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 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 Crime, Punishment, and Social Control
This course offers a sociological introduction to the topics of crime, punishment, and social control with a focus on the United States. In this course, we will examine various perspectives on crime and social control with particular attention to how society defines criminality, how axes of social difference—such as race, class, gender, and sexuality—intersect with issues of punishment and social control, how we as a society decide how to deal with crime, what effects those decisions have, and how punishment and social control techniques have changed over time. Structured by those broad concerns, we will explore topics including policing, courts and the judicial process, prisons and mass incarceration, and surveillance.
LEGAL_ST 320-0-20 The Fourteenth Amendment (taught with HISTORY 320-0-20)
The Fourteenth Amendment’s role in defining and protecting citizenship, privileges and immunities, due process, and equal protection from its nineteenth-century origins to the present.
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 333-0-20 Constitutional Law II (also POLI_SCI 333)
Consideration of US Supreme Court decisions dealing with civil and political rights, including equality, freedom of speech and religion, and criminal procedures.
LEGAL_ST 340-0-20 Gender and the Law (also GNDR ST 340)
This 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 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 376-0-22 Digital Data: Privacy and Governance (taught with IMC 311-0-20, FT IMC 414-0-20)
Data Governance will address the rapid move of companies toward digital marketing and communications efforts, and the world of connected devices known as the Internet of Things. With the emphasis on data privacy and security, the class will explore critical legal and technology issues that create liability for marketing professionals and their companies.
