CENTER FOR LEGAL STUDIES

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.

What if we live in a world where there’s no law? How will society function? Will we be better or worse off? In this class, we will anchor our discussions of these questions on a series of science fiction texts and films. Along the way, we will supplement our discussions with social theories of the law and empirical research in anthropology, political science, and sociology.

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.

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 to design 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 LegalStudies 206/Sociology 206, a prerequisite for this course. 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. Prerequisite: LEGAL_ST206/SOCIOL 206. Taught with LEGAL_ST 207; may not receive credit for both courses. The topical focus of the course will be violence by the police and capital punishment in the United States. These topics will be explored with interdisciplinary readings and relevant legal cases. Students will be exposed to several research tools and research processes, as they also engage with material on police violence and capital punishment. In addition to shorter assignments, students will develop a research proposal on a topic of their choosing.

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.

Legal_St 276-0-20 "Crime, Punishment, and Social Control", Abigail Barefoot (Winter 2026)

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 276-0-20 "Japanese American 'Internment'" (also ASIAN_AM 220-1), Shana Bernstein (Winter 2026)

Twice since 9/11, politicians have referred to the World War II imprisonment of Japanese Americans as a possible precedent for policies toward Muslims. Yet many Americans remain ignorant about this important and understudied episode in U.S. history. This seminar-style course examines events leading up to the mass imprisonment of a group of people based on race, the role played by wartime emergency language, the experiences of Japanese Americans, and the consequences of this wartime policy. It focuses on the intersections between race, gender, nation, and law. Readings include secondary and primary sources, including related court cases, executive orders, documentary films, memoirs, and fiction. Note this is a discussion-based class. Students will be expected to read and participate daily, as well as write three papers throughout the quarter (two approx. 3-5 pages, one 8-10 pages).

What is education for? Who should it serve? Who decides? This class focuses on the political and legal contention in U.S. education, with a special focus on the Supreme Court decisions Brown and SFFA.

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.

How and why do some issues, real or imagined, get blown out of proportion? In this course, we will explore what moral panics are, how they occur, and how we respond to them via legislation and policing. We will think intersectionally, analyzing how race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability shape who or what is seen as “dangerous” or ‘deviant.” Along the way, we will develop a robust theoretical toolkit, combining an interdisciplinary range of perspectives from critical criminology, sociolegal scholarship, cultural studies, and creative non-fiction journalism to help us recognize and critique dubious claims. 

How are surveillance technologies shaping daily life and society, especially in terms of shaping what we think, see, and do? Building on the interdisciplinary field of surveillance studies, this course explores the intersection of policing, surveillance, and the law and raises questions about (in) security, civil liberties, control, and privacy. Topics will include The Patriot Act, biometrics, algorithm and predictive policing, and citizen surveillance. Students will also engage with the political, ethical, and methodological concerns that increased surveillance raises.

This course offers a thorough examination of the U.S. Supreme Court in the American political system. We will focus primarily on the Court as an institution—that is, the set of norms, rules, and policymaking processes that lead to the High Court’s decisions. Although the study of legal doctrine (e.g., constitutional law) is central to understanding the Supreme Court’s role in American government, this course will emphasize the institutional processes by which the justices create substantive policy (and not the content of legal doctrine itself). In doing so, we will investigate how the Court operates as both a legal and political institution, as well as its place in the larger political system. This course will also emphasize the social scientific study of the Supreme Court, involving topics such as judicial selection, the Court’s agenda-setting and control of its docket, and decision making on the merits.

This course investigates the structure of American government as laid out by the Constitution and defined by the Supreme Court.  It will also examine the many controversies over what, exactly, the Constitution means, who gets to decide, and how.

This course investigates the civil rights and civil liberties protected by the Constitution and defined by the U.S. Supreme Court—including privacy, equality, freedom of expression, and freedom of religion. In doing so, we will examine what, exactly, the Constitution means, who gets to decide, and how.

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.

This course explores the complex intersection of psychology and law, examining how psychological research informs legal policies and practices. Topics include expert testimony, forensic assessment methods and limitations, legal competence, and the insanity defense. The course also addresses the role of psychological syndromes such as Battered Women’s Syndrome and Rape Trauma Syndrome in court, criminal profiling, memory issues including eyewitness testimony, interrogation and confessions, jury selection and decision-making, as well as the psychological aspects of prisons and the death penalty.

Prerequisite: Psychology 110

Survey of laws, regulations, and cultural norms regarding nonhuman animals and animal ownership in the United States.  History of animal protection movement, wildlife regulation, hunting and fishing rights, livestock care and slaughter, animal experimentation, anti-cruelty legislation, and companion animal law.  Prerequisite: Legal_St 206-0 or Poli_Sci 230-0, or instructor approval.

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).

Attorneys are central to American life and popular culture, but the profession is undergoing dramatic change. For years, the supply of lawyers has vastly outstripped the demand for legal jobs and the resulting lawyer bubble has grown. Meanwhile, those who land law jobs have different challenges: recent surveys report many attorneys' growing disenchantment with their work and dissatisfaction with their lives. This seminar will examine the profession's multidimensional crisis. What changes occur in attorneys, both individually and systemically, emerging from law schools and finding their roles in the legal realm? Why is working within the most lucrative big firms now regarded by many as the pinnacle of private practice? What other options are available? It will explore life after law school, examining the disparate places law graduates might find themselves. The course invites prospective law students to consider their potential places, as individual lawyers, in what remains a noble profession. It also invites those students in other undergraduate disciplines who may be curious about trajectories open to them in this post-graduate academic and, ultimately, career field.

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.

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.