Immigration Law Courses

2 credits

This course will provide an overview of business immigration law, with a particular focus on how various federal administrative agencies are engaged in shaping a complex, multidisciplinary immigration law ecosystem for employers. In addition to a substantive overview of nonimmigrant and immigrant visa classifications throughout the course, we will explore how immigration laws are informed by, and overlap with, other key areas such as corporate and securities law, employment and labor law and tax law. Topics will include entity formation of new businesses; visa challenges in entrepreneurship; immigration obstacles faced by multinational businesses; immigration consequences of mergers and acquisitions; the intersection of business immigration with employment laws; enforcement trends targeted at employers; and the role of the IRS and tax laws in business immigration. We will also briefly review administrative law basics, explore the parameters of executive power in shaping business immigration law, and examine the plenary power of the President over immigration. Throughout the course, we will discuss how debates about outsourcing, unemployment and national security, among others, inform a complex national discussion about business immigration. We will also identify, examine and discuss core professional responsibility issues that arise in business immigration practice. There are no prerequisites for this course. There is no writing requirement, but there will be weekly quizzes and a final examination. Class attendance and participation are essential.

3 credits

Many of our most famous--and infamous--cases are procedural. Because procedural rules allow, or restrict, access to justice, procedure is a central pressure point in the struggle to eradicate structural inequality and oppression through the courts. This seminar will focus on the ways in which aspects of civil procedure decrease or perpetuate structural inequality for marginalized communities, especially regarding issues such as race, sex, gender, disability, nationality/immigration status, sexual orientation, and religion. We will read short, provocative essays to analyze which communities do, and do not, get a fair opportunity to have their claim or defense heard in court. From a critical perspective, we will engage in a discourse about the procedural, structural limitations on social justice. Another goal of this seminar is to explore a more complex view of our professional roles as attorneys. GRADING NOTICE: This class will not offer the CR/NC/H option. UPPER-CLASS WRITING REQUIREMENT: This class may not be used to satisfy the requirement. **A student who fails to attend the initial meeting of a seminar (designated by an (S) in the title), or to obtain permission to be absent from either the instructor or the Registrar, may be administratively dropped from the seminar. Students who are on a wait list for a seminar are required to attend the first seminar meeting to be considered for enrollment.

3 credits

This survey course provides an overview of the law concerning gender discrimination and gender equality. It will provide students with a foundation for understanding and evaluating how gender shapes and informs the law and how legal doctrine in a number of specific areas responds to problems of sex or gender discrimination. The course will address both the historical role of law in creating and maintaining forms of gender discrimination in basic social institutions and the efforts of activists, lawyers, and legal scholars to challenge such discrimination and secure equality through law. The course will introduce a variety of theoretical approaches to the study of gender and equality, as well as many substantive areas of law that implicate sex and gender. The course uses legal cases across a wide variety of subject matter areas in order to develop those theoretical frameworks, including constitutional law, employment discrimination law, family law, criminal law, education law, reproductive rights and justice, poverty law, and immigration. Those cases will include classic sex discrimination cases challenging the unequal treatment of women as well as newer cases challenging discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation as discrimination based on "sex." Through a series of "Putting Theory into Practice" problems, students will be able to test the application of such theoretical frameworks about gender and the law in numerous real-life situations, ranging from sports, the military, schools and campus life, television programming, assisted reproductive technology, parenting, the Affordable Care Act, and legal practice. Students will gain understanding of how the study of gender discrimination and equality enriches the study of law more generally. The course will also be a helpful building block for a variety of legal career paths. Student evaluation will be based on a final examination, short written responses to several "Putting Theory into Practice" problems, and class participation.

3 credits

THIS CLASS IS RESTRICTED to students who have formally applied to and been accepted to the Immigrants' Rights and Human Trafficking Program. In this seminar, students will further develop their trial advocacy and client counseling skills by participating in multiple simulations and a mock hearing. They will learn about comparative models to address human trafficking, and the challenges of a criminal justice framework to solving complex social problems. The course will focus on the lawyer's role in anti-trafficking work, given: (1) converging areas of law; (2) the emerging multi-disciplinary nature of legal work; and (3) tensions among the role of the client as both victim and defendant. Courses will focus on further developing students' competencies in the following areas: (1) strategic planning and decision-making; (2) client interviewing and counseling; (3) trial advocacy; (4) leadership and innovation; and (5) professional responsibility. Classes will focus on a wide range of topics, including: (1) oral advocacy; (2) direct and cross examination; (3) accompaniment and survivor-led advocacy; (4) legal advocacy and brief writing; (4) legislative advocacy; and (5) developing professional roles and self-care. NOTE: The Immigrants' Rights and Human Trafficking Program counts toward the 6 credit Experiential Learning requirement. GRADING NOTICE: This course does not offer the CR/NC/H option.

3 credits

THIS CLASS IS RESTRICTED to students who have formally applied to and been accepted to the Immigrants' Rights and Human Trafficking Program. Students have three fieldwork options: (1) concentration in immigrants' rights; (2) concentration in human trafficking; or (3) work on both types of cases. Students focusing on immigrants' rights will represent adult and children asylum seekers and other vulnerable noncitizens with the opportunity to litigate an immigration case in the Boston Immigration Court. Students focusing on anti-trafficking work will represent survivors of labor and sex trafficking in a wide range of civil matters and engage in policy-related work to address gaps in the local and national landscape. Students focusing on both immigrants' rights and human trafficking will represent immigrant clients and survivors of human trafficking in a range of civil matters. All students will have the opportunity to engage in immigrants' rights and human trafficking work through "Know-Your-Rights" visits at the local jail/detention center and by conducting intake at the Family Justice Center for human trafficking survivors. Students, working in pairs, assume the primary responsibility for multiple clients' complex cases, from start to finish. Students conduct client interviews, track down witnesses, speak with experts, develop documentary, testimonial and expert evidence, and write legal briefs. The clinical supervisors prepare students for their cases through weekly supervision meetings, mid-semester and final individual meetings, and mock hearings, as appropriate. NOTE: The Immigrants' Rights and Human Trafficking Program counts toward the 6 credit Experiential Learning requirement. PRE/CO-REQUISITE: Evidence. GRADING NOTICE: This course does not offer the CR/NC/H option.

3 credits

THIS CLASS IS RESTRICTED to students who have formally applied to and been accepted to the Immigrants' Rights and Human Trafficking Program. The seminar is the fall companion course for students enrolled in the Program. It provides a practice-oriented introduction to advocacy on behalf of indigent clients, including noncitizens and survivors of human trafficking. Students will develop a wide range of competencies with classes focusing topics including: (1) client interviewing and counseling; (2) case planning; (3) legal research and writing; (4) cultural competency; (5) legal story-telling and developing a theory of the case; (6) affidavit writing; (7) vicarious and secondary trauma; and (8) professional responsibility. Students will participate in class simulations, present in case rounds, and actively engage in facilitated discussions. There also will be two boot camp classes for students with specialized training in the following areas: (1) immigration law with a focus on asylum law and representing vulnerable noncitizens; and (2) human trafficking law with a focus on the protection framework in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and multi-disciplinary lawyering. NOTE: The Immigrants' Rights and Human Trafficking Program counts toward the 6 credit Experiential Learning requirement. GRADING NOTICE: This course does not offer the CR/NC/H option.

3 credits

THIS CLASS IS RESTRICTED to students who have formally applied to and been accepted to the Immigrants' Rights and Human Trafficking Program. In this seminar, students will further develop their trial advocacy skills by participating in multiple mock hearings and portions of simulated trials. In particular, this course will focus on developing students' competencies in the following topics: (1) witness preparation, including working with lay and expert witnesses; (2) oral advocacy, including direct/cross examination and opening and closing statements; (3) factual and legal research; (4) cross-cultural lawyering and implicit bias; (5) legal advocacy and brief writing; (6) basic negotiation; and (7) developing professional roles and identities. Students will also be introduced to the intersections between criminal and immigration law, and to law and organizing in the immigration context. NOTE: The Immigrants' Rights and Human Trafficking Program counts toward the 6 credit Experiential Learning requirement. GRADING NOTICE: This course does not offer the CR/NC/H option.

3 credits

This class will cover the immigration laws of the United States, including the administrative and regulatory framework of the United States agencies charged with enforcing U.S. immigration laws. The topics covered by this course include the power of the Congress to regulate immigration; the effect of politics on immigration policy; nonimmigrant and immigrant visa classifications; the law of asylum; the intersection of immigration law and criminal law; grounds of removal from the United States; relief from deportation, immigration court representation and access to justice; and the law of naturalization and derived citizenship.

3 credits

Recent census data informs us that there are approximately 40 million immigrants living in the United States. About 11 million of these immigrants are undocumented or otherwise in the country illegally. The rest of the country remains divided on their feelings regarding the immigrant population, with about half believing that immigrants "strengthen the country because of their hard work and talent, while 41% [believe them to be] a burden because they take jobs, health care and housing." (Information in this paragraph obtained from Most Illegal Immigrants Should Be Allowed to Stay, but Citizenship is More Divisive (Pew Research Ctr., Washington, D.C.), Mar. 28, 2013.) This course will investigate the life of an immigrant in American society from a legal perspective. Students will learn how immigrants, both documented and undocumented, interact with various sections of the American system. The goal is to assess various ways in which an individual's immigration status affects access to important rights and benefits accorded to citizens and analyze the legal rationale for existing limitations. We will examine these issues through the use of law review articles, court cases, existing and proposed legislation, newspaper articles, empirical studies, and governmental and private organizational position papers. Topics may include an investigation of an immigrant's access and limitations in primary and secondary education, public benefits, the court system, employment, voting, as well as modes of immigration policing by both federal immigration authorities and state police. ENROLLMENT LIMIT: 16 students. LIMITED WRITING REQUIREMENT OPTION: A limited number of students may be permitted to satisfy the upper-class writing requirement. ** A student who fails to attend the initial meeting of a seminar (designated by an (S) in the title), or to obtain permission to be absent from either the instructor or the Registrar, may be administratively dropped from the seminar. Students who are on a wait list for a seminar are required to attend the first seminar meeting to be considered for enrollment.