LAWS 7650 Legislative and Public Policy Advocacy

This course covers several matters pertaining to legislative and public policy ideas that are developed and designed to address a range of societal issues and the advocacy work that is required in seeking to have these ideas actually become law whether as a legislative act or as an adopted policy within an executive branch agency. The course seeks to familiarize students with the life cycle of a legislative act or adopted public policy. The life cycles can progress from the stage of idea generation to vetting the idea to building support for the proposed legislative act or public policy to drafting a proposed legislative bill or agency public policy to navigating the bill or public policy through various official channels whether in a legislature or in anexecutive agency and can continue through to certain post-adoption matters such as those designed to maximize the effectiveness of the act or policy. The course will have a diverse set of guest speakers who work on legislative and public policy matters in a number of different capacities, including speakers from advocacy groups and organizations that develop model legislation, lobbyists, legislators and those who work in executive agencies.