Legal Methods II: Economic Justice, Consumer Debt, and Public Interest Lawyering

Course Location: Uris Hall Room 140

This course explores how fundamental social problems—homelessness, poverty, racism, gaps in social safety nets—create issues of economic justice that public interest organizations and lawyers are working to address. We bring public interest lawyers to the classroom to talk about the ways consumer debt (and laws related to it) interacts with the social problems that their organizations address, including divorce, domestic violence, and homelessness. We will also talk to lawyers whose organizations (e.g., New York’s Bankruptcy Assistance Project) increase access to debt relief laws such as bankruptcy.

We will draw on diverse methodologies and literatures to study the causes and consequences of debt, including law, economics, and sociology. We will also explore the logic and limits of existing laws and the strategies employed by public interest lawyers to leverage existing legal institutions.