Civil Rights Injunctions Seminar - Spring 2008

[These are current announcements.  Old announcements are archived here.]

March 2, 2008

I wanted to post here, for your convenience, some things that I have discussed with most of you. 

Your paper drafts are due on March 24, unless I give you an extension.  I am happy to meet with you prior to that time--just send me an email proposing some meeting times.  I will meet with each of you after I read your draft. 

Two other items: 

Please plan to hand in to me, at the end of the semester, not only your paper but the various unpublished documents you have collected as part of your research.  This can be paper copies or (better) pdf or word processing files.  These documents will be helpful to me as I read your paper, and may be incorporated in the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. 

In case you are interested, here is a draft paper I've just posted at SSRN.com It's similar to the litigation histories you are writing, in some ways, so I thought you might be interested in it: 

Schlanger, Margo, "Jail Strip-Search Cases: Patterns and Participants." Law and Contemporary Problems, Forthcoming Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1100278  

Feb. 6, 2008

As discussed in class, we'll have our class session on writing a litigation history and case study on Monday, 2/11, instead of two weeks later.  The reading, in the syllabus, is:

• Ed Stein, The Story of Goodridge v. Department of Public Health: The Bumpy Road to Marriage for Same-Sex Couples
• Vidhya Reddy, Indigent Defense Reform (2007).
• Margo Schlanger, Civil Rights Injunctions Over Time: A Case Study of Jail and Prison Court Orders, 81 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 550 (2006) (You can skip part II, except for II-D

That's quite a bit of reading, so I think I'll make my article optional.  Note that there's also a case study posted below, of the Tinsley case.  That's optional, too. 

Your literature review and case catalog are due on the 21st; you may wish to review this (previously posted) getting started memo, which describes both of them.  I don't have any preferences as to format, except that things should be easy to read.  Feel free to ask me any other questions by email or in class. 

Jan. 30, 2008

For anyone interested in more information about the Tinsley case we talked about in class, and an excellent example of a student-written case study, there is a case summary and lots of documents available for the case in the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse, here.  In addition, the case study, by Carolyn Hoecker, is here. 

For class this coming week, we'll meet in room 305, and the assignment will be as described in the syllabus:

Locating and researching unreported cases:

• Read:  Kenley Maddux, Research Pathfinder (2007)
• Internet searching
• Westlaw searching
• PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) in federal district court

For those of you working on federal case categories, you should register for PACER access in advance of the class.