LAW 7225 :
Race & Law: Asian Am Exp

Separation of childre from their parents at the border, prosecutions of Asian American scietists for trade secret theft, the quarantine of persons allegedly infected with a virus of Asian origin all have their roots in American jurisprudence involving Asian Pacific American communities, including the immigration exclusion cases, the Japanese American internment cases, and the citizenship exclusion decisions. Although the Asian Pacific Americans represented some forty-five different ethnicities and one hundred thirty different languages, the American courts treaated them all with the same broad brush over more than one hundred fifty years. How did it happen and what is the jurisprudential legacy of such decisions in the courts across the U.S.? This course will explore this question through a discussion of prior race-based precedence along with an application to present day social, legal, and political-economic issues. This course will also discuss how racial considerations insinuate themselves into court decisions, through institutionalization of racial subjugation, and how to better identify implicit bias in legal decisions across a gamut of socio and political economic policies.

Exam Info: No Exam. Two or three short papers (5-7 pages). Focus on how to write cogently and concisely like a practitioner.