Law in Rural America
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.