Check the schedule of classes for days and times: http://classes.berkeley.edu
R1B.1: Technology, Surveillance & the Law, Brie McLemore, 4 units, Area N/A
This course will contend with key questions, such as: what is (or should be) the relation
between technology and law, what is the legal landscape to contend with the unprecedented levels of data collection “big tech” affords, and is the right to privacy possible in the current age of technological innovation and, if so, can it be equally afforded to all? We will also adopt an intersectional lens because, as law Professor Alvaro Bedoya states, “in a world where everyone is watched, everyone is not watched equally.” This course will explore the particular implications for technology and surveillance for historically marginalized populations, such as communities that have been targeted due to their racial, ethnic, and religious affiliation, the poor who rely on the State for subsistence, people who engage in non-heteronormative relations that have been criminalized by the state, and people both directly and indirectly impacted by the Carceral State. We will also expand the boundaries of surveillance beyond the parameters of the State in order to contend with the role of corporations in developing and marketing technological innovations that, in turn, dictate and expand the Surveillance State.
We will adopt a legal, social, political, economic, and cultural context in order to
assess the limitations of law in the face of the promises, hopes, and expectations for
technological innovations. This course will afford students the opportunity to explore how
history shapes the current state of the law, as evident through the evolution of the “Right to Privacy,” as well as the importance of law for social movements attempting to curtail the
Surveillance State. What is technology and what does it seek to do? What do we mean by
“surveillance”? And, lastly, what is privacy and is this understanding universal? As technology dramatically impacts and alters all aspects of our lives, this class is timely and essential for understanding the interplay between law and society in the modern-day.
NOTE: R1B courses must be taken for a letter grade.
**This course is lower division and will not count towards the major.**
R1B.2: 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. In this course, we will think critically about the legal and economic structures that make up the U.S.
health care system. 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?
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).
88: Crime and Punishment: Taking the Measure of the U.S. Justice System, Dag MacLeod, 2 units
**This course is lower division and will not count towards the major.**
NOTE: This Data Science Connector course is meant to be taken concurrently with Computer Science C8/Statistics C8/Information C8: Foundations of Data Science. Students may take more than one 88 (data science connector) course if they wish, ideally concurrent with or after having taken the C8 course.
100: Foundations of Legal Studies, 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, Tomlins, 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.
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?
123: Data, Prediction & Law, Marshall, 4 units, Area I or V
Data, Prediction, and Law allows students to explore different data sources that scholars and government officials use to make generalizations and predictions in the realm of law. The course will also introduce critiques of predictive techniques in law. Students will apply the statistical and Python programming skills from Foundations of Data Science to examine a traditional social science dataset, “big data” related to law, and legal text data.
***Note: students should complete Foundations of Data Science, or complete equivalent preparation in Python and statistics, before enrolling in this course.
132AC: Immigration and Citizenship, Lisa Knox, 4 units, Area II or IV
We often hear that America is a “nation of immigrants.” This representation of the U.S. does not explain why some are presumed to belong and others are not. We will examine both historical and contemporary law of immigration and citizenship to see how law has shaped national identity and the identity of immigrant communities . In addition to scholarly texts, we will learn to read and analyze excerpts of cases and the statute that governs immigration and citizenship, the Immigration and Nationality Act.
133AC: Law & Social Change: The Immigrant Rights Movement, Abrams, 4 units, Area IV or V
This course will explore the relationship between social movements and the law (ie, statutes, administrative regulations, judicial decisions, and policies and practices of enforcement, at both state and federal levels), focusing on the movement for immigrant rights led and populated by undocumented activists. We will examine that movement as it has emerged both nationally and in the state of Arizona. We will ask how legal action has spurred the formation of a social movement, and how that movement has sought to influence, resist, and transform the law. We will study the ways in which the movement in Arizona has faced a distinctive legal landscape: state legislation and state and local enforcement tactics have made the state almost uniquely hostile for immigrants, yet they has also enabled activists to use the federal courts and the Constitution as vehicles for change. We will also examine the ways in which the movement in Arizona has coalesced with a national movement for immigrant rights, as it has sought legislative and administrative goals: a path to legalization for DREAMers (undocumented youth), comprehensive immigration reform, and relief from deportations. We will finally consider how major changes in the leadership and direction of federal institutions with plenary power over immigration have demanded conceptual and tactical response from this movement, analyzing the transition between Obama and Trump administrations. The course will seek to answer two primary questions about the undocumented activists who are now at the center of this movement: first, how movement participants with no formal institutional role – and in this case, no formal legal status – have become confident and sophisticated legal claims-makers whose actions shape the law and its enforcement; and second, how those participants conceive law and legal institutions, and their own relation to them. The course will also be concerned with the role(s) of lawyers who collaborate with, assist, and work on behalf of the movement; we will consider how these roles may depart from conventional forms of legal representation.
***NOTE: While there are no formal pre-requisites for this course, students are strongly encouraged to take Legal Studies 132AC before enrolling in this class. Knowledge of immigration law will be a great benefit in understanding the legislation, policy, and enforcement with which activists are engaging.
135: Law, Judicial Politics, and Rights in Latin America, Monica Castillejos-Aragon, 4 units, Area IV or V
This course introduces the study of comparative constitutional law in Latin America and will prepare students to acquire substantial training on the existing legal traditions in the world: the common law and the civil law systems.
We will study how political, social, and historical dynamics shape the work of state actors, such as the executive, legislative, judicial powers, as well as the legal profession, and civil society groups to mobilize legal and social change.
138 001: The Supreme Court & Public Policy, Ben Brown, 4 units, Core (SS) or Area IV or V (Check classes.berkeley.edu for day/time.)
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.
138 002: The Supreme Court & Public Policy, Elizabeth Tejada, 4 units, Core (SS) or Area IV or V (Check classes.berkeley.edu for day/time.)
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.
147: Law & Economics II, Bruno Salama, 4 units, Area III
Microeconomic theory will be applied to government and regulation. Topics include the economic analysis of constitutional law, administrative law, regulation, corporations, and environmental law. To illustrate, the behavior of legislators who want to maximize the votes that they receive will be described and predicted. Similarly, the behavior of regulatory agencies who seek to maximize their own budgets will be predicted. The best forms of regulation will be identified assuming that parties subject to it minimize the cost of compliance, as when corporations try to satisfy environmental controls at least cost. Law & Economics I (LS 145) is not a prerequisite.
154: Human Rights Research & Practice, Koenig/Stover/Rohini Haar, 4 units, Area IV
This course provides an overview of international human rights, including the field’s historical and theoretical foundations; the jurisprudence of international human rights; empirical insights from disciplines such as sociology, psychology, history, and anthropology; and emerging trends in human rights practice.
158: Law & Development, Bruno Salama, 4 units, Area III or IV
Focusing on developing countries, this course considers the relationship between legal institutions and rules – including informal and traditional ones – and development – defined by different actors by economic growth, education, health, or a wide spectrum of freedoms. It examines efforts by national leaders, international organizations, foreign aid agencies, and NGOs to “reform” law to promote development, along with the resistance and unplanned consequences that often ensue.
****CANCELED 159: Introduction to Law & Sexuality, Sonia Katyal, 4 units, Area II or IV CANCELED*****
This course focuses on the legal regulation of sexuality, and the social and historical norms and frameworks that affect its intersection with sex, gender, race, disability, and class. We will critically examine how the law shapes sexuality and how sexuality shapes the law. Our subject matter is mostly constitutional, covering sexuality’s intersection with privacy, freedom of expression, gender identity and expression, equal protection, reproduction, kinship, and family formation, among other subjects. We will study case law, legal articles, and other texts (including visual works) that critically engage issues of sexuality, citizenship, nationhood, religion, and the public and private spheres domestically and internationally.
160: Punishment, Culture, and 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.
168: Sex, Reproduction, and the Law, Mark Leinauer, 4 units, Area II
This course examines recent American legal and social history with respect to reproductive and sexual behavior. We will consider two theoretical aspects of the problem: first, theories of how law regulates social behavior and second, more general theories about how reproduction is socially regulated. Armed with these theoretical perspectives, the course will then examine closely a number of legal/social conflicts, including sterilization, abortion and contraception.
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.
174: Comparative Constitutional Law: The Case of Israel, Michal Tamir, 4 units, Area IV or V
The seminar will provide an introduction to the comparative study of constitutional law through the lens of Israeli constitutional jurisprudence – a jurisprudence built explicitly on the foundations of a variety of other constitutional systems, reflecting the diversity of approaches to constitutionalism. Through this comparative framework students will learn basic constitutional theory as well as explore some of the major constitutional debates in Israeli contemporary law. The constitutional theory part of the course will discuss the formation of Israeli constitution in comparison with the structure of other constitutions such as the U.S. Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This framework will introduce the central notions of constitutionalism – the ideas that that constitutions can (and should) limit government; the role of the judiciary in interpreting and enforcing the constitution; and the importance of constitutional rights. Among the constitutional debates that the class will explore are topics such as freedom of expression and freedom of association, equality, the right of human dignity, due process, social rights, freedom of occupation, freedom of religion etc. These topics will also be looked at from a comparative perspective drawing upon different constitutional regimes such as the Canadian Charter and the constitution of South Africa.
***Canceled***175 – Access to Justice: Comparative & Historical Perspectives, Alexandra Havryshylyn, 4 units, Area IV ***Canceled***
***Canceled***
This class first introduces students to the origins of the access to justice problem, paying attention to disparate impacts along the lines of race, class, and gender. It examines how the costs of legal services, and in turn of law school tuition, steadily rose in the last several decades. Drawing on both historical and comparative case studies, students will then be encouraged to think creatively about who can represent individuals at law. Further inspiration comes from contemporary case studies outside North America and Europe. Finally, students will have an opportunity to execute a guided research project on a historical, comparative, or contemporary aspect of access to justice that helps shed light on potential solutions today. ***Canceled***
177: American Legal & Constitutional History, Ben Brown, 4 units, Core (H) or Area II or III or V
This course explores the history of American legal institutions and doctrine from colonial times to the present. It deals both with the history of American constitutional law (through the study of major U.S. Supreme Court opinions) and with the development of certain important bodies of non-constitutional law, such as the law of property, the law of torts (civil wrongs), and criminal law. In exploring how American law has developed over time the course may serve as something of an introduction to our current legal and constitutional order.
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: Constitutionalism Before the Constitution, Hoekstra, 4 units, Area IV or Area V
This is a seminar in the history of political and legal theory, with a focus on component ideas of constitutionalism. We will consider some of the forerunners of the conception of a constitution, and early articulations of some of the ideas that we associate with a constitution, including balance of powers, checks and balances, mixed government and divided sovereignty, and fundamental law. Some of our central texts were influential for American constitutional thinking, but they should encourage reflection about how theorists of the past thought about some of these ideas differently, and not just about how past ideas may have helped to shape modern ones. We will touch briefly on the Athenian and Roman constitutions, and will read texts by Polybius, Marsilius of Padua, Niccolò Machiavelli, Johannes Althusius, Charles I, James Harrington, Montesquieu, Noah Webster, James Madison, and others. The focus of our seminar will be on reading these primary texts together.
190.2: Int’l Courts & Human Rights, Lisa Reinsberg, 4 units, Area IV or Area V
The emergence and rapid development of the international human rights framework over the last 75 years is a remarkable innovation, yet it is nonetheless evident that human rights abuses continue to impact people around the world. What role do international courts play in our understanding and enjoyment of human rights? In this seminar, we will discuss the modern system of international human rights protection, its history, its various components, its successes, and its shortcomings. Using primary legal texts and case decisions, as well as textbook excerpts and scholarly critiques, we will examine which rights are considered fundamental and how the interpretation of those rights has expanded over time. We will compare the courts and quasi-judicial bodies that protect human rights, including their jurisdiction, competencies, and impact. Finally, we will discuss the roles and strategies of the various actors involved, including grassroots activists and elected judges.
190.3: Medical Ethics & Law, Rivka Amado, 4 units, Area II or Area IV
Once medical ethics focused on four principles setting out physicians’ duties to their patients: the duty to respect patients’ autonomy to refuse or choose their treatment, the duty to promote the welfare of the patients, the duty to avoid harm and the duty to be concerned with just distribution of scare resources. These concerns were the elaborated upon my philosophers concerned with moral theory. During the second half of the Twentieth Century, physicians’ duties have been extended due to new developments of modern technology, the introduction of new medical interventions and the rise of consumer and patient’s rights movement which pressed for greater transparency, and more patient autonomy. These new developments triggered a host of ethical dilemmas. Among them are the presumption of patient competence, the right to die with dignity, the control over organ harvesting and transplantation, and issues of reproductive rights and ownership of frozen embryos. On a societal level, medical ethics involves issues about protection of public health, proactive measures to prevent illness and injury (mandatory vaccination, quarantines) and rationing health care.
190.4: History of the Prison, Lieberman, 4 units, Area I or Area IV
Arguments over the purposes and practices of punishment have become a
familiar feature of current political debate and controversy. The first weeks of
semester are devoted to the debates that attended one of the most dramatic
transformations in the history of western punishment: the emergence in the
early-19th century of the penitentiary as the standard sanction for the treatment
of the most serious crimes. We will examine leading reform arguments in support
of the penitentiary; antagonistic assessments of the earliest experiments with the
penitentiary; and the subsequent proposals to adapt imprisonment to new penal
purposes.
In the remaining weeks at the semester, we will consider another and more
contemporary episode in the history of punishment. We explore the recent
phenomenon of “mass incarceration” in the U.S. along with the extensive changes
that have occurred in criminal justice since the 1970s. We conclude with an examination of current calls for prison abolition.
190.5: Comparative Criminal Justice Reform, Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg, 4 units, Area I
This course will introduce current criminal justice reforms, focusing on examples from the Israeli and American criminal justice system. We will examine a variety of punitive and non-punitive justice mechanisms that have proliferated in recent years as social responses for crime, including Pre-Settlement Conferences, Restorative Justice, Community courts, Drug Courts, Diversions, Hybrid Civil-Criminal processes and even Social Media as an arena for seeking justice. We will discuss the background for their emergence and explore their perils and promises. The course will also examine the influence of American criminal justice reforms and the deepening legitimacy crisis of mass incarceration on Israeli criminal justice system, and the ways Israeli criminal justice system embraced, as well as resisted and transformed American reforms in light of the specific history, culture and challenges of the Israeli context.
190.6: Constitutional Jurisprudence: Liberty/Equality, Alan Pomerantz, 4 units, Area IV or V
Personal liberty and inalienable rights have been a central tenet guiding our nation since the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The government was created to protect those liberties. But the founding documents were drafted by men of privilege who for decades occupied the important governmental and judicial positions of power. Accordingly, it was inevitable that the preservation of those privileges and the resulting inequities regarding race, the status of woman, sexual preference, gender and voting became imbedded. These inequities began to be addressed beginning with the Civil War, and accelerated after World War II when the federal government and the Supreme Court began to mandate equality at the expense of certain individual liberties and privileges. Recently, the trend has moved back towards protecting individual liberties and historic privileges at the expense of mandated equal treatment. But now the constitutional arguments are different and are based on religious freedom, individual morality, an expanded definition of verbal and “non-verbal” speech and prohibitions on government mandated speech and behavior. In the coming terms, the Supreme Court will be asked to re-examine issues regarding religious freedoms, race, health care, gender, abortion, and self identity through the lens of the developing emphasis on individual rights and privileges.
The course will address the evolution of the Supreme Court’s and federal government’s
activities in areas where liberty and equality are in conflict. The goal is to understanding the current political situation and the likely outcome of decisions the Court will be asked to make that implicate the inherent conflict between individual freedom and mandated equality.
190.7: Truth, Justice and Reconciliation: Responses to State Violence, Julie Shackford-Bradley, 4 units, Area II or Area IV
How do people and communities envision and enact justice in response to state-sponsored and state-sanctioned violence? How have TRCs (Truth and Reconciliation Commissions) and analogous approaches taken shape in the United States, in response to state-sponsored violence, including “legal violence”? With South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a foundational model, this course will examine an array of community-based strategies for surfacing truths about historical harms, pursuing accountability through apologies and reparations, and restoring relationships, communities, artefacts, and lands. We will also address the many challenges that arise in establishing official commissions, reaching out to communities, and following through with recommendations, especially when working with the same governmental and political structures that perpetrated or enabled the violence, and when the violence is ongoing. The course will “think globally and act locally” by presenting examples of TRCs around the world and in the US, and engaging students in research on the possibilities of TRC approaches for the Berkeley campus and Bay Area.
190.8: Natural Law & Constitutional Interpretation, Steven F. Hayward & Janice Rogers-Brown, 4 units, Area IV or Area V
This course will examine whether Natural Law is still relevant today. The Natural Law tradition stretching back to antiquity was at the center of Anglo-American and European law at the time modern constitutional democracy took shape. For more than a century Natural Law reasoning has been supplanted by numerous modern foundational rivals. Is Natural Law legal reasoning therefore wholly obsolete? What might remain operative from this tradition? Can it inform judicial review of constitutional controversies in any substantial way? This seminar will review the Natural Law tradition and its principal challengers; the two forms of modern Natural Law thought (Aristotelian/Thomistic, based on teleology, and the Kantian Natural Law theory based on synthetic rationalism), and the relation of Natural Law to the common law and positive law.
190.9: Plea Bargaining in Anglo-American Law, Mary Vogel, 4 units, Area I or Area IV
One striking feature of American courts is the widespread practice of plea bargaining. Why might a country with strong jurisprudence, laws and legal institutions turn from jury trials and judicial decisions to a “negotiated” criminal justice? And why reward those claiming guilt? This course explores the nature of plea bargaining, varieties in its form across diverse legal systems, its causes, forces shaping its practice, and its consequences. The role of the US Supreme Court in decisions on constitutionality of the practice is probed with emphasis on voluntariness, coercion, fairness, efficiency, equity along lines of difference, access to justice, and fair trial. We explore competing accounts of the historical emergence
and contours of plea bargaining in the United States and England and look to the British Commonwealth to examine dynamics in several member countries. Anglo-American plea bargaining is then set in comparative perspective by contrasting it with a few Roman-Dutch law-based jurisdictions. Paradigms of elite social control, political corruption, and “localization” of human rights are analyzed. Finally, we consider pros and cons of plea bargaining; its potential implications for legitimation of governance and normativity of law; and possible impacts on the role of evidence, charging decisions, and trial practice.
Alternatives and proposals for reform are weighed.
H195B: Legal Studies Honors Thesis, Your Supervising Professor, 3 units, can be counted towards the Area in which two courses are taken.
Study of an advanced topic under the supervision of a faculty member leading to the completion of a senior honors thesis. These units are designed for students who began the Honors Program in the Fall.
H195C: Legal Studies Honors Research and Writing Seminar, Morrill, 2 unit, Areas not applicable.
The goal of the seminar is to provide Honors students additional support as they conduct the research for and write their senior honors theses, and prepare presentations for the Spring Studies Undergraduate Research Conference. Honors students enroll in the two unit LS H195C seminar during the second semester of the Honors Program along with the three units of LS H195B.