Nondiscrimination Policy
The University of Virginia is committed to equal opportunity and affirmative action. To fulfill this commitment, the university administers its programs, procedures, and practices without regard to age, color, disability, marital status, national or ethnic origin, political affiliation, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, veteran status, or family medical or genetic information and operates both affirmative action and equal opportunity programs consistent with resolutions of the Board of Visitors and with federal and state requirements, including the Governor's Executive Order on Equal Opportunity. The university's policies on "Preventing and Addressing Discrimination and Harassment" and "Preventing and Addressing Retaliation" implement this statement. The Office of Equal Opportunity Programs has complaint procedures to address alleged violations of these policies.
Student Organization Contact Information
Lambda Law Alliance
Contact:
Chase Cooper
President
E-mail: cjc3ab@virginia.edu
Faculty Contact Information
Professor Daniel R. Ortiz
Phone: 434.924.3127
E-mail: dortiz@virginia.edu
Administrator Contact Information
None
Course Titles and/or Descriptions
- Civil Liberties: The seminar is a survey and discussion of selected contemporary problems in civil liberties, using both case law (largely Supreme Court) and contemporary writings as base materials. The topics for this fall's classes will be the interplay between rights of privacy and freedom of speech, religious liberty, academic freedom, sexual orientation and civil liberties, terrorism and civil liberties, and alcohol and drug abuse. There is some overlap with Constitutional Law II, as to both subject matter and particular cases addressed.
- Criminal Law and the Regulation of Vice: This is a course in legal theory which focuses on the history, politics, and policy shifts in six areas usually regarded as "vice crimes": disapproved sexual behavior, gambling, pornography, illicit drugs, prostitution, and alcohol. The crimes in question have traditionally been viewed as "victimless" and prosecuted primarily for purposes of enforcing morality—leading to prosecutions for homosexual sodomy or importuning, polygamy, or bookmaking. Today, the idea that they are victimless or immoral is hotly contested. Many legal commentators and practitioners have turned instead to arguments about their harm or lack of harm, and about harm reduction as a way to address this category of crimes. As a result, over the past half century, huge changes in law and law enforcement practices have been common in this area, and not all in the same direction. Decriminalization is common for gambling and pornography, but a "war on drugs" increased the prison population from drug-related crimes ten-fold in the United States during the last generation. Why? Are there differences of principle or only of politics informing radically different recent events and transnational variations? What do the differences between these areas of enforcement tell us about our social choices and values? And what do they tell us about the just limits on punishment? In this course, we will explore these questions by focusing on the legal, empirical, and theoretical dimensions surrounding "vice crimes." We will probe the legal requirements for regulation and the empirical reality of the practices, as well as the theoretical debates about prohibiting these activities and the ramifications of criminal enforcement.
- Education Law, Policy, and Inequality: This course considers law and policy pertaining to elementary, secondary, and higher education. It is not a general survey course; rather, this course focuses on how educational systems respond to inequality. Issues of race, gender, and class, which dominate legal and policy discussions of educational inequality, are the most prominent features of the course. Within that context, topics include school desegregation; school finance; school choice; parochial education; charter schools; schools targeting students based on sex, race, or sexual orientation; standardized testing; the No Child Left Behind Act; affirmative action in higher education; and market-driven models of higher education. In addition to constitutional and statutory law, course materials include readings in educational theory, history, and sociology.
- Gender and Legal Theory: The seminar will explore a range of theories that attempt to define sex, gender, and sexual orientation, and to explain how those constructs are and should be treated by law. We will consider each theory on its own merits, and we will compare and contrast them with each other. Does the theory offer an effective description of these important identity characteristics, and does the theory offer an effective way to understand, criticize, and/or revise the manner in which our legal system goes about the business of achieving social justice for men and women? The main focus of the seminar is not legal doctrine, though we will read and evaluate some cases. Rather, most of our readings will consist of theoretical texts, some written by legal scholars and others by philosophers, political theorists, and cultural critics. We will delve into feminist legal theory, queer theory, and masculinity studies.
- Law, Literature, and the Family: The family is a unique institution in that it is sometimes said to be pre- or extra-legal, and yet it also is profoundly shaped by law. In order to identify the meaning and value of family, therefore, it is necessary to explore its construction in both legal and nonlegal texts, and to consider, among other things, the ways in which the sources conflict with or reinforce each other. In this seminar, we will examine the ways in which family is defined, represented, and regulated by legal texts and literary ones. Our main objectives will be to develop an understanding of the legal construction of the family, both as a means of recognizing existing social structures and as a mechanism for regulating individuals and groups, and to consider those aspects of family that elude law or, more prosaically, that cannot be reduced to legal concepts. Readings will include a variety of texts, including cases, statutes, novels, short stories, films, and theoretical articles. Through these texts, we will explore such topics as the historical foundations of the family in our culture, gender relations within the family, slave families, the relationship between family and citizenship, gay families, polygamous families, family dissolution, state support for impoverished families, and more.
- Regulating Public Space in Historical and Theoretical Perspective: This seminar will explore how law creates public space and how legal and nonlegal actors police, regulate, and contest it. The course brings both historical and theoretical perspectives to bear on street-level crime control strategies, including the uses and abuses of vagrancy, stop-and-frisk, drug possession, and gang loitering laws. Other topics include the problems of panhandling and homelessness, the rights of individuals to speak in public spaces, and the ways in which land use laws are used to control deviance. The course considers the classes of persons—including racial minorities, people with disabilities, and gays and lesbians—who have historically been the targets of street-level disorder campaigns and how those groups have resisted or complied. The course will involve close reading of legal, historical, and sociological materials.
- Religion, Democracy, and Law: This seminar will explore the proper role of religious convictions in a liberal democracy. The first few weeks of the seminar will provide a general overview of the contemporary debate on whether citizens and public officials have duties to refrain from relying on religious beliefs in political and legal decision-making. After this introduction, each session will be devoted to an intensive discussion of an article drawn from the philosophical and legal literature (with selected topics including, e.g., abortion, homosexuality, evolution, blasphemy, public education, and civil disobedience). For each session, designated students will be required to criticize or defend the article in question.
- Rights, Bills of Right, Constitutions: The Americanization of Britain? Until 2000, the United Kingdom did not possess a Bill of Rights enforceable in the courts. The passage of the Human Rights Act of 1998 was contentious, even though Britain had 50 years before largely created the European Convention on Human Rights that HRA 1998 incorporated into British law. It was (and to some degree still is) widely believed that Britain had no need to incorporate the Convention into domestic law, and that it was impossible to entrench rights in British law due to the absence of a written constitution. This short course explains why the British obsession with the "sovereignty of parliament" made incorporation difficult; why politicians, judges, and academic observers were hostile to expanding judicial review of government and parliament; why they changed their minds; what the impact of the Human Rights Act has been over the past seven years; and what may happen next. The course will involve some jurisprudence as well as the analysis of interesting recent cases on freedom of religion, sexual self-expression, the rights of suspected terrorists, and the right to a fair trial. The British government has recently proposed a number of further constitutional changes; together they raise the question of whether Britain will come to resemble the United States—and in what respects.
- Sexuality and the Law: This seminar will explore the role of the law in constructing identity and conduct around sexuality, particularly for women, children, and sexual minorities. The course will cover a variety of legal issues at the forefront of the feminist and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) rights movements. These include criminalization of sexual activity, discrimination and harassment in employment and education, and family relationships, as well as distinct challenges to the transgender community and to children. Discussions will be framed by both theoretical approaches to sexuality and sexual identity and the politics of LGBT advocacy work. We will consider the ways in which assumptions about morality, gender, and race shape the law's approach to sexuality; examine the relationship between feminism, sexual orientation and gender identity, and sexual rights; and reevaluate the goals and strategies of the LGBT movement. There will be an emphasis on constitutional doctrines, including equal protection, due process, privacy, and freedom of speech and association.
Domestic Partnership Benefits
None
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