Law, Society & State: Charities & Not-for-profit

This seminar explores the legal treatment of charitable and not-for-profit organizations. Charities and not-for-profits are the organizational forms through which social impact is pursued outside (and sometimes alongside) of government, politics and the marketplace of exchange. Charity in the legal sense means the private pursuit of public benefit. It includes such diverse things as
poverty relief, human rights, education, religion, scholarships, environmental protection, animal welfare, the arts, health care and many other pursuits of public benefit. Charity law supplies the legal infrastructure through which such pursuits are voluntarily carried out by private actors. The seminar will explore how the law defines, regulates and promotes charity. It will also explore the justifications for the liberal state’s choice to incentivize and promote through charitable status certain conceptions of the good but not others.