Study

This seminar will explore the current state of thinking about the relationship between identity, politics and legal regulation. In particular, attention will be paid during this upcoming semester to the situation in Puerto Rico.  Among the topics that will be considered are the roles that race and colonial identity have played in leading to Puerto Rico’s current political status (“foreign in a domestic sense”).  We will also consider how these factors (and others) have played into the current debt crisis that the Commonwealth is facing. In addition to Puerto Rico, we will also have discussions of other topics connecting to the broader theme of Law, Identity and Politics such as the Gender Gap in Legal Employment, the future of the Voting Rights Act, and the litigation over the Travel Ban.

Every week, students will be asked to do reaction papers to presentations by guest speakers.  These guests are a set of scholars who are doing some of the most current research on the above-mentioned topics.

The requirements for the class are completion of the reaction papers and active participation in the debates over the papers being presented. There will not be a final exam or final paper. There will be one class meeting most weeks; on one occasion though we will have two sessions.