LAWS 9924 Inclusion and Exclusion in American Law

Who counts as a full member of the U.S. polity? And how has law structured the benefits of such membership as well as the conditions for exclusion? Moreover, how have these terms changed and remained consistent throughout American history? This course will use a variety of landmark cases as a jumping off point for assessing the linkages in the U.S. between full inclusion and judgments about race, gender, Indigeneity, sexuality, class, religion, and immigration. In the process, the course will explore decisive periods of conflict over the meaning of membershipfrom the founding and the Civil War to the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, and more recent struggles regarding equality and freedom. Alongside court-based disputes, we will also assess how inclusion and exclusion interact with basic questions of legal-political institutional design and democratic legitimacy.