Northwestern University OUTLaw

ACADEMICS

A number of courses at Northwestern Law deal substantively with issues related to sexual orientation, sexuality, and gender. The 2004-2005 courses with significant attention paid to these issues are listed below, including Sexual Orientation and the Law, a seminar being taught this spring by adjunct professor Heather Sawyer, Senior Counsel at Lambda Legal.

The clinics listed have represented LGBT clients in the past. Additionally, through the Public Interest Practicum (taught every semester by Professors Len Rubinowitz and Cynthia Wilson), students can extern for credit for 10-12 hours/week at organizations including Lambda Legal, the ACLU of Illinois’s Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, the AIDS Legal Council, and other Chicago-area legal organizations representing LGBT clients.

Additionally, several professors have published significant legal scholarship on sexual orientation. Professor Andrew Koppelman, a leading authority and frequent commentator on LGBT legal issues, is the author of The Gay Rights Question in Contemporary American Law (University of Chicago Press: 2002). Professor Tonja Jacobi is the author of “Same-Sex Marriage: Implications of Legislative Remand for the Judiciary’s Role,” Vermont Law Review 26:2 (Winter 2002). Professor Cynthia Bowman, a feminist legal theorist and family law expert, frequently covers LGBT issues in her courses. Professor Kimberly Yuracko, who studies feminism and sex discrimination, teaches Employment Law, Family Law, and Property. Each of these professors has participated in OUTLaw events in the past.

2004-2005 COURSES

Fall 2004:

COMPARATIVE FAMILY LAW

Prof. Cynthia Bowman

This seminar will focus on key issues in family law from a comparative perspective. During the first half of the course, we will study a number of topics, including, among other things, marriage, divorce, property ownership, custody and maintenance of children, and the legal treatment of cohabitation by both same-sex and opposite-sex couples, as they are approached under three quite different systems: that in the United States, that in European countries with more comprehensive social welfare systems, and that in African customary law. During the second half of the course, we will discuss topics chosen by students for their research papers, which will bring in comparisons from Asia and Latin America as well.

Spring 2005:

SEXUAL ORIENTATION

Prof. Heather Sawyer (Senior Counsel, Lambda Legal)

This seminar will examine the treatment of sexual orientation and related questions of sexuality in the U.S. legal system. It will begin with readings and discussion on theories of human sexuality, the nature of sexual orientation, issues of identity and expression and background on the modern gay rights movement. It will then address the ways in which different views of sexual orientation have determined or influenced legal and constitutional rights in a variety of contents. Particular attention will be paid to first amendment and equal protection jurisprudence and theory (including anti-gay ballot initiatives, military employment, access to information about sexuality, public workplace issues); rights of intimate association and efforts to define, limit or expand family and parental rights (including second-parent adoption, equal marriage rights and domestic partnership); and legal efforts to define and distinguish sex, gender, sexual acts and sexual identity. Some emphasis will be given throughout the seminar on case strategy and development.

FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT

Prof. Victor Rosenblum

The Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution is the primary source of protection against oppressive state laws. In this course, we will analyze and evaluate the Supreme Court's treatment of racial discrimination, discrimination based on sex and sexual orientation, the concept of state action, the reverse discrimination question, and the degree to which the amendment augments the powers of Congress.

COLLOQUIUM: CONSTITUTIONAL LAW

Prof. Andrew Koppelman; Prof. Steven Calabresi

This is an advanced seminar that will bring together outside scholars, resident faculty, and Northwestern students for an exchange of views about cutting-edge research on constitutional theory. Every second week, a workshop will be held at which a leading scholar will present a paper growing out of their research on issues of constitutional law.

LAW AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Prof. Len Rubinowitz

This course is an examination of the relationship between legal institutions (primarily the courts, but also the legislature and administrative agencies) and social change in United States. Emphasis is given to "litigation campaigns," which seek to use the courts to bring about social change. The substantive areas used to illustrate these relationships include several in which there have been substantial legal and social change in the recent past, such as race, gender, political participation, and abortion.

Clinics (offered both semesters):

Clinic: Juvenile Justice, Asylum, and Wrongful Conviction

Prof. Steven Drizin

This section will focus on juvenile justice, political asylum, and wrongful conviction cases. Our clients are primarily children under the age of 17 who are charged with crimes in the Juvenile Court of Cook County. Occasionally, we will also represent children who have been transferred to the adult court in their criminal court proceedings. Depending on student interest, I am willing to take a few political asylum cases each semester. These cases involve both juvenile and adult clients who are in deportation or removal proceedings and who face being sent back to a country where they were persecuted. Finally, much of my work involves advocacy on the juvenile death penalty, false confessions, videotaping interrogations, and trying children as adults.

Clinic: Women/Youth Asylum & Gender-based Persecution

Prof. Vanessa Melendez Lucas

This section will focus primarily in the representation of women and youth seeking asylum in the United States. The main goal of the project is to address through litigation and advocacy issues of gender-based persecution, including domestic violence, genital mutilation, wartime rape, as well as issues of particular impact on refugee children and youth including, abuse, neglect, abandonment, homelessness and exploitation. The project will not only provide litigation assistance but also develop education and advocacy initiatives to address issues impacting immigrant children's issues such as detention and welfare protection.

COURSES NOT OFFERED THIS YEAR

FAMILY LAW

This course examines the regulation of family relationships by the state, including obligations in an intact family, the law of marriage and dissolution of marriage, property division and spousal maintenance upon divorce, alternative child custody standards, the enforcement of child support awards, non-traditional families, and adoption.

FEMINIST JURISPRUDENCE

This course offers both an introduction to feminist legal theory (including competing theories such as formal equality, MacKinnon's "dominance" theory, relational feminism, and pragmatic feminism) and an application of feminist analysis (or analyses) to various substantive areas of law of particular concern to women, including but not limited to rape and other types of violence against women, abortion, surrogacy and other reproductive rights issues, pornography, prostitution, sexual harassment and domestic violence.

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