Established doctrine is under siege. Students advocate for reproductive health care providers and their patients, learning the vital importance of client confidentiality, as well as the impact of political movement strategy and management of press and public messaging.For litigation matters, students work in small teams representing reproductive health care providers and/or patients in cases being handled by attorneys at national organizations. Projects and case assignments will vary according to the posture of the cases, but all will require top-notch legal research, analysis, and writing, as well as strategy meetings with team members. Some cases involve trial level work, including informal fact development, drafting pleadings, discovery, motion practice, and negotiations. Other matters involve appellate briefing.Students also have an opportunity to develop non-litigation skills by undertaking non-litigation matters involving legislative and regulatory work, public education, and strategic planning, at the federal, state, and local level.

Challenging Mass Incarceration Clinic. In the field work, students represent clients in two types of cases: federal sentencing proceedings and Connecticut state parole hearings. Students will learn advocacy strategies aimed at mitigating or ameliorating their clients’ punishment, both prospectively during sentencing and retrospectively during post-conviction proceedings.

…work on innovative policy proposals in collaboration with a network of NGOs interested in food system reform. … Students … will work with faculty, outside experts, and non-governmental organizations to develop innovative litigation and legislative initiatives to bring systemic change to the global food industry, which is one of the top contributors to climate change, animal suffering, human exploitation, and environmental degradation worldwide. The Lab’s primary focus areas for 2022-23 include litigation to address GHG emissions from industrial agriculture and legislative models to hold industrial food producers accountable for the currently uncounted, externalized costs of industrial agriculture.

At least four other claims about “everyday resistance” will be examined. First, that most social movement organizations are the result of the accumulation and coalescence of “everyday resistance.” Second, that the accumulation of widespread and numerous acts of everyday resistance can precipitate quasi-revolutionary change. Third, that generalized forms of everyday resistance imply and rely upon a shared sense of justice and rights to be effective. Fourth, that open protest, when crushed, is likely to devolve into less dangerous forms of everyday resistance.

The course will explore the ways that laws can enforce and/or redress different forms of inequality. (This course is not an introduction to antidiscrimination law.) In exploring inequality along lines of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and class, we will consider equal protection doctrine and classic antidiscrimination law as well as other bodies of law.

The San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project (SFALP) is a partnership between Yale Law School and the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office. SFALP students work with San Francisco Deputy City Attorneys to conceive, develop, and litigate some of the most innovative public-interest lawsuits in the country—lawsuits that tackle problems with local dimensions but national effects. SFALP has worked on a wide variety of issues, including consumer protection, nuisance abatement, wage theft, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, reproductive rights, Internet privacy, healthcare, housing, environmental protection, fairness in arbitration, childhood health and nutrition, payday lending, and access to legal services for immigrants.