Law and Justice

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

How have societies across time and in different places developed and practiced law? What can cross-cultural comparison and the use of ethnographic methods reveal about law, legality, and notions of justice? And how might these insights inform contemporary debates around criminal justice reform, freedom of speech, or attempts to address global economic inequality? In this course, students will embark on a critical introduction to legal anthropology. Course readings will immerse students in the ways different cultures have devised legal systems to resolve social conflict, prosecute and punish crime, create categories to organize social relations such as across gender or race, and to secure and maintain political legitimacy. We will also examine contemporary approaches to the anthropological study of law by looking at cutting-edge research underway including indigenous rights, international criminal law enforcement, transnational financial and economic regulation, migration, and the role of contemporary social movements in the United States, like Black Lives Matter, and globally, like climate change activism, to bring law closer to justice.