The Levitt Justice Lab includes four classes taken simultaneously, including an internship, observation, and reflection course. This coming Fall term the Lab’s topic will be Human Rights and Civil Rights.
How have human rights developed? How are they defined and who enforces them? These questions are immediately relevant to migrant and refugee populations, the movement for racial justice, the status of indigenous populations, as well as the protection of civilians in times of war. Most basically, the study of human rights asks how we can guarantee personal dignity and the ability of all people to live free from persecution, discrimination, and bias.
In Fall ’23, the Justice Lab will take up these questions historically and legally at the international, national, and local levels.
The experiential course (GOVT/PPOL 274) includes a half-day per week internship/observation with local agencies concerned with human and civil rights arranged by the Levitt Center with a community partner.
The Justice Lab is a set of four courses, taken together during a single term, organized around a specific theme. The four instructors in the Lab work together to coordinate syllabi and assignments and to provide students in the Lab with an integrated, interdisciplinary understanding of the topic.
There are no prerequisites for these courses. The Lab schedule allows for students to be free by 3:50 pm every day and can accommodate students with on-campus jobs.
The courses that comprise the Human and Civil Rights Justice Lab are:
Government/Public Policy 274W, Justice Lab Experience and Observation, Prof. Andrea Peña Vasquez, Post-Doctoral Fellow in Public Policy. Instruction in systematic observation through journaling and discussion. The experience takes the form of on-site research, internships, or field-studies. This course includes writing assignments designed to integrate experience and observation with material from the other three courses in the Lab.
Government 254 International Law, Prof. Alan Cafruny, Bristol Professor of International Relations An introduction to international law. Survey of the nature and sources of international law, as well as the actors involved in making and interpreting it. Exploration of human rights, legality of the use of force, just war doctrine, war crimes, national self-determination. Case studies of historical and contemporary national and international conflicts.
History 255 Humanitarianism and Human Rights, Prof. Kevin Grant, Graves Professor of History. This course examines the historical development of humanitarianism and human rights between the late-eighteenth and late twentieth-centuries. It offers an introductory survey of the ideas and tactics in international protests over slavery, industrial working conditions, prisoners of war, and refugees. It considers how rights have been understood, contested, and revised in the legal frameworks of state sovereignty and international government. Additional thematic subjects include religion, race, gender, and the pervasive tension between universal principle and cultural difference.
GOVT 2xx The American Constitution and Human Rights, Prof. Frank Anechiarico, Maynard-Knox Professor of Government and Law. A review of the status of internationally recognized human rights in American constitutional law. Focus on the rights of minorities, access to health care, and support of indigent and disabled individuals. How does the determination of civil rights in constitutional law recognize the protections in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights? How do federal courts interpret the power given to congress to “punish… offenses against the law of nations”? Coursework includes development of an oral and written brief and case studies of local human rights issues.
Enrollment in the program is limited. Applications to the Justice Lab are open to all students.
Please fill out the following application form. Upon clicking "Apply Now", you will be prompted to create a free account with Interfolio. If you already have an Interfolio account, you should sign in. If you don't already have an Interfolio account, click on the "Sign up" button (NOT the "sign in through partner institution link). Applications are due March 28th.
