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Law and Society

Undergraduate · Historical course

Spring 2003

Law is a common and yet distinct aspect of everyday life in modern societies. This course examines the central features of law as a social institution and as a feature of popular culture. We will explore the nature of law as a set of social systems, central actors in the systems, legal reasoning, and the relationship of the legal form and reasoning to social change. The course emphasizes the relationship between the internal logic of legal devices and economic, political and social processes. Emphasis is placed upon developing a perspective which views law as a practical resource, a mechanism for handling the widest range of unspecified social issues, problems, and conflicts, and at the same time, as a set of shared representations and aspirations. We will explore the range of experiences of law for its ministers (lawyers, judges, law enforcement agents and administrators) as well as for its supplicants (citizens, plaintiffs, defendants). We will examine how law is mobilized and deployed by professionals and ordinary citizens. We cannot cover all aspects of the legal system, nor focus on all the different actors. A set of topics has been selected to develop understanding of the situational and systemic demands within which actors in the legal system operate and perform their roles; at the same time, we will try to discover systematic patterns in the uses and consequences of law. Throughout the course there is concern for understanding what we mean by legality and the rule of law.

Readings

  • Abel, Richard L., ed. The Law and Society Reader . New York: New York University Press, 1995.
    Listed reading
  • Burnett, D. Graham. A Trial by Jury . New York: Vintage Books, 2002.
    Listed reading
  • Carter, Leif, and Tom Burke. Reason in Law . 6th ed. New York: Longman, 2001.
    Listed reading
  • Ewick, Patricia, and Susan S. Silbey. The Common Place of Law: Stories From Everyday Life (Language and Legal Discourse) . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
    Listed reading
  • Harr, Jonathan. A Civil Action . New York: Vintage Books, 1996.
    Listed reading
  • Sutton, John. Law/Society: Origins, Interactions, and Change . Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge, 2001.
    Listed reading
  • Berman, Paul. “An Observation and a Strange but True ‘Tale’: What Might the Historical Trials of Animals Tell Us About the Transformative Potential of Law?” Hastings Law Journal 52 (November 2000): 123-180.
    Listed reading
  • Black, Donald. “The Social Organization of Arrest.” In Policing Society. Edited by W. Clinton Terry III. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1985, pp. 290-309.
    Listed reading
  • Burke, Thomas F. Lawyers, Lawsuits and Legal Rights: The Battle over Litigation in American Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002, pp. 1-59, 194-231, 259-260.
    Listed reading
  • Chambliss, William J. “A Sociological Analysis of the Law of Vagrancy.” Social Problems 12 (1964): 67-77.
    Listed reading
  • Cobb, Sara. “The Domestication of Violence in Mediation.” Law & Society Review 31, 3 (1997): 397-441.
    Listed reading
  • Cuba, Lee. A Short Guide to Writing About Social Science . 2nd ed. New York: Harper Collins, 1992. (Recommended book on writing)
    Listed reading
  • Currie, Elliott P. “Crimes without Criminals: Witchcraft and Its Control in Renaissance Europe.” Law & Society Review 3, no. 1 (1968): 7-32. Reprinted as chap. 19 in The Social Organization of Law . Edited by Donald Black. New York: Seminar Press, 1973, pp. 344-367.
    Listed reading
  • Feeley, Malcolm. The Process is the Punishment. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992, chap. 1.
    Listed reading
  • Felstiner, William L.F. , Richard L. Abel, and Austin Sarat. “The Emergence and Transformation of Disputes: Naming, Blaming, Claiming…” Law & Society Review 15, no. 3-4 (1980-1981): 631-654.
    Listed reading
  • Hall, Jerome. Theft, Law and Society. 2nd ed. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952. (Excerpts)
    Listed reading
  • Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter and Selected Tales. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979, pp. 75-89.
    Listed reading
  • Hay, Douglas. “Property, Authority and the Criminal Law.” Chap. 1 in Douglas Hay et. al., Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth Century England . New York: Pantheon, 1975.
    Listed reading
  • Hensler, Deborah. “Suppose It’s Not True: Challenging Mediation Ideology.” Journal of Dispute Resolution , no. 1 (2002): 81-99.
    Listed reading
  • Holmes, Oliver Wendell. “The Path of the Law” (1897). In The Sociology of Law: Interdisciplinary Readings . Edited by Rita James Simon. San Francisco: Chandler, 1968, pp. 19-28.
    Listed reading
  • Paul, Jeremy. “Changing the Subject: Cognitive Theory and the Teaching of Law.” Brooklyn Law Review 67, no. 4 (2002): 987-1022.
    Listed reading
  • Real Justice, District Court. PBS Video, Frontline Series, 1999. (Screening)
    Listed reading
  • Real Justice, Superior Court. PBS Video, Frontline Series, 1999. (Screening)
    Listed reading
  • Sherwin, Richard K. When Law Goes Pop: The Vanishing Line Between Law and Popular Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, chap. 1, 2, 9.
    Listed reading
  • Silbey, Susan. “The Consequences of Responsive Regulation.” In Enforcing Regulation. Edited by J. Thomas and K. Hawkins. Boston, The Hague and London: Kluwer Nijhof, 1984, pp. 147-170.
    Listed reading
  • Silbey, Susan. “The Emperor’s New Clothes: Mediation Mythology and Markets.” Journal of Dispute Resolution , no. 1 (2002): 171-177.
    Listed reading
  • Strunk, William, and E. B. White. Elements of Style . Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999. (Recommended book on writing)
    Listed reading
  • Telpner, Brian. “Constructing Safe Communities: Megan’s Law and the Purposes of Punishment.” Georgetown Law Journal 85 (June 1997): 2039-2068.
    Listed reading
  • Thompson, E. P. “The Rule of Law.” In The Essential E. P. Thompson. Edited and Introduced by Dorothy Thompson. New York: The New Press, 2001, pp. 130-137.
    Listed reading
Sources