To read course descriptions, click on the course titles below. To look up class meeting days and times please go to CAESAR. Note that courses are subject to change.
LEGAL_ST 206-0-20 Law and Society (also SOCIOL 206)
Law is everywhere. Law permits, prohibits, enables, legitimates, protects, and prosecutes citizens. Law shapes our daily lives in countless ways. This course examines the connections and relationships of law and society using an interdisciplinary social science approach. As one of the founders of the Law and Society movement observed, "Law is too important to leave to lawyers." Accordingly, this course will borrow from several theoretical, disciplinary, and interdisciplinary perspectives (including sociology, history, anthropology, political science, and psychology) in order to explore the sociology of law and law's role. This course introduces the relationship between social, cultural, political, and economic forces on the one hand, and legal rules, practices, and outcomes, on the other. We focus on several important questions about law including: How do culture, structure, and conflict explain the relationship between law and society? Why do people obey the law? Why do people go to court? How does the legal system work? What is the role of lawyers, judges, and juries? How does law on the books differ from law in action? How do social problems become legal ones? How can law create or constrain social change?
LEGAL_ST 276-0-20 Corporation in US Law and Culture
A corporation is its own person under the law, separate from those whom it employs or who may own its stock. How did this happen, and what does it mean for the humans who live and work alongside corporations every day?
In this course, we will trace the evolution of the corporate person in the United States from the colonial era to the present. Our focus will be twofold: the evolving legal rights and responsibilities of the corporation, and the role that the corporate person has played in the American cultural imagination.
LEGAL_ST 330-0-20 U.S. Refugee Policy & Localities (also POLI SCI 330)
Comparative understandings of refugee policies in liberal democracies and their relation to constitutional and human rights. Street level bureaucracy, constitutional governance, federalism, integration, refugee resettlement policy, citizenship and belonging.
LEGAL_ST 356-0-20 Constitutional Challenges in Comparative Perspective (also POLI_SCI 356)
Constitutional controversies and resolutions in liberal democracies. Constitutional traditions and governance, rule of law, legitimacy and authority in diverse societies, human rights, social transformation.
LEGAL_ST 398-1-20 Advanced Research Seminar (Majors Only)
Legal Studies 398-1,2 is a two-quarter sequence required for all Legal Studies majors. This seminar exposes students to a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to law and legal institutions; over two quarters, students will develop their own research paper on a topic of interest.
