Prerequisites: Students interested in applying should submit a short (300-word maximum) statement of interest to Professor Hanson. The statement should summarize their motivation for taking the Lab and any relevant experience. Students with questions are encouraged to email Professor Hanson (hanson@law.harvard.edu; please include “Coalition Building Lab” in the subject line).

Exam Type: No Exam

This one-semester lab offers students an opportunity to explore how mission-driven coalitions are built, maintained, and challenged in and around legal spaces. Emphasizing interactive, student-led sessions and small-team collaboration, the course blends historical context, skills development, and applied strategy.

Substantively, the course focuses on the importance and difficulty of building justice-oriented coalitions within and across legal institutions and adjacent systems. It examines how coalition efforts are shaped and often constrained by forces such as hierarchy, individualistic norms, atomizing structural forces, market incentives, corporate influence, and institutional inertia. The course also explores the tensions and complexities involved in forging partnerships among individuals, groups, and organizations that bring differing visions, goals, values, and strategies to the work.

Students will study a range of historical and contemporary coalition-building efforts and draw lessons about how inclusive, justice-focused coalitions can be constructed and sustained. Although the specific topics are still to be determined, the course will examine case studies from legal and legal-adjacent coalitional campaigns such as in the climate justice movement and the judicial reform movement. Students will learn practical tools for coalition building, including stakeholder analysis, movement ecology, power mapping, campaign strategy, and foundational organizing techniques.

Most class sessions will be interactive and student-led. The course will also feature occasional workshops, guest speakers, and hands-on, team-based projects. Each team will design a coalition initiative proposal over the course of the semester.

There is no exam. Assessment will be based on participation, presentations, and the final team project.