Litigating with the Power of the State: The Role of the State Attorney General Short Course

1 credits · Law School

All 50 States and the District of Columbia have an Attorney General (AG), each of whom enjoys broad discretion over a range of legal issues. Though the state AG has consistently played an important role in our constitutional republic, they have more recently assumed a leading role in driving legal policy across the country. They have impacted large sectors of the American economy through multi-billion dollar settlements with the tobacco, banking, and pharmaceutical industries. And they have pursued multiple challenges to policy initiatives of the Biden, Trump, and Obama administrations. Virtually every public policy issue today has a legal component that falls within the purview of the state AG. This short course will examine the unique institutional role of the state AG and challenges and complexities they face in providing legal advice and representation as the state's top legal officer - including their status within their respective state systems, their relationship to the federal government, their role in both offensive and defensive litigation on behalf of the state, and their ever-increasing role in national and even international public policy issues. The course will also discuss the role of the state AG in shaping a host of critical legal policy issues - including criminal justice, consumer protection, environmental and other torts, and federalism. Students will become familiar with key statutes, common law theories, and case law; read scholarly and descriptive articles from a variety of sources; and engage with hypotheticals to understand and analyze the nature and function of the Office of State Attorney General. Limited enrollment. Pass/Fail. [1]