Created by Professors Charles Sabeland James S. Liebman, this course examines new strategies for reforming public institutions through law, and investigates prior and current practices of "public interest" lawyers and the limits of and alternatives to litigation and other adversarial practices by such lawyers. Its fundamental assumption is that the same pressures that are leading to the partial dismantlement and decentralization of many parts of public administration in the U.S. and abroad are also creating new opportunities for citizens and communities to participate in the redirection and constitution of government, and for lawyers to facilitate that process in new and imaginative ways. In its investigations of alternatives to litigation, this course briefly addresses ADR, but rejects it in favor of a related but more comprehensive reform of democratic institutions arguably in progress. Students are of course invited to criticize this view and to develop their own positions.
