Winter 2026 Class Schedule: Center for Legal Studies

Winter 2026 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 101-8	First-Year Writing Seminar: Lawless: Speculations of a Utopian / Dystopian Future without Law	Jesse Yeh
LEGAL_ST 101-8 First-Year Writing Seminar: Lawless: Speculations of a Utopian / Dystopian Future without Law 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.
LEGAL_ST 206-0	Law and Society (also SOCIOL 206)	Joanna Grisinger
LEGAL_ST 206-0 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 235-0	Crime, Punishment and Social Control	Abigail Barefoot
LEGAL_ST 235-0 Crime, Punishment and Social Control 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 248-0	Global Legal History (also HIST 248-0)	Helen Tilley
LEGAL_ST 248-0 Global Legal History (also HIST 248-0) How does our understanding of global history change when we foreground law and empire? To what extent have international legal regimes arisen out of imperial dynamics? Why were slavery and settler colonialism so important to so many constitutional histories? This course takes up these and other questions in order to make sense of the interplay between laws, empires, and corporate entities around the world over the last four centuries (circa 1600 to 2000). We will examine: 1) the origins and effects of mixed jurisdictions (or legal pluralism) in different regions; 2) the ways empires have shaped key concepts of sovereignty and citizenship; 3) the role of transnational corporations in bolstering imperial rule; 4) the roots of empire in the history of human rights and international law; 5) scientific versus legal definitions of racial identities and indigeneity; and 6) entanglements between cultural and intellectual property.
LEGAL_ST 276-0	Introductory Topics in Legal Studies: Japanese American Internment (also ASIAN_AMER 220)	Shana Bernstein
LEGAL_ST 276-0 Introductory Topics in Legal Studies: Japanese American Internment (also ASIAN_AMER 220) 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).
LEGAL_ST 312-0	Surveillance, Policing and the Law	Abigail Barefoot
LEGAL_ST 312-0 Surveillance, Policing and the Law 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.
LEGAL_ST 333-0	Constitutional Law II (also POLI_SCI 333)	Joanna Grisinger
LEGAL_ST 333-0 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 350-0	Psychology and the Law (also PSYCH 340)	Sara Broaders
LEGAL_ST 350-0 Psychology and the Law (also PSYCH 340) This course examines the application of psychology to law, including topics such as the insanity defense, criminal profiling, eyewitness testimony, and interrogation. Pre-requisite - PSYCH 110
LEGAL_ST 370-0	Law and Social Movements	Jesse Yeh
LEGAL_ST 370-0 Law and Social Movements How does “the law” inhibit and facilitate social change? How do movement actors navigate and deploy laws and legal institutions? This course first develops the necessary conceptual tools to analyze the complex relationships between law, politics, and social change. Then, the course will turn to examine two key movements that shape contemporary US: the Civil Rights Movement and the conservative legal movement. This class focuses on developing your ability to work with social science data and historical sources, rather than regurgitating facts. The main components of the course are in-class participation and exercises, as well as short papers.
LEGAL_ST 376-0-22	Fear of Robots (also AMER_ST 310)	Nicolette Bruner
LEGAL_ST 376-0-22 Fear of Robots (also AMER_ST 310) 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_ST 398-2-20	Advanced Research Seminar II	Nicolette Bruner
LEGAL_ST 398-2-20 Advanced Research Seminar II 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.