Brian Highsmith

Harvard University

This seminar explores how place structures power in the American political economy. We will focus, in particular, on the consequences of our institutional design: how the law mediates the relationships between economic geography and racialized hierarchy, corporate power, and the terms of democratic citizenship. The first part of the course considers how law helps determine where people reside and where mobile capital locates; the remainder explores how and why “place” matters for economic opportunity and political representation. During the second part, we will study two primary case studies: mass punishment (covering such issues as prison gerrymandering and local governments’ reliance on regressive fines and fees that are generated through overpolicing) and the “company town” (considering parallels between historical employer-owned communities and contemporary legal structures like special purpose districts and homeowners’ associations).

Brian Highsmith

Princeton University

This seminar explores the institutional stakes of geography for economic opportunity and democratic representation, focusing on racial separation and subjugation in the United States. The first part of the course consider how law and policy help determine where people reside; the remainder explores how and why “place” matters. Many of our readings—which draw from public policy reports, historical context, legal scholarship, and contemporary social science—will focus on the case study of mass punishment, covering such issues as prison gerrymandering and local governments’ reliance on regressive fines and fees that are generated through overpolicing. The primary goals of this course will be to first understand the hidden stakes of geography, as shaped by racialized processes of exclusion and dispossession, and then to apply the resulting insights to contemporary policy problems.

Emily Prifogle

University of Michigan Law School

This course surveys some of the legal issues experienced by rural American communities and their residents. It is designed for those curious about the place of “the rural” in American law and politics. This course will push you to think seriously about how law shapes rural communities and how rural geography in turn shapes legal and policy implementation.

The course will survey a broad range of legal subfields and expose you to historical and contemporary legal problems specific to rural communities in the United States by using legal, political, and historical sources. We will cover topics such as rural legal aid, American Indian law, farmworkers rights, land use, and rural legal practice. In the process we’ll consider changing legal definitions of the rural, consider how each of the topics covered are intertwined, and rethink the place of rural communities in American law and policy.

Ann Eisenberg

West Virginia University College of Law

We often hear about the “urban/rural divide” as a key driver in today’s politics, cultural polarization, and other societal fault lines. But what is the urban/rural divide? What is its significance to law and policy? Drawing on the emerging field of Law and Rurality, this course takes students on a deep dive into the idea of the urban/rural divide. The course is organized around a series of questions: How is the urban/rural divide defined? What historical, legal, political, and economic forces help explain its development? How do race, gender, national origin, and other intersectional identities come into play? What are potential approaches to trying to “mend” the divide in law, policy, and other contexts?

Lisa Pruitt

UC Davis School of Law

The course will survey a broad range of legal subfields and expose you to historical and contemporary legal problems specific to rural communities in the United States by using legal, sociological, historical, and media sources.  We will cover topics such as rural civil and criminal justice systems, as well as a number of legal issues, through the lens of rural difference and rural disadvantage:  the Native American experience, immigration, racial inequality, education, health and human services, and environmental injustice, among others.  In the process, we’ll consider changing legal definitions of the rural, think about how the topics we cover are intertwined, and reassess the place of rural communities in American law and policy.

Jessica Shoemaker

University of Nebraska College of Law

In this seminar, we will analyze advanced topics in property and natural resources law. Our core objective is to analyze how, and if, our collective choices about property and natural resource law intersect with pressing environmental, social, and economic challenges. We will explore these questions fundamentally through the lens of rural land justice and, often, agricultural land tenure specifically. We will ask and explore deep and important questions about property's role in shaping the social and ecological contours of modern rural landscapes, including: Who really owns rural America? Why? And with what consequences?