Curriculum Guide · Courses
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Politics, the State, and Public Employment Seminar
Professor Becker J.D. Seminar 1047 (cross-listed) | 2 credit hours This course will examine the regulation of public employment, focusing on the workplace rights of government employees ranging from teachers to prison guards. It will explore current controversies -- highlighted by recent events in the state of Wisconsin -- while locating them within the wider jurisprudence and political history of public employment. The central questions to be investigated concern the status of civil liberties in the government workplace as well as the relationship between the legal mechanisms of industrial democracy and the administration of a democratic polity. Topics will include the scope of government workers’ constitutional rights when the state acts as their employer; whistle-blowing; privatization of public functions; public sector collective bargaining and ongoing legislative efforts to curtail it; public sector fiscal crisis and impairment of contracts; and patronage and the civil service. Recommended: Prior or concurrent enrollment in Constitutional Law II: Individual Rights and Liberties.
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