Race Law

Undergraduate / Graduate

Race Law takes the law of race as a distinct body of study. It examines how statutes, cases, and other legal materials create racial categories, and how the legal definitions of race are used to reinforce and establish social hierarchies and to exclude certain categories of persons from full rights-bearing legal personhood. This class explores legal cases and primary sources from colonial America to the present to map out the legal construction of race over time. Although incorporating non-legal sources to highlight that the law is not a "black box", the class focuses on the role of law in crafting our understanding of what race means. "Race Law" will be a small junior colloquium geared at students interested in pursuing the topic of law and race for their senior thesis.