CENTER FOR LEGAL STUDIES

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")

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.

In the United States the legal profession exerts tremendous economic and political power, and there are more lawyers per capita than in any other country. This seminar examines the roots of the relationship between law, lawyers, and American commerce. It will explore the law of debt, slavery, injury, and intellectual property, and examine how the law and the lawyers who applied it structured the American economy. The seminar will also explore what a law-driven economy meant for its participants, from debtors and slaves to inventors and CEOs. The seminar will give students a new, critical perspective on debates over the role of finance, corporations, and regulation in American economic life.

This course will explore the role of law in shaping contemporary housing crises related to two broad issues in the United States: the acute shortage of affordable housing, particularly for renters, and the persistence of racial and ethnic residential segregation and housing discrimination.

This seminar focuses on strategic considerations for social movement activists seeking to effect meaningful policy change.  The central theme will be political power – what are its bases and how is it mediated by policymaking institutions in the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government?  Given the obstacles to social movement influence in the policymaking process, how can activist strategies be modified to overcome these other, formidable sources of political power?

The 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.