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Race, Gender and the Law
Prof. Frank Rudy Cooper,
3 credits day; 3 credits evening.
This class explores how people‘s racial, gender, and other identities influence how law is
created, enforced, and experienced. Using case analyses and sociological essays, the class is an
opportunity to think critically about the relationship between identity formation and the
construction of legal meanings. We will consider emerging and controversial practices such as
racial profiling, which is the law enforcement technique of targeting people with certain
identities. The recent Henry Louis Gates arrest shows the degree of emotion generated by the
intersection of law and identities. A premise of this course is that while our visible identity
characteristics have no necessary effect on our personalities, they do have material effects on
how we are treated. How we perform our race (signaled through our behavior, dress, etc.), be it
majority or minority, and our gender, be it masculine or feminine, reflects how we think about
ourselves but also influences how the law treats our claims. Sex orientation, class, ethnicity and
other identities operate similarly. Indeed, the United States, as a country of immigrants, has long
confronted (though not always successfully) these and related issues. Moreover, identities are
multidimensional in that the intersection of, say, race and gender, creates a unique experience
that differs from that of others of the same race but not the same gender, and vice versa. This
course also explores the argument that identities are co-constituted with law. That is, we bring
our pre-formed identities to our interpretations of and interactions with the law, but how the law
treats us simultaneously influences how we understand our identities. In addition to showing how
identities are multidimensional and co-constituted with law, this course will provide students
with a rigorous writing experience that satisfies the school‘s upper-level writing requirement.
The course will train students in how to conduct research on topics merging law and identity,
write an effective outline, turn an outline into a draft, present the draft for discussion, and edit the
draft to create a polished paper. Grading will consider class participation and a final essay.
Enrollment is limited: 20
Elective Course
On List of Recommended Perspectives Courses
May Fulfill Legal Writing Requirement
Final Paper Required