AAS 141 Law in Asian American Community (4) Course will examine the nature, structure, and operation of selected legal institutions as they affect Asian American communities and will attempt to analyze the roles and effects of law, class, and race in American society. (Area II or IV)
UGBA 107 Social & Political Environment of Business (3) Study and analysis of American business in a changing social and political environment. Interaction between business and other institutions. Role of business in the development of social values, goals, and national priorities. The expanding role of the corporation in dealing with social problems and issues. (Area III)
UGBA 175 Legal Aspects of Management (3) An analysis of the law and the legal process, emphasizing the nature and functions of law within the U.S. federal system, followed by a discussion of the legal problems pertaining to contracts and related topics, business association, and the impact of law on economic enterprise. (Area III)
ESPM 163 AC Environmental Justice: Race, Class, Equity & the Environment (4) Overview of the field of environmental justice, analyzing the implications of race, class, labor, and equity on environmental degradation and regulation. Environmental justice movements and struggles within poor and people of color communities in theU.S., including: African Americans, Latino Americans, and Native American Indians. Frameworks and methods for analyzing race, class, and labor. Cases of environmental injustice, community and government responses, and future strategies for achieving environmental and labor justice. (Area II or IV)
Ethnic Studies 190 AC sec 001: Inside and Beyond Walls: Migra, Masses and the Carceral State
The course has three main avenues of exploration. First, we seek to understand the political historical structural and social roots of racialized mass incarceration and racialized mass detention and deportation. Second, we examine the work of practitioners, scholars and activists developing critical analyses and abolitionist strategies for social change through their analytical connections between seemingly disconnected forms of state violence. Lastly, whilst the effects of mass incarceration can be quantified to some extent, and those numbers are often the bi-line for many studies, the damages wrought by these realities are only now being excavated. In the race to incarcerate and detain/deport what does it mean to live in a community where three out of every ten boys growing up will spend time in prison, what does it do to the fabric of a family to have parents suspended in deportation hearings, and what does it mean to a community’s political influence when one quarter of black men in some states cannot vote because of a felony conviction? We seek to integrate the work of both the student’s own story and those directly affected by mass incarceration, detention and deportation. In so doing we will also analyze the organizing of Bay Area and state community organizations such as the Transgender and Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP); All of Us Or None; The UC Black Workers Organizing Project; 67 Suenos; Oakland UNITE and Critical Resistance. (Area I)
Global 173 International Human Rights (4) (formerly known as PACS 126) International Human Rights (4)
This course will explore the philosophical evolution of human rights principles in the realm of political theory and the influence of such principles as they have transformed into a coherent body of law. We will focus specifically on issues in international human rights law; the approach will be both thematic and comparative. Topics will include but are not limited to: human rights diplomacy; the influence of human rights in international legal practice; cultural and minority rights; genocide and the world community; cultural relativism and national sovereignty; international law and international relations; individual and collective rights; migration, labor, and globalization; and national, international, and nongovernmental organizations. (Area IV or V)
History 100D Crime, Punishment, and Power in U.S. History (4)
This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.
This upper division lecture course explores the making of the modern American criminal justice system and the social movements that shaped and were shaped by its colossal, life-altering powers. In the first half of the course, we’ll examine the three distinct spaces in which the material and ideological foundations of our own criminal justice system were laid: the 19th-century prison, the antebellum city, and the slave plantation. From there, we’ll hopscotch through late 19th and early-20th century, identifying key moments and movements that shaped, challenged, and transformed the institutions, politics, and culture of modern criminal justice. Turning in the last few weeks of the semester to the Post-Industrial Era (1970s to 2000s), we’ll examine the retreat from the decarceration policies of the 1960s and early 1970s, the policy decisions that led to mass incarceration, “zero tolerance” policing, the renewed war on drugs—and the beginnings of a backlash against what one social scientist has called “the unforgiving state.” (Area I or IV)
Hist C187 The History and Practice of Human Rights (4) (Area IV or V)
This course examines the historical development of human rights to the present day, focusing especially (but not exclusively) on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. More than a history of origins, however, this course will contemplate the relationships between human rights and other crucial themes in the history of the modern era, including revolution, slavery, capitalism, colonialism, racism, and genocide. As a history of international and global themes and an examination of specific practices and organizations, this course will ask students to make comparisons across space and time and to reflect upon the evolution of human rights in international thought and action—from imperial beginnings to the crises of our time. (Area IV or V)
Media Studies 104D Privacy in the Digital Age (3)
This course examines issues of privacy in contemporary society, with an emphasis on how privacy is affected by technological change. Modern privacy is informed by a patchwork of overlapping constitutional rights, statutory laws, regulations, market forces and social norms. Thus, although the U.S. Constitution does not contain the word “privacy,” the concept remains an important part of our legal and cultural experience. After an introduction to features of the American legal system and the theoretical underpinnings of privacy law, we will consider privacy in the context of law enforcement investigations (including what it takes for the government to track your movements or read your email), national security (such as when the government can get a secret foreign intelligence wiretap), government records and databases (including how to get access to them), newsgathering torts, protections for journalistic work product, First Amendment limitations on privacy regulation, and international perspectives.(Area I or IV)
NATAMST 100 Native American Law (4) Historical background of the unique relationship between the United States government and Native American tribes, and examination of contemporary legislation, court cases, and federal, state, and local policies affecting Native American social, political, legal, and economic situations. (Area II or IV)
Philosophy 115 Political Philosophy (4) This course is devoted to some of the central questions in contemporary political philosophy: liberty, justice and equality. The course is focused particularly on the work of John Rawls. (Area V)
Philosophy 171 Hobbes (4) This course will focus on understanding the philosophical and political thought of Thomas Hobbes within the context of his larger intellectual enterprise. After studying Hobbes’s “Elements of Philosophy” [Elementa philosophiae] project, we will turn to Hobbes’s account of the human being and his science of politics as presented in his Elements of Law, De cive, and Leviathan. (Area I or V)
Political Sci 112B History of Political Theory (4) Early modern political thought up to the French Revolution, including Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. (Area V)
Poli Sci 191.3 Junior Seminar: The Right to Vote in America (4) Most Americans take for granted their right to vote, whether they choose to exercise it or not. But the history of suffrage in the U.S. reveals the deeply contested nature of the vote in the United States over the last two centuries. Efforts to enlarge the American polity and include previously excluded groups have been countered by doubts about democracy, resistance to suffrage expansion and adpotion of measures hindering access to the ballot. This course will consider both the history, the politics and the legal Doctrines defining the right to vote in America.
Students will have to initially waitlist for the course, but the limit for the waitlist matches the number of remaining seats in the course, so as long as their Berkeley GPA was 3.3 or higher and they have junior or senior standing based on semesters completed, they would be moved in.
Public Policy C189/Social Welfare C181: Crime Prevention Policy
In this introductory survey course, students examine the relationships among social science and crime prevention policy. The goal is to identify actionable insights from science that can be applied to help prevent the development of criminal potential in young people, reduce crime and re-offending in the
community, and improve the lives of people at risk. Emphasis is placed on how psychological science can inform legal, clinical, and policy-relevant decisions about people at risk for repeated involvement in the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Part of this course focuses on understanding contextual or “big picture” issues—from how criminal behavior develops over an individual’s life-course, to how the larger problems of crime, mass incarceration,
and justice reform are unfolding over time in the U.S. In the other part of the course, we turn our attention to specific topics that illustrate how science can inform interventions at both system- and individual- levels—from using risk assessment technology to safely reduce incarceration, to using developmental
science to reform the juvenile justice system, to funding correctional interventions that work. Students will have an opportunity to master a specific problem area by working with a small group to produce a well- referenced policy briefing.
Rhetoric 159B Great Themes in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Political & Legal Theory (4) This course concentrates on aspects of 20th century political, social, and legal theory that are too complex to be treated comprehensively as one section of the courses in modern theory. (Area II or V)
Rhetoric 167 Advanced Topics in Law and Rhetoric: The Law of Thinking (4) This course in advanced topics in law, philosophy, and rhetoric proceeds as a philosophical seminar, taking, each term, a different path of inquiry into the philosophy of law as it reveals itself in diverse ways and places. This term, we shall engage in thinking on law by way of inquiring into the law of thinking. (Area II)
Social Welfare C181/Public Policy C189: Crime Prevention Policy
In this introductory survey course, students examine the relationships among social science and crime prevention policy. The goal is to identify actionable insights from science that can be applied to help prevent the development of criminal potential in young people, reduce crime and re-offending in the
community, and improve the lives of people at risk. Emphasis is placed on how psychological science can inform legal, clinical, and policy-relevant decisions about people at risk for repeated involvement in the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Part of this course focuses on understanding contextual or “big picture” issues—from how criminal behavior develops over an individual’s life-course, to how the larger problems of crime, mass incarceration,
and justice reform are unfolding over time in the U.S. In the other part of the course, we turn our attention to specific topics that illustrate how science can inform interventions at both system- and individual- levels—from using risk assessment technology to safely reduce incarceration, to using developmental
science to reform the juvenile justice system, to funding correctional interventions that work. Students will have an opportunity to master a specific problem area by working with a small group to produce a well- referenced policy briefing.
Sociology 114 Sociology of Law (4) Selected legal rules, principles, and institutions treated from a sociological perspective. Influence of culture and social organization on law; role of law in social change; social aspects of the administration of justice; social knowledge and the law. (Area II or IV)
Sociology 137AC Environmental Justice, Race, Class, Equity, & the Environment (formerly 128AC) (4) (cross-listed w/ESPM 163AC) Overview of the field of environmental justice, analyzing the implications of race, class, labor, and equity on environmental degradation and regulation. Environmental justice movements and struggles within poor and people of color communities in theU.S., including: African Americans, Latino Americans, and Native American Indians. Frameworks and methods for analyzing race, class, and labor. Cases of environmental injustice, community and government responses, and future strategies for achieving environmental and labor justice. (Area II or IV)
SOCIOL 280A Law, Punishment, and Inequality, (3) This seminar digs into the dynamics of penality, power, and inequality. We first canvas the major theoretical traditions inaugurated by Durkheim, Marx, Weber (and Elias), Foucault, and Goffman, and add feminism and Bourdieu to the mix. We then deploy these tools to probe the workings and effects of the full panoply of instruments of punishment, policing, the jail, the criminal court, probation and incarceration, parole and justice databases in relation to class disparity, ethnoracial division, gender control, urban polarization, late modernity, and neoliberalism. We close by assembling the building blocks for a robust concept of the penal state and explore the contemporary possibilities and pitfalls of criminal justice reform. (Area I or III)