Final Assignment

363 Final Assignment

Amicus Curiae Brief

The Supreme Court’s docket is full of cases that have the potential to impact society with profound impact. As a law and society studies expert, you have decided to write an amicus curiae brief (friend of the court brief) on a case of your choice (this may be the same case you used for Journal Entry 2, but it need not be). To do this, you will establish a non-profit legal advocacy organization.

In this brief, you will develop an argument for how the Supreme Court should decide this case. This argument should draw on your studies of “law in society” to explain how this case matters and why your preferred outcome is most desirable. In addition, and drawing on content from weeks 8-9, you will analyze the implications of this case for “liberal democracy” and for the Supreme Court’s own legitimacy. You should cite both course readings and original research about your chosen case, and provide a formal works cited to accompany your amicus curiae brief. For credit, you will submit:

1. Amicus Curiae Brief
2. Works Cited (your works cited should be properly formatted (double spaced, alphabetical order, hanging indentations, etc.) and should include any in-course and external readings you used to support your analysis)

All amicus curiae briefs should include the following sections (you should use subheadings as I do in the outline below):

1. Interests of the amicus (~100-200 words)
   • In this section, you will introduce your legal advocacy organization. For this part of the assignment, you should be creative. You are a law and society studies expert, but what is your purpose as an advocacy organization? Are you interested in representing businesses? Working people? Do advocate on specific issues, or more general issues? How has your work in your legal advocacy organization brought you to share an interest in this case? What is your organization’s stake?
2. Summary of Argument (~150-300 words)
   • In this section, you will briefly introduce the court case and the legal question facing the court. Then, you will summarize your argument and the evidence you will explore in the rest of this amicus curiae brief in about a paragraph.
3. Argument (~600-1200 words)
   • In this section, you will develop your argument for how the Court ought to decide this case. While you are making an argument for how the Supreme Court ought to decide an important matter of law, we are not applying a purely legal analysis. Instead, we are approaching this from the perspective of law and society scholarship. That is, we study law as engaged citizens, and we study law both as institutions and as an idea. Your argument should connect in some way to the interests of your legal advocacy organization, which you introduced in the first section of the assignment.
4. Liberal Democracy and Institutional Legitimacy Analysis (~150-300 words)
   • In this section, you should draw on content from weeks 8-9 to briefly consider the implications of this case, and the Court’s decision, for “liberal democracy” and the “rule of law.” Does the Court’s decision impact any institutions of liberal democracy like individual liberties, equality, citizenship, or political competition? Is the Court’s decision likely to be ignored by the public, or to generate a lot of excitement or upset? How is that likely to impact the Court’s legitimacy, and with what consequence?
5. Conclusion (~100-200 words)
• In this section, you should briefly summarize the argument and evidence you have developed and conclude by explaining to the court, for a final time, how you think the Court ought to decide and why.