Legal Studies Courses Fall 2021

R1B 001: The Sanctuary Tradition in Law & Social Practice, Bonnie Cherry, 4 units, Area N/A

The practice of providing sanctuary (legal, political, or religious) has endured for thousands of years and across cultures. In some cases, providing sanctuary to those who seek it is codified in law. In others, sanctuary is offered to those who seek refuge from the law itself.

This course will explore the history of the sanctuary tradition across legal, social, political, and cultural contexts and will ask one overarching question: what can the sanctuary tradition teach us about the boundaries of the law?

The sanctuary tradition, both in place and practice, blurs the lines between sacred and secular, between sovereign state and citizen power, and allows us to ask the following sub-questions:

–  What does sanctuary look like? What are some shapes that sanctuary takes? What are the limits of the legal form in creating (or resisting) this space?

–  What does the sanctuary tradition say about cultural practices and how these practices shape (or resist) law, and vice versa?

–  What can we learn about legal consciousness and rights mobilization from looking at specific sanctuary movements?

NOTE: R1B courses must be taken for a letter grade.
**This course is lower division and will not count towards the major.**

R1B 002: Health Law & the Politics of Care, Anna Zaret, 4 units, Area N/A

This course teaches Reading and Composition under the substantive theme of U.S. health law and policy. Few issues are more perennially at the forefront of American politics than health care. Despite widespread discontent with the current system, structural reforms have yet to be achieved. The fragmented and largely privatized U.S. health care system stands in stark contrast to the national health programs that operate in nearly all comparable countries. Efforts to reform U.S. health policy and improve health equity have been structured around private markets and economic incentives. How did we end up with this structure of health law and policy in the U.S.? What values and assumptions are its foundation? Why do we conceive of health and health care in the ways that we do? What are possible alternatives? In this course, we will think critically about the legal and economic structures that make up the U.S. health care system. The first part of the class will focus on theory and history as we think about ideas about illness and medicine. The second part of the course will look at topical contemporary issues in health policy, with special attention to how health inequities intersect with racialized and gendered oppression.

NOTE: R1B courses must be taken for a letter grade.
**This course is lower division and will not count towards the major.**

39D: Current Political & Moral Conflicts & the Constitution  Frosh/Soph Seminar, Pomerantz, 2 units, Area N/A

**This course is lower division and will not count towards the major.**
There are two sections of 39D Spring 2019. Check the Berkeley Academic Guide Schedule for details.

We will read Supreme Court cases, as well as political and legal commentary from across the political spectrum, and consider not only the opinions of the Justices, but also why they hold those opinions. We will seek to discover the way in which courts use authority and craft law. Here is an article about the course (video included).

100:  Foundations of Legal Studies, Prof. Mark Leinauer, 4 units, Core (H, SS)

This is a liberal arts course designed to introduce students to the foundational frameworks and cross-disciplinary perspectives from humanities and social sciences that distinguish legal studies as a scholarly field. It provides a comparative and historical intro to forms, ideas, institutions, and systems of law and sociological ordering. It highlights basic theoretical problems and scholarly methods for understanding questions of law and justice.

103:  Theories of Law & Society, Prof. Mark Leinauer, 4 units, Core (H, SS) or Area II

Surveys leading attempts to construct social theories of law and to use legal materials for systematic social theorizing, during the period from the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth century.  The course considers major discussions of such themes as the relationships between law, politics, society and economy; the connection between historical change and legal change; the role of law in the processes of social integration and social discipline; and the distinctive elements of legal ordering in the modern west.

107:  Theories of Justice, Song, 4 units, Core (H) or Area II or III or IV

This is a lecture course in political philosophy, focusing on liberal political theory which emphasizes the protection of individual freedom as against social demands, the maintenance of social and economic equality, and the neutrality of the state in conditions of cultural and religious pluralism.  By studying mainly modern authors, we will attempt to understand the importance of these goals and the possibility of their joint fulfillment. Attention will be paid to the work of John Rawls, to the problem of moral and political disagreement, and the relation between “ideal” thinking about justice and thinking about justice in conditions of racial, gender, and class hierarchies.

109: Aims & Limits of Criminal Law, Perry, 4 units,  Area I

This course focuses on the analysis of the capacity of criminal law to fulfill its aims. What are the aims of criminal Law? How are they assigned relative priority? What principles can be identified for evaluating the effort to control disapproved activities through criminal law?

125: Human Rights and War Crimes Investigations: Methods, Koenig, 4 units, Area I or IV

This seminar offers an introduction to the concept and practice of human rights research and investigations, with an emphasis on the collection and analysis of online open source information. In addition to lectures and readings, the course will engage students in the Human Rights Investigations Lab at Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center, an effort that supports the work of Amnesty International, the Syrian Archive, and a number of other organizations that are working to bring awareness to and collect evidence in support of international atrocity cases, including human rights law firms and international commissions of inquiry. In the seminar and lab, students will have an opportunity to engage in one or more real-world investigations.

136: Law and Rights in Authoritarian States, Stern, 4 units, Area IV or V
This course investigates the reasons why authoritarian leaders devolve power to courts and the control strategies they deploy to keep judges, lawyers and plaintiffs in check. The course will mix more theoretical readings on approaches to law and the logic of courts with empirical studies of how law works in four settings: Nazi Germany, East Germany, China, and Russia. Throughout the semester, we will ask ourselves how world historical time (e.g. the rise of rights talk, the global trend increased judicial power) and regime type (e.g. military dictatorship, competitive authoritarianism, one-party states) influence both the letter and the practice of law. In addition to scholarly books and articles, course materials will include original court documents as well as memoirs and films that illustrate how ordinary people experience the legal system.

137: Equality Rights, Oppenheimer, 3 units, Area IV or V

Comparative Equality Law uses a problem-based approach to examine how the law protects equality rights in different jurisdictions. The course will comparatively examine US, European, and other national, regional and international legal systems (including those of India, Brazil, Colombia, Canada and South Africa) and provide a global overview of legal protection from and legal responses to inequalities. The course covers 5 topic modules: Theories and sources of equality law; Employment discrimination law (race, sex, age, disability, LGBTQ+); Secularism, human rights and the legal rights of religious minorities; Sexual harassment/Violence; Affirmative action (race, caste, origin), and gender parity.

Note the odd times at which this course meets!
Comparative Equality Law meets on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.
The Tuesday class meets at 9:10 (9:00 “Berkeley Time”) for 50 minutes, in a classroom on the Berkeley campus. The Thursday class meets on Zoom at 15:00 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). For most of the semester that’s 8:00 am in Berkeley, but when we move from “daylight savings time” to “standard time” in November, 15:00 UTC becomes 7:00 am in Berkeley. Because the course includes students and faculty from at least eight time zones in North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Asia it is essential to set the course meeting time in Universal time instead of Pacific time. And, because most of our partner universities start their classes on the hour, we will not use “Berkeley Time” for our Thursday class meetings.

138.1:  The Supreme Court & Public Policy, Ben Brown,  4 units, Core (SS) or Area IV or V

This course examines a number of leading U.S. Supreme Court decisions in terms of what policy alternatives were available to the Court and which ones it chose. Prospective costs and benefits of these alternatives and who will pay the costs and who gets the benefits of them are considered. Among the areas considered are economic development, government regulation of business, national security, freedom of speech and discrimination. Readings are solely of Supreme Court decisions.

138.2:  The Supreme Court & Public Policy, Elizabeth Tejada,  4 units, Core (SS) or Area IV or V

This course examines a number of leading U.S. Supreme Court decisions in terms of what policy alternatives were available to the Court and which ones it chose. Prospective costs and benefits of these alternatives and who will pay the costs and who gets the benefits of them are considered. Among the areas considered are economic development, government regulation of business, national security, freedom of speech and discrimination. Readings are solely of Supreme Court decisions.

140:  Property & Liberty, Ben Brown, 4 units, Area II or III

The course will explore the relation between property law and limits of liberty in different cultures and at different times.  The course will cover theories of property law, slavery, the clash between aboriginal and European ideas of property, gender roles and property rights, common property systems, zoning, regulatory takings, and property on the internet. Readings will include legal theorists, court cases, and historical case studies.

145:  Law & Economics I, Prof. Bruno Salama, 4 units, Core (SS) or Area III

This course introduces economics as a tool for analyzing, evaluating and interpreting the legal framework that underpins a market economy. The first part examines the most basic legal foundations of markets, namely property, contract, corporate, tort, administrative and criminal law. The second part introduces relevant topics in the regulation of markets. It covers a few conceptual questions (the role of efficiency considerations in law and policy, the concept of regulations and the role of courts, and the dilemma between growth and distribution) as well as applied topics such as insurance, bankruptcy, labor, family, antitrust, and intellectual property law.

149:  Law, Technology & Entrepreneurship, Katyal, 4 units, Area III

Entrepreneurship plays an increasingly essential role in today’s global economy.  New companies and startups play valuable roles in the formation of new industry, also spurring established incumbent companies towards further growth.  This course is designed to explore the role of law in facilitating the development of entrepreneurial enterprises, paying special attention to the complex interaction between innovation and regulation.

160.1:  Punishment, Culture, & Society, Perry, 4 units, Core (H,SS) or Area I or II

This course surveys the development of Western penal practices, institutions, and ideas (what David Garland calls “penality”) from the eighteenth-century period to the present. Our primary focus will be on penal practices and discourses in United States in the early 21st century. In particular we will examine the extraordinary growth of US penal sanctions in the last quarter century and the sources and consequences of what some have called “mass imprisonment.” To gain some comparative perspective the course will also take up contemporary penality (or penalities) in Europe, South Africa, Central America, and Asia, as well as US penality and society at some earlier conjunctures.
In our analysis of penality, we will draw upon a range of social science theories with general relevance but with particularly rich application to the study of punishment. These theories provide the “tool kits” we will use to interpret and analyze multiplex implications of punishment and its relationship to changes in economic, social, and political relations associated with modernization and more recently the globalization of modern capitalism. The course will examine many examples of penal practices and the ideas associated with them including mass imprisonment, the death penalty, and restorative justice. In the last portion of the class we will examine the recent crisis in California’s juvenile prisons through the lenses both of different social theories and the examples of different national and historical penal patterns.

160.2:  Punishment, Culture, & Society, Kristin Sangren, 4 units, Core (H,SS) or Area I or II

This course surveys the development of Western penal practices, institutions, and ideas (what David Garland calls “penality”) from the eighteenth-century period to the present. Our primary focus will be on penal practices and discourses in United States in the early 21st century. In particular we will examine the extraordinary growth of US penal sanctions in the last quarter century and the sources and consequences of what some have called “mass imprisonment.” To gain some comparative perspective the course will also take up contemporary penality (or penalities) in Europe, South Africa, Central America, and Asia, as well as US penality and society at some earlier conjunctures.
In our analysis of penality, we will draw upon a range of social science theories with general relevance but with particularly rich application to the study of punishment. These theories provide the “tool kits” we will use to interpret and analyze multiplex implications of punishment and its relationship to changes in economic, social, and political relations associated with modernization and more recently the globalization of modern capitalism. The course will examine many examples of penal practices and the ideas associated with them including mass imprisonment, the death penalty, and restorative justice. In the last portion of the class we will examine the recent crisis in California’s juvenile prisons through the lenses both of different social theories and the examples of different national and historical penal patterns.

162AC – Restorative Justice, Julie Shackford-Bradley, 4 units, Area IV

This course will examine the theory and practice of restorative justice, with an emphasis on the ways that criminal justice systems implicate the emotions and the social integration of both victims and offenders.  The course will begin with a critical examination of the current focus of the criminal justice system on retribution and incarceration. It will explore the racially disproportionate effects of this system, a product both of governmental failures to recognize the continuing economic, social and psychological effects of slavery and Jim Crow, and law’s failure to look beyond a narrow, individually-oriented notion of discrimination. The course will also interrogate the ways that existing approaches function – at times, purposefully – to foster vengeance and contempt toward offenders as a social category, complicating the process of re-entry and reintegration.

164:  Juvenile Justice & the Color of Law: The Historical Treatment of Children of Color in the Judicial System – Delinquency & Dependency, Trina Thompson, 4 units, Area I or II or IV

Juvenile Justice and the Color of Law investigates the profound role of law and legal institutions in shaping and defining racial minority and majority communities. Students will interrogate the definition and meaning of race in U.S. society (e.g., whether race is biological, cultural, environmental, based on White supremacy, or a social construct that is constantly being transformed) and will critically examine the connection between law, race and racism, both in the historical context and in modern society. The course is a collaborative effort to learn the truths of our collective history; to share the truths of our individual experiences and lives; and, to determine if we desire a more just society, and if so, how to create our own paths and contributions to this endeavor.

170: Crime & Criminal Justice, Elizabeth Tejada, 4 units, Area I

This course examines the scope and causes of the crime problem in America, and the uses and limits of our criminal justice system in dealing with it. The class will look at recent trends in crime and at how our crime problem compares with that of other countries. Topics include the massive expansion of the American prison system in recent years and its effect on the crime rate, critical analyses of different theories of the causes of crime, strategies for preventing and controlling crime, death penalty, gun control, white-collar crime, and crime in the family.

173AC: Making Empire: Law & the Colonization of America, Tomlins, 4 units, Area II or V

This is an intro to the origins, development, and expansion of European settlement on the North American mainland. We will concentrate on the impulses – commercial, ideological, and racial – that drove European colonizing; the migrations (voluntary and forced) that sustained it; and the political and legal “technologies” that supplied it with definition, explanation, and institutional capacity. We will pay attention to themes of sovereignty, civic identity, race, and “manifest destiny” and will discuss how law provided both the language and technical capacity to transform territory into property, people into slaves, and the land’s indigenous inhabitants into “others” who existed “outside” the civic order of the American Republic.

****Canceled****
181:  Psychology & Law, Gregory Davis (Harvard), 4 units,  Area II

This course will examine the implications of cognitive, social, and clinical psychology for legal theory, policies, and practices. The course will analyze the psychological aspects of intent, responsibility, deterrence, retribution, and morality. We will examine applications of psychology to evidence law (e.g. witness testimony, psychiatric diagnosis and prediction), procedure (e.g., trial conduct, jury selection), and topics in criminal, tort, and family law.
****Canceled****

184: Sociology of Law, Kristin Sangren, 4 units, Core (SS) or Area IV

This introductory course explores major issues and debates in the sociology of law.  Topics include theoretical perspectives on the relationship between law and society, theories of why people obey (and disobey) the law, the relationship between law and social norms, the “law in action” in litigation and dispute resolution, the roles of lawyers, judges, and juries in the legal system and in society, and the role of law in social change.  The course will examine these issues from an empirical perspective.

190.1: Monetary Law & Regulation, Bruno Salama, 4 units, Area III or V

The world is experiencing renewed interest in the law and regulation of money. The drivers for that include technological developments that made possible innovations such as cryptocurrencies and central bank digital currencies,alongside fears of excessive debt levels,concerns over the loss of dollar hegemony, and, more recently, unconventional monetary policies enacted in response to the COVID19 crisis. Despite the appearance of originality, most of the existing questions have already been addressed, in one way or another, during the process of consolidation of modernday finances. This course discusses some of today’s pressing monetary questions by surveying the history of US monetary law. It covers the first Supreme Court cases on monetary powers under the US Constitution, the creation of the Federal Reserve System, the rise and fall of the Bretton Woods System, the inflation of the late 1970s, and the era of easy money initiated in the aftermath of the 2008 banking debacle.No previous knowledge of monetary matters is required. 

190.2: Racial & Colonial Foundations of UC Berkeley, Nazune Menka, 4 units, Area IV or V

The purpose of this seminar is to engage students in an investigation of the origins of the University of California with a view to developing a proposal for an undergraduate class in Legal Studies. While several universities on the east coast are grappling with how they benefited from slaverythe University of California has failed to look deeply into its own origins. Drawing upon the work of the UC Berkeley (University) Truth & Justice Project, the seminar will explore the history of the University and its racial and colonial foundations. 

190.3: Human Rts & Civil Rights Israel, Michal Tamir, 4 units, Area II or IV

Human rights in Israel have evolved in a unique way. Since the establishment of the State, the Supreme Court recognized and developed the rights through the interpretation of laws. For example, when the Supreme Court was required to rule on the authority of the Minister of the Interior to close a newspaper by virtue of a so-called “Press Ordinance,” it developed the freedom of expression and the conditions for its violation. All rights have evolved as relative rights that can be balanced with other rights and interests, and an explicit statute could have infringed upon them. In 1992, Israel underwent a “constitutional revolution” with the enactment of two Basic Laws focusing on protecting human rights. Some of the human rights are enshrined explicitly in the Basic Laws and other rights were interpreted by the Supreme Court as arising from “human dignity.” Today an explicit law cannot infringe upon rights and it is necessary that it also meet the requirements of the Basic Laws. 

190.4:  Law & Social Change: The Case of Israel, Masua Sagiv, 4 units, Area IV

The question of law’s role in promoting social change has engaged research and practice for decades. However, the main focus in this area was given to changing distributive and class structures, while maintaining conceptual fixation regarding the nature of social change and the ways to promote it. The course will examine the scope and limits of promoting social change through law in the cultural, religious and communal spheres in Israel, in those areas where the “status quo” dominates: the different conflicts of state and religion in Israel. Issues to be covered include religion-induced segregations, religious marriage and divorce, Jewish dietary laws, gender equality and religions, conversion, and free exercise of religion in different sites (such as the Western Wall and the Temple Mount). While the question of law and social change arise in any contemporary democracy, the Israeli experience provides unique perspectives and illustrations, which will be explored critically, throughout the course. 

190.5:  Law, Justice & the Constitution in Modern German History, Matthew Specter, 4 units, Area IV

We will surveys 20th century German history from WWI to the present through the lens of law, state and society. This takes us through the collapse of the German Reich in World War I, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the two postwar Germanies, East and West, and the period since reunification in 1990. This course illuminates the historical processes by which a robust constitutional jurisprudence and liberal political culture was successfully built, but also the limits of “managed democracy” and the tension between cosmopolitan and xenophobic formulations of national identity. Students will gain an appreciation for a major Western tradition of legal theory and be acquainted with major figures in continental political thought, and a comparative perspective on constitutional history, liberalism, and human rights.

190.6: Fundamental Rights under the Constitution, Alan Pomerantz, 4 units, Area IV

This course will examine the evolution of the Supreme Court’s treatment of the conflicts between individual liberty and governmental mandates of equal treatment. We will begin by examining the historical legal, social and cultural support and acceptance of unequal treatment of people based on certain inherent characteristics including race, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation, towards the Court’s support of governmental mandates of equal treatment at the expense of individual liberty and freedom of choice, to the current trend permitting individuals and governmental institutions to “opt out” of non-discrimination laws based on newly developed and reinterpreted constitutional theories.

H195A:  Honors Seminar, Morrill, 5 units, Area N/A

Students contemplating an Honors thesis must be enrolled in the first half of the program with LS H195A in the Fall of their senior year, which is aimed specifically at preparing them for the task. The seminar will cover such important subjects as selecting a thesis topic that is both interesting and capable of investigation within the limits of a single semester, developing and implementing an effective research strategy, and completing the writing.  UCB GPA 3.5  Legal Studies GPA 3.5 required.

During the following Spring semester, students who continue with the Honors Program (LS H195B) will complete a substantial research paper under the supervision of a faculty member.

To apply for the Honors Seminar LS H195A for Fall, please refer to the application info under ‘Research’ then ‘Honors Program’ on the Legal Studies website.