Teaching Poverty Law

This semester I’m teaching Poverty Law at Seattle U. Law. It has been a fun and challenging task to put together a syllabus and decide what should be included in a class covering such a broad topic. So much of what is taught in law school I would consider rich people’s law and so much of what poverty lawyers do in the day-to-day is not covered in law school courses or tested on the bar exam. Trying to create a class that might address all the enormous constant legal issues faced by poor people (eviction, criminalization, child welfare, public assistance, old age benefits, immigration, low-wage work, Medicaid, consumer rights, credit, gentrification, etc.) and all the ways that the law structures our economic relations to create poverty is daunting. More than that, I feel like what most law students who want to do social justice work really need to learn that they won’t get enough of in law school is how to think and talk about race, how to understand the ways that legal reform often strengthens and legitimizes systems of oppression, how to work in groups and collaborate, how to evaluate their own privilege, how to think about big transformative social change and what role if any lawyers have in it, how to use intersectional analysis to think about poverty in terms of race, gender, immigration status and disability simultaneously and how to understand capitalism, imperialism and genocide as the underlying structures of our legal system. It is hard to know how to make some of these things happen, or start them, while also covering some of the big famous cases they are expected to learn in a class like this. I thought I would share with all of you my syllabus from this semester which shows some of the balances I have tried to strike. I am sad that there is not more material on this syllabus about surveillance, immigration and the War on Terror, so I have been working that into each class period’s discussions and also created some paper assignments focused on it. I would be excited to hear about other people’s experiences of doing teaching about this topic in any context (high school, community classes, etc.) I also recommend two additional tools that I have found useful and which are accessible for many different kinds of learning environments: the DVD “Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?” and the Racial Wealth Divide Toolkit available from United for a Fair Economy. Below is my syllabus. I welcome suggestions.

POVERTY LAW
Fall 2008
Dean Spade

SYLLABUS

Description

This course aims to create a critical dialogue about the role of law in structuring wealth inequality and remedying such inequality. The interdisciplinary course materials that we will be using throughout the semester have been selected to assist students in engaging in critical analysis about the roles of capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and ablism in structuring law, as well as law’s role in structuring those systemic conditions. The course will explore both specific questions and histories concerning public benefits, disaster relief, housing, imprisonment, immigration and other legal issues facing low-income populations as well as broad questions about how we might conceptualize the role of law reform in social movements aimed at redistributing wealth and life chances.

Reading Questions

When engaging the readings, whether cases, articles, policies or personal narratives, in addition to your other inquiries it will assist you in preparing for class discussion if you consider the following questions:

Ø How does the writer understand power, social change and the economy?

Ø How does the writer define or explain poverty?

Ø What does the writer think should be done about the concerns s/he is identifying, both immediately and more broadly? What should the world look like for this writer?

Ø Who is the writer speaking to? Who is s/he disagreeing with or responding to?

Schedule

Week 1 August 26, 28

Stephen Loffredo, Poverty, Inequality and Class in the Structural Constitutional Law Course, 34 Fordham Urb. L.J. 1239 (2007)

Vijay Prashad, Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses: Debt, Prison, Workfare (2003), Chapter 1 “Debt.”

From What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and the State of the Nation please read Kalamu ya Salaam,”Introduction: Below the Water Line,” Charmaine Neville, “How We Survived the Flood,” Malik Rahim, “This is Criminal,” Jared Sexton, “The Obscurity of Black Suffering.”

Week 2 September 2, 4

Cheryl Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” in Critical Race Studies: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement, (eds. Crenshaw et al.) (1996)

Alan Freeman, “Legitimizing Racial Discrimination Through Anti-Discrimination Law: A Critical Review of Supreme Court Doctrine,”in Critical Race Studies: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement, (eds. Crenshaw et al.) (1996)

Andrea Smith, “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy: Rethinking Women of Color Organizing,” in Color of Violence (ed. Incite!) (2006)

Week 3 September 9, 11

San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973)

James v. Valtierra, 402 U.S. 137 (1971)

Richard Kaplan, “Economic Inequality and the Role of Law,” 101 Mich. L. Rev. 1987 (2003).

Week 4, September 16, 18

Angela Harris, “From Stonewall to the suburbs?: Toward a political economy of sexuality,” 14 William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal, 1539 (2006).

To Render Ourselves Visible by Alisa Bierra, Mayaba Liebenthal and Incite! in What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and the State of the Nation.

Week 5 September 23, 25

Michel Foucault, “Governmentality”

Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”

Mariana Valverde “Geneologies of European States: Foucauldian Reflections,” 36 Economy and Society 159 (2007)

Week 6 September 30

Willse, Craig (guest speaker in class 9/30) “Universal Data Elements,” or the Biopolitical Life of Homeless Populations, available at http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles5(3)/universal.pdf

Week 7 October 7, 9

Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare, Chapters 1, 8 and 10

Kenneth J. Neubeck and Noel A. Cazenave, Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card Against America’s Poor, Chapter 2, “Conceptualizing Welfare Racism”

Week 8 October 14, 16

Wyman v. James, 400 U.S. 309 (1971)

Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970)

Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U. S. 471 (1970)

Shapiro v. Thompson 394 U.S. 618 (1969)

Regulating the Poor, Chapter 12.

Week 9 October 21, 23

Regulating the Poor, Chapter 11.

Noah D. Zatz, What Welfare Requires from Work, 54 U.C.L.A. L. Rev. 373 (2006)

Steven Greenhouse, Many Participants in Workfare Take the Place of City Workers, N.Y TIMES, Apr. 13, 1998, at A1.

Barie v. Lavine, 357 N.E.2d 349 (N.Y. 1976).

United States v. City of New York, 359 F.3d 83 (2d Cir. 2004).

Week 10 October 28, 30

Joseph P. Shapiro, No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement, Chapter 2 “From Charity to Independent Living”

Eli Clare, Exile and Pride, excerpt

Disability in the New World Order, Norma Erevelles

Cleveland v. Policy Management Sys. Corp., 526 U.S. 795 (1999)

Brevard Achievement Center, 342 NLRB No. 101, 175 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 1329 (2004)

Samuel R. Bagenstos, The Future of Disability Law, 114 Yale L.J. 1 (2004)

Week 11 November 4, 6

Spade, Dean, “Compliance is Gendered,” in Transgender Rights (ed. Currah, Minter, Juang)

Blum, Perina and Defilipis, “Why Welfare is a Queer Issue,” 26 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 201 (2000).

Reynolds v. Giuliani, 35 F. Supp. 2d 331 (S.D.N.Y. 1999).

Alex Vitale, City of Disorder, excerpt

Optional reading: Gwendolyn Mink, Welfare’s End, 1-32, 3-140

Week 12 November 13

Materials regarding poverty lawyering and challenges to Legal Aid funding, excerpted from Nice and Trubeck textbook. Guest Speaker Ada Shen-Jaffe.

Week 13 November 18, 20

Angela Davis, “Are Prisons Obsolete?” Chapters 1, 2, 3.

Patricia Allard, “Crime, Punishment and Economic Violence” in Color of Violence (ed. Incite!)

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “Globalisation and US Prison Growth: From Military Keynesianism to post-Keynesian Militarism.” Race & Class 1999: 40; 171

Week 14 Nov 25

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded (ed. INCITE!):
Chapter 1: The Political Logic of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, by Dylan Rodríguez
Chapter 2: In The Shadow of the Shadow State, by Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Chapter 4: Democratizing American Philanthropy, by Christine E. Ahn
Chapter 10: Social Service or Social Change?, by Paul Kivel
Chapter 15: Non-Profits and the Autonomous Grassroots, by Eric Tang

Week 15, December 2, 4

Rinku Sen, Stir It Up, excerpts

Dean Spade and Rickke Mananzala, “Trans Resistance and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex”

 

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