Adam B. Cox

Courses

• Constitutional Law

  This course provides an overview of American Constitutional law. It focuses on issues of equality and individual liberty, federalism, judicial review, separation of powers, and the allocation of authority between the federal and state governments. It places questions of doctrine and theory in an historic, social and political context.

• Immigration Law and the Rights of Non Citizens

  American immigration law is today, as it has long been, an enormously important and controversial topic. This course offers an introduction to the legal regulation of immigration and immigrants in the United States. How does American immigration law decide who is permitted to come to the United States and who will be forcibly deported? And what constitutional rights do noncitizens have, both inside and outside the context of exclusion and deportation? To answer these questions, the course takes a wide-ranging approach. We will dive deeply into immigration history while also focusing on cutting-edge policy debates. We will explore pressing questions of constitutional law, while also unpacking a complex statutory and regulatory scheme. We will assess the theoretical structure of the rules used to pick among prospective migrants, while also studying the political movements and conflicts that gave us the immigration laws we have today. Some of our topics will include: the growing integration of the immigration and criminal justice systems; DACA, new restrictions on asylum access, and the power of the President to shape immigration policy; and sanctuary cities and the role of state and local governments in enforcing immigration law.

• Legislation and the Regulatory State

  Much of the first-year curriculum in law school focuses on common law. But we live in an age of statutes and regulations. When it comes to protecting the environment, regulating immigration, policing financial markets, ensuring food safety, and just about everything else in American life, law is mostly made and interpreted by administrative agencies, not common law courts. This course examines the institutions and legal foundations of the administrative state. We will explore the relationship between Congress, the President, and federal administrative agencies. We will examine the role that federal courts play in policing those relationships. And we will consider the scope of agencies’ power to make and change rules—from seatbelt requirements to deportation policies—that have an enormous effect on people’s daily lives.