Corruption

2 credits · Law

This seminar will explore the connections between corruption, law, and democracy. We will focus primarily on the problem of political corruption, but we'll also look briefly at possibly analogous worries about technological corruption of reasoning and discourse. We will explore the links between corruption--both as rhetoric and as reality--and the rise of populism, in the United States and around the world. And we will consider how the law does and should respond to corruption, and how ideas about corruption have shaped, in particular, criminal law and the law of campaign finance. Over the course of the term, each student will be required to make four oral presentations of three to five minutes each, and one of these will also be submitted in the form of a 500- to 750-word paper. Grading will be based on the oral presentations, the short paper, and participation in class discussions.