2023 Summer Schedule
Session A—Six Weeks: May 22–June 30
Session B—Ten Weeks: June 5–August 11
Session C—Eight Weeks: June 20–August 11
Session D—Six Weeks: July 3–August 11
Session E—Three Weeks: July 24–August 11
Session F—Three Weeks: July 3–July 21
Session 12W—12 Weeks: May 22–August 11
Quick List of courses:
Session A: 100, 102, 107, 157, 160, 162AC
Session D: 145, 177, 182
Session A-Six Weeks: May 22 - June 30
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.
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.
107: Theories of Justice, Anna Zaret, 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.
157: International Relations & International Law, Smadar Ben Natan, 4 units, Area IV or V (This is an online course.)
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.
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.
***Canceled***162AC – Restorative Justice, Julie Shackford-Bradley, 4 units, Area IV ***Canceled***
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.
Session D-Six Weeks: July 3 - August 11
145: Law & Economics I, 4 units, Peter Sester, 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.
177: American Legal & Constitutional History, 4 units, Doug Sangster, 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.
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.***