CENTER FOR LEGAL STUDIES

This course broadly provides a cultural analysis of true crime and pop culture. In particular, we’ll uncover why true crime stories seem to go viral (and why certain folks enjoy devouring these narratives). We will think intersectionally, analyzing how race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and citizenship shape concepts of “victimhood” and “criminality,” as well as make certain true crime narratives more “popular” than others. Finally, we will develop a robust theoretical toolkit, combining an interdisciplinary range of perspectives from feminist anti-violence studies, critical criminology, literary criticism, and creative non-fiction journalism.

Description coming soon.

Description coming soon.

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?

Law is everywhere. Law permits, prohibits, enables, legitimates,protects, and prosecutes. Law shapes our day-to-day lives incountless ways. This course examines the connections andrelationships of law and society using an interdisciplinary socialscience approach. As one of the founders of the Law and Societymovement observed, "law is too important to leave to lawyers."Accordingly, this course will borrow from several theoretical,disciplinary, and interdisciplinary perspectives (such as sociology,history, anthropology, political science, and critical studies) in order toexplore the sociology of law and law's role primarily in the Americancontext. The thematic topics to be discussed include law and socialcontrol; law's role in social change; and law's capacity to reach intocomplex social relations and intervene in existing normativeinstitutions and organizational structures.

Course description coming soon.

From superhero movies, daytime court shows, and true crime podcasts, "the law" is everywhere in our popular culture, even when we don't see it. In this course, we explore three interrelated questions: 1) how do people think about the law in their everyday life? 2) how does the law shape the production of popular cultures? and 3) how is the law represented in our popular cultures? This class focuses upon building the conceptual foundation and analytical tools for students to answer these questions for themselves

This course introduces students to the social, political, legal, and cultural history of immigration in the United States. In addition to exploring the history of southern and eastern European immigrants, it uses a comparative framework to integrate Latin American and Asian migrants into our understanding of immigration since the late nineteenth century. The course is an exploration of major themes in immigration history rather than a comprehensive examination. Issues students will consider include immigration law, acculturation, community, racial formation, victimization vs. agency, the transnational and international context of immigration, and competing notions of citizenship, among others.

This course examines the relationship between law and the distribution of power in society, with a particular emphasis on law and social change in the United States. Readings will be drawn from the social sciences and history, as well as selected court cases that raise critical questions about the role of race, gender, and sexual orientation in American society. Among the material we will examine are the documents made public in the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Students should be aware that some of this material is graphic and disturbing.

Key documents and debates in the development of theories of law and jurisprudence. From Aeschylus to contemporary democratic and legal theories and major court cases on topics ranging from torture to Title IX.

This course investigates the structure of American government as laid out by the Constitution. It will also examine the many controversies over what, exactly, the Constitution means, who gets to decide, and how. We will discuss judicial review, the powers of Congress and the executive branch, and the relationship between the federal government and the states.

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.

A polity governed by “We the People” is the foundational principle of democracy. Yet, who is included in this “We” and who is not? How is that decided and enforced? What does it mean to live in a country without being part of the governing “We”? This course draws from anthropology, critical race theories, history, political science, sociology, and sociolegal scholarship and explores the deeply intertwined processes of race, politics, and law. These important questions are relevant globally, even though the course focuses primarily, but not exclusively, on the U.S. context. The course first develops students’ conceptual toolkit for analyzing the relationships between race, law, and politics. Then, the course examines two core tensions: social differences versus law’s universality and law’s role in maintaining the status quo versus instigating social change. This course will be student discussion-forward and the main component of the course will be a self-directed research paper.

For the past thirty years, reality television – a genre of programming that aims to give us a view into the “unscripted” actions of our peers – has been a dominant force in U.S. entertainment.  Many of us watch these shows to relax, to turn off our critical thinking, and to immerse ourselves wholly into some manufactured drama and schadenfreude.  Considered as a cultural text, though, reality television can illuminate some profound truths: about how we decide what is right and wrong, about the tension between written and unwritten rules, and whether anyone can simply be “here to make friends.” 

In this course, we ask what reality TV can teach us about the nature of law.  We’ll read and discuss key works in the philosophy of law from H.L.A. Hart, Lon Fuller, Ronald Dworkin, Scott Shapiro, and others, and then see how their ideas stand up to the test of shows like Survivor, The Bachelor, FBoy Island, Ink Master, and Bachelor in Paradise.  By the end of the quarter, students will be able to explain the main currents of thought in legal philosophy with reference to elimination ceremonies, confessionals, alliances, and other fundamentals of reality TV gameplay.

Originating in Slavic words for forced labor, the term “robot” evokes for many an image of blocky metallic humanoids beeping their way through a set of tasks.  Yet robots also carry the specter of revolt. We tend to fear the automated tools we design to mechanize labor, even as we continue creating more of them.  In this class, we will investigate U.S. popular culture’s treatment of robots from early cinema’s “mechanical men” to the modern controversy over generative AI.  Along the way, we will survey U.S. law’s responses to the spread of technology, with particular attention to the problems raised by cutting-edge innovations like self-driving cars and AI-generated artwork.  We will read fiction by Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and Naomi Kritzer; analyze films like The Iron Giant and The Stepford Wives; and engage with the work of scholars like Donna Haraway, Dennis Yi Tenen, Scott Selisker, and others.  By the end of the course, students will develop a more nuanced understanding of what it means to fear robots and what that fear obscures about them (and us).

Legal Studies 398 is a two-quarter sequence (398-1 and 398-2) required for all Legal Studies majors. This seminar will expose 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. During winter quarter, students will complete their research projects and present their projects to the class. Students will meet to discuss shared readings, will workshop their paper drafts with one another, will prepare oral presentations based on their research, and will meet individually with the professor and with the Graduate Teaching Fellows.