Fall 2026 Class Schedule: Center for Legal Studies

Fall 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 101-7	College Seminar: True Crime: Which Stories Get Told?	Abigail Barefoot
LEGAL_ST 101-7 College Seminar: True Crime: Which Stories Get Told? 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.
LEGAL_ST 206-0-20	Law and Society (also SOCIOL 206)	Jesse Yeh
LEGAL_ST 206-0-20 Law and Society (also SOCIOL 206) 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_ST 235-0-1	Crime, Punishment and Social Control	Abigail Barefoot
LEGAL_ST 235-0-1 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 305-0-1	American Immigration (also HISTORY 305)	Shana Bernstein
LEGAL_ST 305-0-1 American Immigration (also HISTORY 305) 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.
LEGAL_ST 308-0-1	Sociology of Law (taught with SOCIOL 318)	Bob Nelson
LEGAL_ST 308-0-1 Sociology of Law (taught with SOCIOL 318) 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.
LEGAL_ST 332-0-1	Constitutional Law I (also POLI SCI 332)	Nicolette Bruner
LEGAL_ST 332-0-1 Constitutional Law I (also POLI SCI 332) 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.
LEGAL_ST 340-0-1	Gender, Sexuality and the Law (also GNDR ST 340)	Joanna Grisinger
LEGAL_ST 340-0-1 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 398-1-20	Advanced Research Seminar (Majors Only)	Nicolette Bruner
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.