Study

This course critically assesses the international and domestic laws, institutions, and legal and political theories that relate to protecting the fundamental liberties of all human beings. The course emphasizes (1) specific "hot button" topics within international human rights law, such as extraordinary renditions, hate speech, and lesbian and gay rights); (2) the judicial, legislative, and executive bodies that interpret and implement human rights; and (3) the public and private actors who commit rights violations and who seek redress for individuals whose rights have been violated. Course requirements include a final exam, a negotiation exercise, and student participation in class discussions.

Note on scheduling for Fall 2023:
To accommodate Professor Helfer’s responsibilities as a member of the UN Human Rights Committee, which meets in Geneva, Switzerland in October 2023, several class meetings will need to be canceled, rescheduled or held on Zoom.  Additional information will be provided prior to the first class meeting.

Working for social justice is an important part of the professional obligations of all lawyers, and for many law students, their initial motivation for pursuing a legal education. This course is designed to introduce students to the ways in which lawyers committed to social justice engage with communities, individual clients, social and political causes and legal systems to help effect social change. We will examine the types of lawyers working toward social justice, the ways in which lawyers help shape claims in social justice cases, and finally, how lawyers use their skills and training to engage in political struggles and movements to achieve social justice for the communities, causes, or individual clients that they represent.

Through readings, discussion, and independent studies of legal cases and movements in social justice, students will explore different models of social justice lawyering and the barriers present both in the representation of under-served communities and in pursuing a career in public interest law. Students will also have an opportunity to explore more deeply how they plan to be a lawyer engaged in social justice work, either in their pro bono or full-time future practice.

A study of how law regulates intimate adult relationships and relationships between parents and children. We will discuss constitutional and statutory rights and restrictions on marriage, adult relationships, adoption, parentage, child custody, dissolution of adult relationships, and financial support for children. We will explore the evolution of family law in relation to racial and gender equality and consider issues of socioeconomic inequality and access to justice.  Grading is based on a final examination and class participation. 

The International Human Rights Clinic provides students with an opportunity to critically engage with human rights issues, strategies, tactics, institutions, and law in both domestic and international settings. Through the weekly seminar and fieldwork, students will develop practical tools for human rights advocacy—such as fact-finding, litigation, indicators, reporting, and messaging—that integrate inter-disciplinary methods and maximize the use of new technologies. Students will also develop core competencies related to managing trauma in human rights work, as well as the ethical and accountability challenges in human rights lawyering. Types of clinic projects include those that: apply a human rights framework to domestic issues; involve human rights advocacy abroad; engage with international institutions to advance human rights; and/or address human rights in U.S. foreign policy. Students work closely with local organizations, international NGOs, and U.N. human rights experts and bodies. Students are required to have taken Human Rights Advocacy (offered only in the Fall) as a pre-requisite or co-requisite. There is no ethics requirement for this course. Some travel will likely be involved. Student project teams will also meet at least once a week with the clinic instructors. Students work on clinic projects for a minimum of either 100 or 125 hours of clinical work during the semester. This course may not be dropped after the first class meeting.

Enrollment Pre-/Co- Requisite Information

Students are required to have taken Human Rights Advocacy (offered only in the Fall) as either a pre-requisite or co-requisite. LL.M. students are eligible for enrollment in the Clinic in the Spring semester with instructor permission and should contact Prof. Huckerby to discuss eligibility requirements.

The Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic is an interdisciplinary clinic that represents non-profit community-based and environmental organizations throughout the region to address a wide variety of environmental concerns in a variety of different venues. Students work in interdisciplinary teams and engage directly with clients to develop legal and advocacy strategies, conduct site-based assessments, develop legislative and regulatory proposals, and participate in community outreach and education efforts. Students also may engage in litigation, regulatory, and policy proceedings as case needs dictate. Skills training is conducted in weekly seminars and case management meetings and emphasizes client counseling, legal and policy advocacy, networking and working with experts. Although the mix of topics addressed varies among semesters, common themes include environmental justice, climate change, water quality, natural resources conservation, endangered species protection, sustainable agriculture, public trust resources, and environmental health. Clinic faculty make an effort to honor student preferences for case assignments, consistent with case needs and each student’s objectives for professional growth and development.

Clinic Enrollment and Credit Policies

To enroll, law students must have completed their 1L year; Nicholas School students may enroll after their first semester with permission from the clinic's directors. International LLM students may enroll during their second semester with permission from the clinic's directors. Variable credit (4-6 hours) is allowed for law students with permission from the clinic’s directors.

Although not a prerequisite, students are encouraged to have completed Environmental Law, Ocean and Coastal Law and Policy, and/or Administrative Law prior to enrollment.

Ethics Requirement for Law Students

Students are required to have instruction in the Model Rules of Professional Conduct prior to, or during, enrollment in the Environmental Law and Policy Clinic. Examples of ethics classes that meet the requirement include Ethics in Action: Large Firm Practice (LAW 231), Ethics of Social Justice Lawyering (LAW 237), Ethics and the Law of Lawyering (LAW 238), Ethics and the Law of Lawyering in Civil Litigation (LAW 239), Criminal Justice Ethics (LAW 317) and Ethics in Action (LAW 539).

Important to Note: This course may not be dropped after the first class meeting. Students MUST be able to attend the day-long clinic intensive training session to enroll in this course.

The Wrongful Convictions Clinic pursues plausible claims of legal and factual innocence made by incarcerated people in North Carolina convicted of serious felonies. 

Students in the clinic study the causes of wrongful convictions, including mistaken eyewitness identification, false confessions, faulty forensic evidence, “jailhouse snitches,” and race. Student-attorneys work under the supervision of faculty to develop, manage, and litigate cases by carrying out a wide range of legal activities, including communicating with our clients, locating and interviewing witnesses about facts, gathering documents and records, drafting a range of legal documents and memos, working with experts, and helping to prepare for evidentiary hearings and oral arguments in state and federal courts. Most clinic cases do not involve DNA.

Many former students describe their time in the clinic, working to exonerate individuals incarcerated for crimes they didn't commit, as their most rewarding experience during law school.

This course critically assesses the field of human rights advocacy, its institutions, strategies, and key actors. It explores how domestic, regional, and global human rights agendas are set using international law frameworks; the ethical and accountability dilemmas that arise in human rights advocacy; and human rights advocacy concerning a range of actors, including governments, international institutions, and private actors. It addresses the role of human rights in social movements, including in addressing systemic racism, as well as the development of transnational human rights networks. It also considers issues such as how to resolve purported hierarchies and conflicts between internationally-guaranteed rights, efforts to decolonize the practice of human rights, and the ways in which populist and other forces also invoke human rights to further particular agendas. Drawing on case studies within the United States and abroad, it will examine core human rights advocacy tactics, such as fact-finding, litigation, standard-setting, indicators, and reporting, and consider the role of new technologies in human rights advocacy. In examining the global normative framework for human rights, this course focuses on how local, regional, and international struggles draw on, and adapt, the norms and tactics of human rights to achieve their objectives. Evaluation will be based on class participation and a final paper.

This class is a pre-requisite or corequisite for Law 437 International Human Rights Clinic.

Urban Legal History is a research seminar which will focus on the legal issues relating to Durham's political, social, and economic development. The class will involve intensive study of primary and secondary materials, and will require students to produce substantial (45 page) research papers.

This course will examine the social, political, and legal forces that shape race relations in the United States. Students will engage competing visions of racial equality through law by examining major civil rights issues such as affirmative action, voting rights, and mass incarceration. This course will also highlight the limitations of law in racial reform and will consider the ways in which law can perpetuate race, gender, and class hierarchies. The course’s readings will draw from a wide range of interdisciplinary materials. Evaluation will be based on class participation and an examination.

This three-credit integrated externship will immerse students in the theory, practice, and politics of Movement Lawyering.  The course proceeds in two parts: a weekly seminar and partner work.  In the seminar, students learn the foundations and tactics of movement activism and discover how lawyers work with social movements to build power and create change.  In the partner work portion, students are paired with lawyers and organizers from around the Southeast to produce legal analyses, policy papers, legislative reviews, rapid response documents, outreach materials, and more, with a special emphasis on racial and reproductive justice.  Past and current projects include:

• Data collection and analysis on local police budgets
• Legal research on the viability of decarcerating people imprisoned during the War on Drugs
• Background research for a bill outlawing unauthorized pelvic exams in teaching hospitals
• Drafting a policy paper on the family policing system (often called the foster care system) and convening a working group
• Compiling geographic and demographic information for a project on infrastructure justice and food apartheid

Course enrollment is by application.  Students interested in applying for the course should submit their CV and an approximately one-paragraph statement of interest about their background and why they would like to enroll in the course. For the Spring 2024 semester, statements should be sent to Professor Anne Gordon (agordon@law.duke.edu), no later than 5 pm on November 3.

This two-credit seminar will examine the extent to which the criminalization of abortion in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), together with 21st century surveillance, compromises or eliminates the physical, decisional, and informational privacy of women and people who can become pregnant.

We will review the history of the Supreme Court’s contraception and abortion cases and carefully read Dobbs. We will learn about the historical criminalization of abortion and pregnancy outcomes in the US and related surveillance. We will then examine current state laws criminalizing abortion, defining a fetus as a person, and creating civil liability schemes, and discuss how these laws affect privacy. We will learn about the laws that protect (and fail to protect) privacy in our modern information economy and consider the ways privacy law intersects with abortion law. In this context, we will consider both commercial surveillance and surveillance by law enforcement.  Other topics will include: the privacy implications of medication abortion and the current litigation that threatens its continued availability in the US; the extent to which providers, aiders and abettors, and women who self-manage abortion may be subject to prosecution in ban states; the increasing legal conflicts between shield states and ban states; the effects of criminalization on the privacy of the physician-patient relationship and the associated disincentives for seeking reproductive health care; the implications of laws purporting to control, limit or prohibit access to or dissemination of information about abortion in ban states; and attempts to affect or restrict individuals’ movement within and between states to obtain care.

Both privacy and abortion law are rapidly changing environments in the United States, and attention to current developments in both arenas will be part of the class. We will make every effort to address and incorporate developments as they occur. Assignments will include interactive online comments and responses about the readings, a research project and presentation on the developing law in a particular state, and a writing assignment. There is no final exam.

This course is not open to students who took Law 611.45 - Readings: Privacy in a Post-Dobbs World in Fall 2022.

This two credit course will examine the role race has played since the birth of the United States in driving immigration policy both in terms of who is permitted to enter the United States and who is targeted for detention and removal. Topics will include the Chinese Exclusion Act, the national origin quota system, Japanese internment, the Bracero program, post-9/11 registration, expansion of immigration enforcement through the criminal justice system, border policy, and the narratives constructed around Latinx, Black, Asian, and White immigration. We will also analyze the roles Congress, the executive branch, the courts, and the public have played in creating and responding to these policies. Students will be required to engage with written and other documentary material through drafting regular blog posts, commenting on other students’ posts, and a final substantive research paper.

Students must take this course, or U.S. Immigration and Nationality Law (LAW 351), prior to or during enrollment in the Immigrant Rights Clinic