Fall 2022 Class Schedule: Center for Legal Studies

Fall 2022 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 101-6	First-year Seminar: Law and the Civil Rights Movement	Joanna Grisinger
LEGAL_ST 101-6 First-year Seminar: Law and the Civil Rights Movement This course explores the relationship between law and civil rights in modern American history – in particular, African Americans’ efforts to secure their legal, political, civil, and economic rights. How and why did the American civil rights movement pursue legal change (in the courts, in the legislatures, and in administrative agencies)? How and why did legal actors (including judges, White House officials, members of Congress, and state governors) engage with civil rights reformers? What are the benefits of pursuing legal change, and what are the limits? In order to answer these and other questions, we will read and discuss material including court cases, statutes, speeches, memoirs, newspaper articles, photographs, and songs. By the end of the quarter, students will be able to read and analyze diverse primary sources carefully and accurately, with attention to the author’s perspective, position, and credibility, and to the source’s general context; read, evaluate, summarize, and engage with scholarly works by others, and be able to analyze authors’ arguments for evidence, context, strength, and credibility; make clearly written and organized arguments that are well supported by primary sources; and understand how to work with integrity and to properly cite facts, ideas, and scholarship. Students will also engage with primary documents and scholarly research related to social inequalities and diversities; better understand how such differences as race, class, and gender are related; better understand the impact that histories, institutions, and/or social structures have on local issues and on individual experiences and identities, including their own; and think and write more critically about political, social, economic, and/or cultural issues related to social inequalities and diversities. Students will also practice setting and evaluating academic goals; communicating effectively and respectfully; studying effectively; and knowing when and how to ask for help.
LEGAL_ST 206-0-20	Law and Society (also SOCIOL 206)	Nicolette Bruner
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 318-1	Legal and Constitutional History of the United States (also HISTORY 318-1)	Joanna Grisinger
LEGAL_ST 318-1 Legal and Constitutional History of the United States (also HISTORY 318-1) This course explores some of the major questions and problems of American legal history from the colonial era to 1850. First, we will examine how and why the colonies developed their laws and legal institutions, and how these evolved over time. Next, we will explore the legal, political, and social forces that led to the American Revolution, and we will look at how Americans drew on their legal experiences in drafting a constitution. We will then examine how judicial and legislative action guided and enabled explosive economic growth in the nineteenth century. Not everyone was able to participate in the new economy, however; we will explore how the law created separate categories for women, American Indians, and African Americans that limited their participation in law, politics, and society. By the end of this course, you should be able to: read, understand, and analyze different kinds of legal texts; understand a variety of legal concepts and doctrines and their meaning in historical context; understand the distinct roles played by different actors (judges, legislatures, lawyers, litigants, voters, etc.) within the constitutional system; and make cogent, evidence-based arguments about these core themes in law and legal history.
LEGAL_ST 330-0-20	U.S. Refugee Policy & Localities (also POLI SCI 330)	Galya Ben-Arieh
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 340-0-20	Gender, Sexuality and the Law (also GNDR ST 340)	Abigail Barefoot
LEGAL_ST 340-0-20 Gender, Sexuality 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. Taught with GNDR ST 340.
LEGAL_ST 350-0-20	Psychology and the Law (taught with PSYCH 340)	Sara Broaders
LEGAL_ST 350-0-20 Psychology and the Law (taught with PSYCH 340) This course will examine the complex issues involved in applying the science of psychology to the field of law. Among the topics we will cover: • How psychological research can apply to policies and practices in the legal system • Expert testimony • Methods, uses, and limitations of forensic assessment • Determination of legal competence • The insanity defense • Syndromes (Battered Women's Syndrome/Rape Trauma Syndrome) in the legal arena • Criminal profiling types, methods, and limitations • Eyewitness testimony and other memory issues • Interrogation and confessions • Jury selection and decision making • Prisons and death penalty Taught with PSYCH 340; Pre-requisite - PSYCH 110
LEGAL_ST 356-0-20	Constitutional Challenges in Comparative Perspective (also POLI_SCI 356)	Galya Ben-Arieh
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 376-0-20	International Environmental Law (also ENVR POL 390)	Wil Burns
LEGAL_ST 376-0-20 International Environmental Law (also ENVR POL 390) Global environmental problems, including the looming threat of climate change, the biodiversity crisis, and increasing pressures on ocean ecosystems due to human activities, have become pressing concerns in recent decades. In response, a sophisticated architecture of global governance has emerged, including through the establishment of hundreds of multi-lateral treaties to confront these threats. As a consequence, nation-States have begun to cooperate with each other to an unprecedented extent, although not without facing significant obstacles, and not without domestic political agendas sometimes delaying or thwarting progress at the international level. This class examines the array of legal regimes, politics, governance processes and policy tools that have emerged in the arena of global environmental law and politics. We will focus on a number of different discrete international environmental problems, as well as how international environmental law is formulated and enforced at the international level. Assignments will include drafting of UN resolutions and simulated UN General Assembly "debates" and a mid-term examination. There will also be substantial small-group work to engage in interpretation of treaties. Taught with ENVR POL 390
LEGAL_ST 398-1-20	Advanced Research Seminar (Majors Only)	Abigail Barefoot
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.