Race and Indigeneity Course Requirement

As a requirement for graduation, students must complete a minimum of 2 credits in a course including substantial content relating to race and indigeneity, structural inequity, and the historical bases for such inequity. This requirement is designed to prepare students to serve as competent members of the legal profession.

Learning Goals:

To enable students to understand and interrogate historical and contemporary conceptions of race, ethnicity, racial formation, indigeneity, settler colonialism, and racial justice;
To familiarize students with the history of migrations of peoples to California and the broader United States and the effects of law on those migrations;
To enable students to understand and interrogate theories, concepts, and critiques (such as intersectionality, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and liberalism) that may be applied to the analysis and interpretation of legal doctrines, concepts, and court cases; and
To enable students to understand and interrogate the practical applications of different theoretical lenses to legal rights, legal remedies, and policy decisions

Current Course Roster (2025-2026):

Asian Americans & the Law (Fall 2025)
Education Equity Seminar (Fall 2025)
Indigenous Sovereignty in the Federal System (Spring 2026)
Race & the Law (Fall 2025)
Race, Law & Capitalism (Spring 2026)
Race, Law, and Criminal Justice (Spring 2026)
The Law of Debt (Fall 2025)
Work, Law, & Society (Spring 2026)

Course Roster (2024-2025):

Centering CA in the History of Race & the Law (Fall 2024 and Spring 2025)
Critical Identity Theory (Fall 2024)
Critical Race Theory (Spring 2025)
GUILT: Gendered Understandings in Law and Legal Theory (Spring 2025)
Race, Law & Capitalism (Spring 2025)
The Law of Debt (Fall 2024)
Toward Abolition Democracy: Law, Lawyers, and Social Movements (Fall 2024)
Tribal Nations and the Law (Fall 2024)
Work, Law, & Society (Spring 2025)

Course Roster (2023-2024):

Centering CA in the History of Race & the Law (Spring 2024)
Critical Identity Theory (Fall 2023)
Critical Race Theory (Spring 2024)
Finding Freedom: Racial Justice in the Criminal Legal System (Spring 2024)
GUILT: Gendered Understandings in Law and Legal Theory (Spring 2024)
Race & the Law (Fall 2023)
Tribal Nations and the Law (Fall 2023)
Work, Law, & Society (Spring 2024)

Course Roster (2022-2023):

C.A.S.S.T.E - Critical Approaches to Subjectivity, Solidarities & Theories of Equality (Fall 2022)
Centering CA in the History of Race & the Law (Spring 2023)
Critical Identity Theory (Spring 2023)
GUILT: Gendered Understandings in Law and Legal Theory (Spring 2023)
Law and Social Movements (Fall 2022)
Policing in the United States (Fall 2022)
Race & the Law (Spring 2023)
Race, Law & Capitalism (Spring 2023)

Course Criteria Questions:

How does this course help us understand axes of inequality, the role of law in producing inequality, and the potential for legal change through law?
How does the course expand students’ understandings of the relationship between law, race, ethnicity, and indigeneity?
How does the course contribute to understandings of substantive legal doctrines and their development?
How does the material contribute to an ability to understand and work in a complex, dynamic, multi-racial and multi-ethnic context with significant regional differences and histories?
How does the material help students understand the tensions between/among different groups?
How does this course prepare students to talk about race, ethnicity, racism, and racial inequality (as well as other axes of social difference) without defensiveness or overwhelming discomfort?
How does this course prepare students to develop relationships with clients, third parties, and the state across terrains marked by inequality?

Thanks to Professor Kaaryn Gustafson and Professor Jamelia Morgan (Northwestern Pritzker School of Law) for their work on these learning goals and course criteria.