Welcome,
I conduct socio-legal research focused on how everyday people construct the law as material resources and through interpretative frameworks. This approach helps me get a better idea of how we are constituted by legality and how we constitute everyday life in formal law and in our daily routines and habits. This also helps me better teach law to undergraduate students at the community college.
Syllabus:Click here
Workbook
Click here for the workbook.
Presentations & Video Lectures
Presentation: 3 Narratives of Legality: Click
Course Problem: Homelessness
Video: Uneven Growth: click
Website: Anti-Eviction Mapping with Manon Vergerio: click
Website: Segregation Map: click
Exam Reading: Case Study: This is like a true story, a housing journey of “X”: Click here for the workbook.
Exam Assignment: Google Form:Click
Examine: Housing Justice Social Movement. Click here
Assignment: Google Form. Click
Weekly Graded Assignments
See Syllabus for Weekly Assignments.
Additional Suggested Readings:
Articles:
George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson “Broken Windows”: Click
Patricia-Hill Collins “Power of Self-Definition”: Click
bell hooks “Confronting Class”: click
Moyer, et al, “All Eyes Are on You: Gender, Race and opinion writing on the U.S. Court of Appeals”: Click
Charles R. Lawrence III “The First This Time Black Lives Matter, Abolitionist Pedagogy, and the Law” : Click
Jason M. Leggett “The Limits of Law: Courts, Health Care, and Patient Dumping” : Click
George Lakoff “Metaphor, Morality, and Politics, Or, Why Conservative Have Left Liberals in the Dust” : Click.
Additional Suggested Cases:
Callahan v. Carey: click
Johnson v. McIntosh: Click
Marshall Trilogy Cases: Click
Wickard v. Filburn: Click
Learning Outcomes
1. Property-first constitutional narratives re-inforce social exclusion based on race, gender, and class.
2. Broken windows theory represents one dominant cultural view of how society should be organized to the detriment of minority representations.
3. White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant views are over-represented in judicial opinions; these court cases influence how all Americans think about rights, social control, crime, and liberty.
4. Homelessness = racial capitalism + gentrification + displacement + criminalization.
5. Legal narratives describe a “double-edge” sword that both re-inforce domination and provoke resistance.
6. Social Institutions influence how we tell stories about legality, constitutions, and social change: Education, Family, Religion, Education.
Final Prep