand, and international politics, domestic politics, U.S. law, and historical factors, on the other hand. The course begins with the legal rules that constitute the international politico-legal system, such as the prerequisites and perquisites of a nation-state, the sources of international law, and the formal relationship between international and domestic law. The course continues with the legal rules governing international trade, such as the rules of the European Union and the World Trade Organization. The course concludes with legal rules that regulate the international environment, such as the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. As time permits, the course also covers the legal rules that regulate war, alliances, and weapons, such as the U.N. Charter and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
International Litigation of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1) Can the rights to health, education, housing or adequate food be enforced by courts? Long viewed as mere programmatic goals to be realized progressively through political processes and within available resources, economic-social-cultural rights are increasingly being litigated in judicial and quasi-judicial instances at national and international levels. Some of these cases have been successful while others have not. Classic distinctions between economic-social-cultural rights and civil-political rights are being questioned. This seminar seeks to provide the legal and analytical tools to understand why distinctions between rights are unhelpful and why some claims succeed while others fail. The course considers the international normative framework for the legal protection of economic-social-cultural rights, the corresponding obligations assumed by states, the contentious procedures available internationally for the adjudication of individual complaints, and how cases must be framed to survive basic justiciability and admissibility thresholds. The course examines each of these matters through analysis of human rights instruments, procedures, and case law, as well as detailed case studies on the right to health and the right to housing.
Nationalism and Cultural Identity This course makes use of cultural studies, political theory, history, and law to study forms of group identity and membership as well as the politics of inclusion, exclusion, and recognition of groups by states. The course decouples the concepts of nation (a community of ethnic, racial or cultural relatedness) and state (a geo-political body) in order to explore the relationships between the two. The course focuses on attempts at national definition by the United States (through immigration and citizenship law, holidays, monuments, etc.) and on the struggles by nationalist groups for recognition within pluralist states, but it also provides a solid foundation for anyone interested in nationalism in an international context.
PRESIDENTIAL POWERS This course considers a variety of issues involving the application of law to the president’s functions. Many such issues are of constitutional stature and fall under the general rubric of separation of powers or checks and balances. Therefore we also examine the powers vested in other branches of government. The course includes a review of some or all of the following: law enforcement (including the institution of the independent counsel); program administration (including the president’s authorities in relation to the so-called independent federal agencies); budgeting and accounting; the line-item veto; executive privilege; impeachment; immunity to suit for the president and other executive officers; authority over foreign affairs and the war powers, including claims to extensive powers in the war against terrorism (e.g., the use of coercive interrogation or even torture); detention of “enemy combatants”; and the chartering of military tribunals to impose criminal punishment. The class considers the major judicial decisions on these subjects, but one objective of the course is to derive an appreciation for how few of these questions have been or could be litigated and thus governed by clear judicial guidance.
REFUGEE LAW This course covers in detail refugee law and the procedures involved in adjudicating claims to political asylum, as well as such topics as: the theory and philosophy of refugee protection; comparative refugee law and procedure; the special dimensions of gender-based persecution claims; U.S. overseas refugee programs; restructuring the asylum adjudication process; “temporary protected status”; the role of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees; regional and universal treaties concerning refugees; and extradition law (including the political offense exception).
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