This course aims to take Ellison's warning to heart and to bring law and history into a dialogue about race in the United States. More specifically, the course takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of anti-discrimination law in an effort to explore how that body of law has been shaped by social, political, and intellectual currents in United States history. Readings include equal protection cases from Plessy v. Ferguson , through Brown v. Board of Education , to Missouri v. Jenkins , as well as articles by historians and legal scholars such as John Locke, James Madison, Edmund Morgan, Gunnar Myrdal, Manning Marable, Eric Foner, Patricia Williams, and Derrick Bell. The final weeks of the course are spent placing recent developments in anti-discrimination law in a broader historical context. An examination of the responses of the courts and the legislatures to differential treatment of women and men.
Areas covered in depth are constitutional law, employment, and pregnancy discrimination.
Contrasts and similarities between race and sex discrimination are explored as well as questions of equal pay, job safety, and related areas. This course surveys legal issues impacting upon professional individual and team sports and amateur athletics. There will be a take-home final examination.