Legal Studies Courses Summer 2022

NOTE: Legal Studies offers courses during the six week sessions: Session A and Session D.

2022 Summer Schedule

Session A-Six Weeks: May 23 - July 1
Session B -Ten Weeks: June 6 - August 12
Session C-Eight Weeks: June 21 - August 12
Session D-Six Weeks: July 5 - August 12
Session E-Three Weeks: July 25 - August 12
Session F-Three Weeks: July 5 - July 22
Session 12W-12 Weeks: May 23 - August 12

Quick List of courses:

Session A:  R1B, 102, 138, 160, 168, 182
Session D: 100, 145, 170

Session A-Six Weeks: May 23 - July 1

***CanceledLS R1B: Sanctuary Tradition in Law & Social Practice, Bonnie Cherry, 4 units, Does not count towards the major.Canceled***

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?

LS 102:  Policing & Society, Eduardo Bautista-Duran, 4 units, Area I

This course examines the American social institution of policing with particular emphasis on urban law enforcement. It explores the social, economic and cultural forces that pull policing in the direction of state legal authority and power as well as those that are a counter-weight to the concentration of policing powers in the state. Special attention is given to how policing shapes and is shaped by the urban landscape, legal to cultural.

LS 138:  The Supreme Court & Public Policy, 4 units, Brittany Arsiniega (Furman University), Core or Area IV or V  ONLINE COURSE

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.

LS 160:  Punishment, Culture & Society, 4 units, Alessandro De Giorgi, 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 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.

LS 182: Law, Politics & Society, 4 units, Malcolm Feeley, Core or IV or V

This course explores the nature and function of law and legal systems.  It asks:  What is the nature of legal authority?  Where does it originate? Why do we obey it?  From where does law come? How are laws made? How do judges reason?  It also focuses on law and conflict resolution:   How do people bring cases to court?  How do judges decide cases?  What alternatives are there to the legal process?  The course addresses basic question common to all legal systems, but draws most examples from Anglo-American legal systems.   Finally, a traditional conception of law is that it is a timeless set of principles, yet society is always changing.  So, how then does law change?  How do courts respond to social change?  To what extent can courts themselves bring about social change?  And, if they try, what resources are at their disposal?  Readings will be drawn from a variety of fields: philosophy, history, judicial opinions, and scholarly articles.  If you are attentive to these materials and engage during lectures and discussion sections, you will become knowledgeable one of society’s most important institutions, the legal system.  There are no prerequisites for this course. It should be of interest to Legal Studies majors; those thinking about going to law school; science majors; and visiting foreign students who are interested in getting a window onto an important institution—law– not only in the United States but everywhere—indeed anyone curious about one of society’s core institutions.

***NOTE: This course must have at least 22 students enrolled in order for it to continue. If the course has less than 22 students, it will be canceled, so have a back-up plan.***

Session D-Six Weeks: July 5 - August 12

LS 100: Foundations of Legal Studies, Yoav Mehozay (University of Haifa), 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.


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

This course uses the concepts and tools of economics to analyze problems in law, focusing on contracts, property, torts, and legal process. Students will be expected to apply the analysis to broad array of legal issues.

LS 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.