Spring 2018 Class Schedule
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.
Course | Title | Instructor | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
LEGAL_ST 207-0-20 | Legal Studies Research Methods (taught with SOCIOL 227) | Robert L Nelson | ||
LEGAL_ST 207-0-20 Legal Studies Research Methods (taught with SOCIOL 227)Legal Studies Research Methods introduces students to research methods used in interdisciplinary legal studies, including jurisprudence and legal reasoning, qualitative and quantitative social science methods, and historical and textual analysis. The course is a prerequisite for the Advanced Research Seminar in Legal Studies, 398-1, - 2, and is intended to prepare students for the design of their own research project to be conducted in 398-1, -2. Through exposure to and engagement with interdisciplinary research methods on law and legal processes, the course will provide students with a deeper understanding of law in its historical and social context. The course will provide students with a set of research tools with which to conduct research on legal institutions. The course builds on content from Legal Studies 206, a prerequisite for 207. While part of the Legal Studies major sequence, the course will enrich the analytic skills of students from many fields who are interested in law or in interdisciplinary research methods. (Pre-Req: Legal_St 206 "Law & Society") | ||||
LEGAL_ST 276-0-20 | History of the American Legal Profession | Justin Simard | ||
LEGAL_ST 276-0-20 History of the American Legal ProfessionThis seminar examines the American legal profession from its small and provincial origins in the eighteenth century to its enormous and influential presence today. It will explore topics including legal education, practice, ethics, and professional organization, and it will survey the influence of the profession in fields from politics and business to the civil rights movement. Students will gain an appreciation for the many roles that lawyers play outside of the courtroom and the way that the profession has shaped the development and application of American law. | ||||
LEGAL_ST 340-0-20 | Gender and the Law | Joanna Grisinger | ||
LEGAL_ST 340-0-20 Gender and the LawThis course is intended as a survey of how law has reflected and created distinctions on the basis of gender and sexuality throughout American history. We'll look at legal categories of gender and sexuality that have governed (and, often, continue to govern) the household (including marriage, divorce, and custody), the economy (including employment, property, and credit), and the political sphere (including voting, jury service, and citizenship). Throughout the course, we will examine the relationship between legal rules and social conditions, and discuss how various groups have challenged these legal categories. | ||||
LEGAL_ST 376-0-20 | Law and Slavery | Justin Simard | ||
LEGAL_ST 376-0-20 Law and SlaveryLaw played a critical role in creating and perpetuating American slavery. This seminar examines the origins and development of the laws that built and sustained a slave society. It will explore the legal efforts that slaveowners made to protect their property and the role of judges and lawyers in treating people as property. This seminar will also examine resistance to slavery through the legal system, following abolitionists, politicians, and slaves themselves as they attempted to make a legal case for freedom. Students will learn the fundamental role that the law of slavery played in the development of the United States and gain a critical perspective on a legal system that helped sustain a vicious institution. | ||||
LEGAL_ST 376-0-21 | Refugee Policy and Localities (taught with POLI_SCI 390-0-31) | Galya Ruffer Ben-Arieh | ||
LEGAL_ST 376-0-21 Refugee Policy and Localities (taught with POLI_SCI 390-0-31)Through the lens of the U.S. 1980 Refugee Act, students in this class will examine the ways in which a national policy, premised on human rights obligations in the 1951 International Convention for the Protection of Refugee and 1967 Protocol, contributes to the lived experience of that policy in localities. We will consider what local understandings of refugee policy can teach us about constitutional governance, federalism, integration and civil society. More broadly, students will gain insight into the complexities of refugee resettlement policy as a durable solution for refugees seeking protection. We will look comparatively at national refugee resettlement and admission policies, but, by focusing on localities, consider the variation of policy and governance across localities in Western Liberal Democracies that have already accepted sizable numbers of refugees and migrants. Local responses fall along a spectrum, at one end welcoming (#refugeeswelcome, sanctuary cities) and at the other end restrictive ("not in our backyard"). The variation of refugee policy and governance in localities has a direct impact on the lived experience of refugee protection, public perception of refugee policies and understandings of membership and belonging in a constitutional democracy. Through archival research surrounding the 1980 Refugee Act and field research in Chicago neighborhoods, students will gain exposure to qualitative interpretive methodology. By curating exhibits around the 1980 Refugee Act and the ways in which that law is lived out in localities, students will become contributors to the creation of a Refugee Policy and Localities digital archive. | ||||
LEGAL_ST 376-0-22 | Constitutional Challenges in Comparative Perspective (taught with POLI SCI 390-0-24) | Galya (Ruffer) Ben-Arieh | ||
LEGAL_ST 376-0-22 Constitutional Challenges in Comparative Perspective (taught with POLI SCI 390-0-24)In this course we will be thinking about how and whether constitutions shape national values and offer a framework for legitimacy and governance to hold together diverse societies and resolve deeply rooted social tensions and ethnic divisions. We will consider the constitutional responses of other democratic countries such as the U.S., Canada, India, France, Germany, Great Britain, South Africa and Australia to the challenges of capital crimes, right to life/abortion, terrorism, racism, gender disparities, religious discrimination. In learning about the varying traditions of written and unwritten constitutions, civil and common law and the foundations and structures of separation of powers and judicial review of the constitutionality of laws in these countries, students will learn to think critically about the U.S. Constitution and the different ways in which constitutional democracies provide for public order, counter-majoritarian governance, equality and protection of the rights of minorities through rule of law and question whether constitutional solutions can address the kinds of social and political problems we have today. (Pre-Req: Legal_St 332 "Con Law I" or 333 "Con Law II") | ||||
LEGAL_ST 394-0-20 | Professional Linkage Seminar: Human Rights & US Refugee Law | William Schiller | ||
LEGAL_ST 394-0-20 Professional Linkage Seminar: Human Rights & US Refugee LawThe objectives in this course are: 1) to learn about international human rights conditions and refugee law mechanisms in the United States, through ongoing research related to asylum claims that will be presented at the end of the quarter in a trial; and 2) to become familiar with the diverse work of refugee-related professionals, including individuals who perform documentation-gathering, advocate for legal and public policy, and provide health care for asylum-seekers in the United States. In this class, you will be introduced to fundamental tenets of international human rights law and its domestic counterpart, U.S. asylum law. You will build upon this foundation for the remainder of the course by researching two asylum claims involving refugees from two countries, which you will present in mock hearings at the end of the course. |