Due
December 9
Background:
In
"The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change?,"
Gerald Rosenberg
(1991) writes the following:
"American courts are not all-powerful institutions.
They were designed
with severe limitations and placed in a political system
of divided powers. To
ask them to produce significant social reform is to forget
their history and
ignore their constraints. It is to cloud our vision with
a naive and romantic
belief in the triumph of rights over politics. "
The question:
Do
you agree with Rosenberg's statement? If so, what structures
prevent the courts (and law) from performing as an effective
tool for social change. How can these structures be modified
so that law can be an effective means for addressing inequalities
(or other problems) in our society. If
you disagree with Rosenberg, please offer examples of the
effectiveness of courts and law as tools for social change.
How might these positive uses of the law be increased and/or
become more effective?
As always, there is no one correct response to this question.
In addition, I believe there are logical reasons for agreeing,
or disagreeing, with Rosenberg's thesis.
____________________________________________
As a reminder, here are instructions from the course
outline:
Essays
should have sufficient breadth and depth to indicate
more than a passing awareness of the issues raised in
the questions. Grading will be determined based on the
thoroughness of response and the ability to properly
apply knowledge gained through reading the text. Essays
should be "term paper quality." Pay attention
to spelling, sentence and paragraph structure, organization,
and citations. Your papers should use APA style , which
is described in the Publication Manual of the American
Psychological Association (5th edition, 2001). Questions typically contain multiple parts. This is not
done to make questions more difficult. Multiple parts are
recommended to provide guidance that will lead to a high
quality answer. Remember to address each section but do
not assume that the ideas raised in each section are the
only issues to be addressed in your response.
Completed
essays should be e-mailed to mentor@nmsu.edu. Although
I have several e-mail addresses, this is the only
one you should use for this class. My computer can only
read certain formats. Fortunately, these are popular formats
and you should be able to submit assignments without any
problems. If you are using Microsoft Word, just save as
word and send. If you are using any other program please
save as .rtf before sending. Don't put anything after the
dot - let the computer take care of this. For example, "exam1.joe" will
not open on my computer. Use "exam1_joe" instead
and let the computer add the .doc or .rtf after your file
name. Send papers as attachments. Use the body of the message
to tell me what you are sending so I will know that you
are sending an intended attachment rather than a virus
or other malicious attachment.
|
