This course examines the possibility of new strategies for reforming public institutions through law. Its fundamental assumption is that the same pressures that are leading to the partial dismantlement and decentralization of many parts of public administration in the United States and abroad are also creating new opportunities for citizens and communities to participate in the redirection and constitution of government, and for lawyers to facilitate that process in new and imaginative ways. Background readings trace the causes and consequences of the broad reordering of government; prior and current practices of   "public interest" lawyers; and the limits of and alternatives to litigation and other adversarial practices by such lawyers. Cases studies from the United States, the Westminster systems, and continental Europe (in, for example, school reform, affirmative action claims, aboriginal representation, and environmental regulation) will document the extent to which citizens, communities and legal practitioners already are beginning to adjust to and further ongoing changes in public administration and the obstacles - doctrinal, institutional, and political - those actors face in doing so. Looking ahead, the course will consider relationships between such innovative administrative models and emerging global trends in democratic participation. This course is intended to be a vehicle for students to engage in original research work in an applied setting of their choice.