NOTE: Legal Studies offers courses during the six week sessions: Session A and Session D.
NOTE: Areas listed are for the New Plan.
Quick List of courses:
Session A: LS 104AC, LS 109, LS 138, LS 182
Session D: (All LS 110’s are Canceled), LS 147, LS 157, LS 160, LS 176
Session A (May 21 – June 29) six weeks
LS 104AC: Youth, Justice & Culture, Elizabeth Brown (from SFSU),
8-10am MTWTh, 4 units, Area I or II
The course challenges adult-centered representations of urban youth of different ethnicities, their problems, and the supposed solutions to those problems. It departs from the conceptualizations and methods used to study youth in mainstream criminology and developmental psychology. The seminar builds an alternative, youth-centered perspective, exploring what it means to put youth perspectives at the center of socio-legal inquiry. As a socio-legal endeavor, the seminar studies law as it is lived, shaped, and encountered by urban youth in their everyday lives. It illuminates the conceptual frames, methodological tools, and substantive findings that come to the front when the focus is on how youth make sense of their own lives, assert their own views of justice and law, and act on one another. Particular attention is given to youth conflict, peer relations, identity building within and across ethnic groups, claims on space and territory, the salience of law and rights, and adaptations to adult authorities and practices in the contexts of urban neighborhoods and public schools.
LS 109: Aims & Limits of Criminal Law, Richard Perry, 2-4pm MTWTh,
4 units, Area I
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?
***CANCELED***LS 132AC: Immigration & Citizenship, Leti Volpp, 12-2pm MTWTh, 4 units, Area II or IV***CANCELED***
***CANCELED***
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.
LS 138: The Supreme Court & Public Policy, Sean Farhang,
10am-12pm MTWTh, 4 units, Core 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.
CANCELED LS 170: Crime & Criminal Justice CANCELED
Prof. Alan Pomerantz CANCELED
10am-12am MTWTh CANCELED
4 units CANCELED
Area I CANCELED
LS 182: Law, Politics & Society, Malcolm Feeley, 8-10am MTWTh, 4 units, Core or IV or V
This course examines the theory and practice of legal institutions in performing several major functions of law: allocating authority, defining relationships, resolving conflict, adapting to social change, and fostering social solidarity. In doing so, it will assess the nature and limits of law as well as consider alternative perspectives on social control and social change.
Session D (July 2 – August 10) six weeks
***CANCELED LS 110 001: Indigenous Rights & American Law, CANCELED Elizabeth Pacheco, 2-4pm MTWTh, 4 units, Area IV or V ***CANCELED***
This course will explore: What are “human rights”? Can human rights be considered “inalienable”when history reveals the denial of the rights? What are the barriers to achieving universal human rights? What do human rights campaigns tell us about the solutions to achieve human rights? We explore these issues through the indigenous context. We survey the cultural, political, and legal stature of indigenous peoples both in the U.S. and internationally. As Echo Hawk does, we explore what is needed to achieve rights and reconciliation with focusing on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples. Finally, we look critically at the bias and cultural injustices that can
underlie policies to stifle progress. And we will discover the successes of those that persevere to achieve human rights and justice.*** CANCELED***
***CANCELED LS 110 002: Anti-Corruption Law, Hana Ivanhoe, 10am-12pm MTWTh, 4 units, Area III, V ***CANCELED
This course will examine the phenomenon of corruption (primarily corporate corruption) and the existing legal and voluntary frameworks under both US and international law addressing acts of corruption at home and abroad. This course will involve a good deal of policy discussion and will require readings outside of those in a typical casebook, rangingfrom Francis Fukuyama to IMF working papers. We will begin with a discussion of the definition, effects and impacts of corruption, particularly in developing countries. We will touch briefly on public or political corruption and then move to corporate corruption beginning with a study of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), related decisions, enforcement actions and enforcement agency guidance. We will then evaluate and compare existing international frameworks for combating corporate corruption globally, including the OECD Convention Combating Bribery and the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC). We will close with an examination of private initiatives, voluntary frameworks, standards and guidelines for preventing corporate acts of corruption abroad.
***CANCELED ***
***CANCELED LS 110 003: Children’s Literature & Law, Meredith Wallis,
8-10am MTWTh, 4 units, Area II ***CANCELED
This class is about the study of literature specifically, children’s literature as a source of, and force for, law in the sense of nomos: the stories we tell children about law and the law we make in the telling. The first two weeks are focused on abstract questions: what is the relationship of law and literature? What use is there to studying both? What makes children’s literature particularly appropriate as a legal site? The last four focus on two substantive areas property and contract and tackle more specific inquiries: where are portals located, and what legal right do they implicate in their placement? In other words, how, legally, do children get to imaginary lands? How do heroes get what they need to accomplish the happy ending in a fairy tale, and is there any preference by author or historic period for certain ways of getting? In other words, if we moved from status to contract over the period covered by the literary fairy tale, did the fairy tales as well?
***CANCELED ***
***CANCELED LS 110 004: Law & Society in Iran, Behnoosh Payvar, 12-2pm MTWTh, 4 units, Area II or IV ***CANCELED***
This course will explore the relationship between law, norms and social change in the context of a legal system which has religion of Islam as its main reference. During the course, we will review basic features of Iranian legal system, criminal law, family law, role of courts, social organization of law, and using interdisciplinary approach we will address topics as norms and modern society, gender perspective of Islamic legal system,
technology and social change. Exploring the legal system background in Iran offers the opportunity to study how traditional ways of restoring justice were suddenly replaced by a modern judiciary and the proceeding implications. The class will examine the role of media and technology in social change, addressing values, norms, perceptions and interactions that take place in a modern society, and how these changes interact with the legal system that is based on traditional Islamic percepts. The course will also cover the gender perspective that is incorporated in the Islamic legal system, and how men and women are seen and perceived by the law. ***CANCELED***
LS 147: Law & Economics II, Dan Vencill (emeritus, SFSU),
12pm-2pm MTWTh, 4 units, Area III
Law and Economics I is not a prerequisite. 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.
LS 157: International Relations & International Law, Ivana Stradner,
10-12pm MTWTH, 4 units, Area IV or V
This course will evaluate and assess modern theories of international law. We will examine the work of legal scholars and look to political science and economics to see how these disciplines inform the study of international law. We will also examine a host of fundamental questions in international law, including, for example, why states enter into international agreements, why states comply with international law, and what kind of state conduct is likely to be influenced by international law.
LS 160: Punishment, Culture & Society, Alessandro De Giorgi,
2-4pm MTWTh, 4 units, Core 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.
LS 176: 20th Century American Legal & Constitutional History,
Ben Brown, 10am-noon MTWTh, 4 units, Area V
This class covers the development of American law and the constitutional system in the twentieth century. Topics include Progressive Era Regulatory policy, criminal justice and relations, freedom of speech and press, New Deal legal innovations, modern tort liability, environmental regulation, judicial reform, and federalism. It is recommended that students have completed at least one course in legal studies or political science dealing with American history or government.