Law school teaches students to "think like lawyers," but what exactly does that mean? Presumably, it at least means learning to make and respond to arguments within the constraints of the law. But which materials count as legitimate sources of law, what values the law embodies and what methods are appropriate to the task of discerning its meaning are always questions open to debate. In other words, the law is an essentially interpretive intellectual and social practice.
The Program in Law and Humanities is dedicated to deepening and broadening our understanding of this practice. It does so largely by exploring connections between law and such "humanistic" disciplines as philosophy, literature and history (to name only the oldest and best-known). Like law, these disciplines wrestle with difficult questions of interpretation, evidence and value in their respective domains. This is one reason why lawyers, judges and legal scholars have looked to them for guidance for centuries. Cross-disciplinary teaching and research in these fields both facilitates better understanding of the law and also points to ways in which the study of law may contribute to the humanities.
Contact: Charles Barzun
CurriculumThe Program is committed to offering courses each year that reflect an interdisciplinary law and humanities perspective. Students can also find relevant courses in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Students who are interested in pursuing a formal combined-degree program may apply for the J.D.-M.A. programs in English, philosophy or history.
Current Courses (2009-10) | Descriptions
American Legal History Seminar
Advanced Topics in the First Amendment (Religion Clauses)
American Social and Legal History
An American Half-Century
Bioethics and the Law
Comparative Constitutional Law Seminar
Civil Rights History from Plessy to Brown
Constitutional History I: American Revolution to 1896
Constitutionalism: History and Jurisprudence
Ethical Issues in Foreign Policy
Evidence Theory
Germs, Guns, and Lead: Public Health Law and Policy
Global Intellectual Property: History and Theory
Jurisprudence
Law and Ethics of Human Subject Research
Law and Literature
Legal and Moral Reasoning in Public Policy
Legal Theory in Europe and the United States: A Comparative Analysis
Lochner Era
Marriage: Law, Culture, and Imagination
Punishment in Law and Culture
Race and Law
Religion, Democracy, and Law
Rescue, Charity, and Justice
Rhetoric (fall and spring)
Supreme Court from Warren to Roberts
Supreme Court Justices and the Art of Judging
Virginia and the Constitution
War and Peace: New Thinking about the Causes of War and War Avoidance
Previous Courses
Art Law
Classics in American Legal Thought
Constitutional History I: Articles of Confederation to the Civil War
Constitutional History II: From Reconstruction to Brown
Critical Race Theory: Problems in Anti-discrimination Law
Feminist Legal Theory
First Amendment Theory
Foundations of Analytic Jurisprudence
Human Experimentation: Law and Ethics of Research in Biomedicine and Public Health
Ideas of the First Amendment
International and Comparative Health Law and Bioethics
Law and Ethics in Medical Practice
Law in Society
Laws of War and the American Civil War
Lawyers in the History of American Public Life
Lawyers, Law, and Film
Privacy and Surveillance
Rights
Seminars in Ethical Values
Trials of the Century: Law and Literature
AdvanceD Topics in the First Amendment (Religion Clauses) Micah Schwartzman This seminar will focus on doctrinal and theoretical controversies involving the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment. The first three weeks of the course will provide a general overview of constitutional protections for the freedom of religion. After this introduction, each week will be devoted to an intensive discussion of a law review article on a selected topic (e.g., public displays of religion, religious accommodation, public funding of religion, the autonomy of religious institutions, the definition of religion, the values and principles that justify the Religion Clauses, and the relationship between the two clauses). For each week, designated students will be required to criticize or defend the article in question. Since the focus of the seminar is on rigorous evaluation of the author’s argument, grades will be based on a ten-page critique and on class participation throughout the semester. Full Description
American Legal History Seminar Charles McCurdy This seminar provides students with an opportunity to investigate problems in American legal history and to learn from one another. Each student will write a 40-page research paper, evaluate 5 or 6 papers written by classmates, and participate in weekly discussions of important works written from different historiographical, theoretical, and methodological perspectives. Each student will also have a weekly appointment time to discuss (and establish) with the instructor a topic, an appropriate method, and a plan of work. Papers may focus on the eighteenth, the nineteenth, or the twentieth centuries. Full Description
American Social and Legal History Tomiko Brown-Nagin This seminar considers issues in 20th-century social and constitutional history, with particular emphasis on matters of race and inequality. Students read constitutional cases, works of historical scholarship, and primary source material. The seminar seeks to achieve four main goals. It familiarizes students with the distinct historiographical and methodological traditions of legal and social historians. It identifies the bundle of social, political, and economic problems that lawyers sought to combat through “civil rights” litigation. It illuminates how civil rights lawyers interacted with non-lawyer activists in social movements, exploring consensus as well as conflict, where appropriate. Ultimately, it identifies the circumstances under which legal and social change occurred during the civil rights era. The seminar conceives inequality broadly and follows the civil rights movement through various stages; thus, while most sessions focus on the struggle for racial equality, the seminar discusses aspects of the women’s rights, labor, anti-poverty, and welfare rights movements, as well. Full Description
Am American Half-Century John Setear In the Cold War, the United States led a coalition of democracies whose constant pressure eventually transmogrified the xenophobic, totalitarian menaces of the Soviet Union and China into, respectively, a fractured economic basket case and an uneasily capitalistic leader in international trade. This seminar examines whether law played a significant role in this outcome, in terms both of international law and US constitutional law. No prior knowledge of the relevant history or law will be taken for granted. Full Description
Bioethics and the Law Thomas Hafemeister Bioethics and the Law addresses some of the most divisive, sharply debated and rapidly emerging issues in society today. The course, which explores the intersection among medicine, technology, and the law, is likely to address issues such as human reproduction and birth (including actions for wrongful birth, wrongful life and wrongful conception), human genetics and the privacy and ownership of genetic information, death and dying, research involving human subjects, organ transplantation, and public health and bioterrorism. Full Description
Civil Rights History from Plessy to Brown Risa Goluboff This course explores the history of civil rights in the fifty years between Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education. The course emphasizes two things: recreating the uncertainties that characterized civil rights doctrine in the pre-Brown era, and analyzing the disparate ways historians of civil rights have treated the topic. Students will write short weekly response papers. Full Description
Comparative Constitutional Law Seminar A. E. Dick Howard Recent years have seen a renaissance of interest in the comparative possibilities of constitutional law. Just as framers of liberal constitutions 200 years ago were influenced by events in France and America, so constitution-makers in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe, South Africa, and elsewhere have considered the experience of more established constitutional democracies in framing their fundamental laws. The seminar will explore the issues entailed in the drafting and uses of a constitution. To what extent do constitutions reflect universal values (such as human rights), and to what extent are they grounded in the culture and values of a particular people? How much borrowing goes on in the writing of a constitution? In particular, in what respects do the U.S. Constitution and American constitutionalism serve as models for newer democracies? What are the historical, cultural, political, and economic contexts necessary to the success of liberal constitutional democracy? Full Description
Constitutional History I: American Revolution to 1896 Charles McCurdy This course will trace the history of American constitutional law development from 1776 to 1896. Topics to be covered include the framing and ratification of the Constitution, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the landmark decisions of the Marshall Court, the constitutional ramifications of slavery and emancipation, and the impact of economic change on constitutional politics and constitutional law. Full Description
Constitutionalism: History and Jurisprudence A.E. Dick Howard This seminar focuses on various ways of thinking about constitutions and constitutionalism -- as a restatement of ancient right (the tradition associated with England's Magna Carta), as being based upon a social compact (as in the thinking of John Locke), as reflecting the idea of a "nation" (as in the Turkish and Iranian constitutions), etc. In developing the ways of looking at constitutions, we will draw in part upon the various schools of jurisprudence (natural law, jurisprudence, etc.) as well as upon historical and contemporary sources. We will pay particular attention to important moments in the history of constitutionalism, such as the founding period of the United States and in France, the era of liberalism in 19th century Europe, the emergence of social and economic rights in the 20th century, etc. Having in mind these perspectives, students are invited to write research papers dealing with constitutionalism in earlier eras or with constitutions or constitutional developments in our own time. Full Description
Ethical Issues in Foreign Policy (Short Course) David Little and John Norton Moore This short course will explore ethical issues in foreign policy. The first session will provide an overview of “Ethical Thinking” generally. The next four sessions will explore the ethical implications of four specific foreign affairs decisions and issues. These will include President Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, decisions to “stress” detainees for intelligence in the war on terror, the decision to intervene militarily in Iraq in March 2003, and decisions regarding the response of the international community to the crisis in Rwanda in 1994. The class will be co-taught with David Little, Professor of the Practice in Religion, Ethnicity, and International Conflict at the Harvard Divinity School, one of the nation’s top experts on ethical issues in foreign policy. Full Description
Evidence Theory Charles Barzun This seminar will explore some of the most difficult doctrinal, philosophical, and empirical issues in contemporary evidence law. Topics will include, among others, the role of the jury in fact-finding, the use of probabilistic evidence, demonstrative and narrative relevance, and expert testimony. Each week we will read 2-4 cases or law review articles covering a particular topic. The only written requirement is a 10-15 page essay on a topic of the student’s choosing, but one-half of the final grade will be based on class participation. Full Description
Germs, Guns, and Lead: Public Health Law and Policy Richard Bonnie and Ruth Gaare Bernheim This course will explore the legitimacy, design, and implementation of policies aiming to promote public health and reduce the social burden of disease and injury. It will highlight the challenge posed by public health’s population-based perspective to traditional individual-centered, autonomy-driven approaches to bioethics and constitutional law. Other themes center on conflicts between public health and public morality and the relationship between public health and social justice and human rights. Illustrative topics include mandatory immunization, screening and reporting of infectious diseases, prevention of obesity and diabetes, prevention of lead poisoning, food safety, mandatory use of cycling helmets and seat belts, and restrictions on alcohol and tobacco advertising. Full Description
Global Intellectual Property: History and Theory Siva Vaidhyanathan This research seminar would survey the "first principles" and subsequent development of the global copyright and patent systems and pay particular attention to 20th century developments of globalization and digitization. The course will consider the key issues and controversies surrounding the steady growth of global Intellectual Property law and policy since 1710. It will not focus on the United States but will instead consider the effects global standardization is having on both developed and developing nations and the relationship among the these two sets. The reading will include essays by the most provocative and influential scholars in the field of “critical information studies”: law professors, computer scientists, communication and media studies scholars, historians, anthropologists, library and information studies scholars, and political scientists. Full Description
Jurisprudence Frederick Schauer This is an introductory course in the enduring concepts and themes of legal theory and legal reasoning. The course will include in-depth treatment of the natural law and positivist traditions, the moral obligation (or not) to obey the law, the foundations of a legal order, the sources of law, the nature of legal authority, the claims of legal realism, and the central ideas of legal reasoning and legal argument, including rules, precedent, analogy, authorities, statutory interpretation, and common-law reasoning. Readings will include books and articles by H.L.A. Hart, Lon Fuller, Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz, Hans Kelsen, Karl Llewellyn, Nicola Lacey, and the instructor, among others. Grades will be based on six short (1000 words each) papers, to be chosen by the student from fourteen weekly assignments. Full Description
Law and Ethics of Human Subject Research Margaret Riley and Lois Shepherd This seminar, specifically designed to be interdisciplinary, is open to graduate students in bioethics, nursing, and public health sciences, law students, and medical school junior faculty and fellows. We will begin with a brief look at the origins of the current system for regulating human subjects research and the ethical and legal frameworks that have evolved to assist with that regulation. We will explore central issues like risk-benefit assessment, informed consent, confidentiality, diversity in subject populations and how subjects are recruited and retained. We will also look into concerns raised by international research such as recruitment of poor and underserved populations and equitable access to the results of the research. We will examine some of the issues raised by new technologies such as genomics and personalized medicine, stem cell research and genetic engineering, nanotechnology and synthetic biology. Finally, we will explore how the changing economics of research creates both conflicts of interest and potentially increased innovation. Full Description
Law and Literature Zahr Stauffer We begin with the premise that we can know more about both law and literature by thinking not just 'about' each one but 'through' each one. In the first half of the course, we read literature through texts drawn from two areas of substantive law: torts and immigration. In the second half of the course, we move away from these legal frameworks, and read cases and texts selected with recourse to a set of concepts that originate in literature and literary criticism. We will focus on authorship, gender, originality, and self-fashioning –or the creation of a self through language— and the way legal mandates may shape that self-fashioning. Throughout, we will be interested in the ways literature represents, resists, and reworks models of legal thinking and legal action. In turn, we will consider how legal storytelling sometimes subverts narrative forms and patterns to innovative ends. Full Description
Legal and Moral Reasoning in Public Policy Richard Bonnie and James Childress This seminar will explore uses of legal and moral analysis in the American political culture through case studies of current policy problems. The range of possible case studies includes organ transplantation, tobacco control, immunization, mental health policy, and physician-assisted suicide. Co-listed in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the course is required for students earning a masters degree in public policy, and will be designed to introduce them to the basic structure of American law, while exposing law students to the fundamental tools of policy analysis. The instructors, an ethicist and a lawyer, are practitioners of public policy, especially in the field of bioethics and health policy, and the case studies will draw upon their own experience, including problems on which they have worked together. Full Description
Legal Theory in Europe and the United States: A Comparative Analysis (Short Course) Neal Duxbury Have American and European legal theorists tended to raise the same sorts of questions about law? If they have not, what are the differences in perspective? Twentieth-century European legal theory was dominated by the question of what gives law its validity, whereas American legal theorists have been preoccupied with rather different questions. Yet in Europe and the United States, legal theorists have ultimately found themselves worrying about much the same set of problems. This short course is structured around two of these problems. The first of these concerns the notion of law as an autonomous entity. The American realist ideas that law is a form of politics, and that law might be profitably studied from the perspectives of other disciplines, took a long time to take hold in Europe. But what did Europeans do instead? The starting-point for the course is European legal positivism, the basic argument behind which is that the reason that laws are binding on citizens has little if anything to do with the moral content of those laws. We will consider the positivist approach alongside American legal realism. The second problem on which this course focuses – a problem that neither the European positivists nor the American legal realists handled particularly well – is that of what makes for good judicial decision-making. In this part of the course we will see how Europeans and Americans have adopted similar approaches to this problem, and how they have developed similarly controversial arguments. The course is designed to introduce American law students to a body of literature that they are unlikely to encounter elsewhere in their studies. It is anticipated that the course will provide students with broader perspectives on some of the problems encountered in other parts of their syllabus, and that it will familiarize them with arguments and literature that they might draw upon when studying, and completing assignments for, other law courses. Full Description
Lochner Era Barry Cushman This seminar will examine significant developments in the areas of constitutional law governing social and economic regulation in the so-called "Lochner Era," extending roughly from 1880 to 1940. Attention will be given to restrictions on and changes in the scope of the federal powers to tax, to spend, and to regulate interstate commerce, as well as to limitations placed upon state and federal regulatory competence by the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, the Equal Protection Clause, the Tenth Amendment, and the Dormant Commerce Clause. We will seek to understand how these limitations and developments presented both obstacles and opportunities to regulatory reformers, how they constrained and shaped their legal strategies, and why they succeeded or failed in securing their regulatory objectives. Each student will be required to produce a substantial research paper on a topic chosen in consultation with the instructor. Full Description
MarriagE: Law, Culture, and the Imagination Kerry Abrams and Anne Coughlin What does the law tell us about marriage, and how does this compare to how marriage is shaped in the cultural imagination? Do law and culture reinforce one another—or are there conflicts? This seminar studies law relating to marriage (and associated topics, such as love, divorce, paternity, etc.) and explores the place of marriage, as legal, social, and cultural aspiration and means of regulation. Materials for study will include fictional texts, cultural analysis, and films, as well as legal cases. Full Description
Punishment in Law and Culture Austin Sarat Other than war, punishment is the most dramatic manifestation of state power. Whom a society punishes and how it punishes are key legal questions as well as indicators of its character. This course considers connections between punishment and culture in the contemporary United States. We will examine punishment through the prism of philosophical literature, literary texts, legal cases, and film. We will ask whether we punish too much and too severely, or too little and too leniently. Among the questions to be discussed are: Does punishment express our noblest aspirations for justice or our basest desires for vengeance? Can it ever be an adequate expression of, or response to, the pain of the victims of crime? When is it appropriate to forgive rather than punish? We will consider these questions in the context of arguments about the right way to deal with drug offenders, sexual predators, and terrorists. In addition, we will examine the treatment of punishment in constitutional law, e.g. the prohibition of double jeopardy and of cruel and unusual punishment. Throughout we will try to understand the meaning of punishment by examining the way it is represented in law and culture. Full Description
Race and Law Kim Forde-Mazrui With such watershed events in the civil rights movement as Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, the eradication of racial subordination in America seemed an achievable goal. Yet, in America today, the condition of many African-Americans and of race relations continue to suffer and, indeed, have deteriorated in many respects. Whether the law has aided or impeded the cause of civil rights in the past, and the extent to which the law can help to resolve racial issues in the present and future, are questions of considerable controversy. This course will examine the response of law to racial issues in a variety of contemporary legal contexts, including affirmative action, criminal justice, voting rights, interracial relationships and adoption, and hate speech. The materials will consist of a mix of cases and scholarly commentary. Classes will center on candid discussion about the issues raised in the assigned materials. Full Description
Religion, Democracy, and Law Richard Schragger and Micah Schwartzman This seminar will explore the proper role of religious convictions in a liberal democracy. The first few weeks of the seminar will provide a general overview of the contemporary debate on whether citizens and public officials have duties to refrain from relying on religious beliefs in political and legal decision-making. After this introduction, each session will be devoted to an intensive discussion of an article drawn from the philosophical and legal literature (with selected topics including, e.g., abortion, homosexuality, evolution, blasphemy, public education, and civil disobedience). For each session, designated students will be required to criticize or defend the article in question. Since the focus of the seminar is on rigorous evaluation of the author’s argument, grades will be based mainly on a ten-page critique and on class participation throughout the semester. Full Description
Rescue, Charity, and Justice Alan Simmons This course will explore the nature and the implications of the positive duties we owe to others (that is, the duties we have to positively assist others, not merely to refrain from directly harming them). Some deny that we have any positive moral duties at all and/or argue that legal and political institutions should never enforce such duties. Those who accept positive moral duties take a variety of positions on both the nature and extent of such duties and on the question of the acceptability of institutional enforcement of them. Theorists distinguish duties of rescue (duties to give aid to the imperiled in emergency situations), duties of charity (duties to assist in the longer-term project of providing others with the resources for living decent lives), and duties of justice (duties to help bring about a just – and, typically, a more equal – distribution of resources, both within and between societies). The course will consider possible philosophical foundations for such duties and arguments for and against creating or preserving positive legal duties. We will undertake substantial examinations of legal duties of rescue (“Good Samaritan laws”) and purported national moral and legal duties to aid impoverished countries or peoples. Readings will be primarily contemporary, drawn from legal theory and from moral and political philosophy. Full Description
Rhetoric Robert Sayler (2 credits) This course will focus on readings from Aristotle, Cicero, and other ancients and modern rhetoric writers, lectures on rhetorical style and substance, review and analysis of video tapes of distinguished oral presentations, informal discussion, student presentation of five video taped speeches and critique thereof. Full Description
Supreme Court from Warren to Roberts A. E. Dick Howard The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren is remembered as having been one of the most activist courts in American history. During the years of Chief Justice Warren Burger, the Court seemed to lack a sense of direction, and the counter-revolution some observers had predicted never came about. What will be the legacy of the Court during the time of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist? What may we expect of the Roberts Court? Among the themes likely to be developed in this seminar are the origins of the Warren Court, that Court’s legacy, and the extent to which that legacy survives today; the relation between presidential politics and the work of the Court; the interplay between the Court and the country at large; specific doctrinal developments; the philosophies of the individual justices; and voting blocs and behavior on the Court. Full Description
Supreme Court Justices and the Art of Judging A.E. Dick Howard Key figures on the modern Supreme Court will be the focus of this seminar. We will consider selected justices—their background before coming to the Court, their major decisions, their jurisprudence, their interaction with other justices, their legacy. We will take stock of these justices both through their own writings and through the views of commentators, including judicial biographers. Full Description
Virginia and the Constitution (Short Course) A. E. Dick Howard In the 400 years since its first settlement, Virginia has been intimately intertwined with the central themes of American constitutionalism – the idea of rights, the balance between national and state power, the nature of religious liberty, the problem of race and discrimination, etc. In this short course, we will consider selected persons, documents, and events which illuminate those themes. Examples include the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786), James Madison’s Virginia Plan (1787), the nationalist opinions of John Marshall, the Prince Edward County litigation, and Virginia’s own Constitutions, especially that of 1902 and the present Constitution. Each student will be asked to choose and to read one book, such as a biography of a major Virginian (Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, etc.) or a book on some aspect of Virginia history relevant to constitutional development. The course’s paper requirement will take the form of an essay on that book. Full Description
War and Peace: New Thinking about the Causes of War and War Avoidance John Norton Moore and Robert Turner Whatever the focus of your professional career, one issue that ought to be of considerable interest to all citizens is the avoidance of war. This interdisciplinary seminar will explore some of the latest thinking about the causes of international armed conflict and the ways in which future wars might be avoided and peace preserved. This seminar builds upon work they began more than a decade ago as, respectively, the first Chairman of the Board and President of the congressionally-established U.S. Institute of Peace. Recent studies by Yale Professors Donald Kagan (History) and Bruce Russett (Political Science), and by University of Hawaii Political Science Professor Rudy Rummel, will be examined, along with a number of traditional intellectual approaches ranging from international law, arms control, and world federalism, to deterrence theory. This seminar will also explore the newest theory of international relations – “incentive theory” – as developed by Professor Moore in “Solving the War Puzzle.” Case studies of past wars will be examined to test competing theories. Prominent guest lecturers will also take part. Students will be expected to take an active part in discussion. Full Description
ART LAW This interdisciplinary course explores how the law shapes and constrains visual expression. The focus is on the censorship of contemporary art. The reading draws extensively on non-legal texts as well as on an array of First Amendment materials. The class considers recent art controversies and the special problems presented by the interpretation of visual images to explore a series of First Amendment topics, including: obscenity law, child pornography law, the feminist anti-pornography movement, the critique of racist hate speech, public art and government funding of the arts. Ultimately we use the problems presented by visual art as a means to probe the meaning of "speech" for purposes of the First Amendment.
Classics in American Legal Thought This seminar covers some of the most important and influential works in 20th-century American legal literature. These are the articles you have heard about in your courses and excerpts of which you may have read. We will read these works in their entirety. After a few weeks of surveying classic texts from the first half of the century, the remainder of the semester is devoted to an intensive study of a single article each week, with students designated to criticize or defend the piece. A willingness to read and re-read the pieces and participate actively in discussion is expected and crucial.
Constitutional History I: Articles of Confederation to the Civil War This course traces the history of American constitutional law development from the Articles of Confederation through the Civil War. Topics include the framing and ratification of the Constitution, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the landmark decisions of the Marshall Court, the constitutional ramifications of slavery, and various constitutional issues raised by the Civil War.
Constitutional History II: From Reconstruction to Brown This course examines, from the perspective of social and political history, constitutional developments from Reconstruction through Brown v. Board of Education. The principal issues addressed include the enactment and early judicial interpretation of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments; constitutional questions involving race in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; economic regulation during the Lochner era; the birth of modern free speech jurisprudence in the wake of World War I; the constitutional crisis over the New Deal in the 1930s, including the Court-packing plan; the birth of the modern Establishment Clause in the late 1940s; free speech issues involving Jehovah’s Witnesses and Communists in the 1940s and 1950s; and, finally, topics involving Brown v. Board of Education, including the Court’s internal deliberations and the consequences of the decision.
Critical Race Theory: Problems in Anti-discrimination Law Throughout American history, race has profoundly affected the lives of individuals, the growth of social institutions, the substance of culture, and the workings of our political economy. Not surprisingly, this impact has been substantially mediated through the law and legal institutions. To understand the deep interconnections between race and law, and particularly the ways in which race and law are mutually constitutive, is an extraordinary intellectual challenge. That is precisely the project of Critical Race Theory (CRT). This course will pursue this project by exploring the emerging themes within CRT. We will also examine some of the questions and criticisms raised about CRT, from both inside and outside of the genre, as well as the impact of the work on legal and political discourse. The point of departure for the course is an exploration of race itself—what exactly is race?—and the role law plays in constructing this identity. Finally, we will consider the extent to which CRT can be employed to address various problems in anti-discrimination law.
Feminist Legal Theory This seminar provides an intensive introduction to various schools of feminist theory, including liberal feminism, cultural feminism, dominance feminism, critical race feminism and feminist uses of queer theory. The seminar consists of two stages. First, we will devote a few weeks to acquiring an overview of foundational writings in feminist legal theory and case law that is commonly critiqued by feminist writers. After that, we will devote each session to a close critique of one law review article or an excerpt from a book on the subject. One student will write a 10-page critique of the article or book, identifying any problems with the author's argument. Another student will serve as the author's advocate, defending the article against all challenges (no writing required for this role). The principal objective of the seminar is to sharpen skills of close reading and critical analysis. Grades will be based one-third on the critique, one-third on performance as the author’s advocate, and one-third on class participation throughout the semester.
First Amendment Theory The seminar consists of two stages. First, we will devote a few weeks to acquiring an overview of general writing about the freedom of speech. After that, we will devote each session to a close critique of one law review article on the subject. One student will write a 10-page critique of the article, identifying any problems with the author's argument. Another student will serve as the author's advocate, defending the article against all challenges (no writing required for this role). The principal objective of the seminar is to sharpen skills of close reading and critical analysis. After the introductory weeks devoted to general background, the workload will be light in terms of sheer pages but heavy in terms of the command students are expected to have of the specific arguments in each article. Grades will be based one-third on the critique, one-third on performance as the author’s advocate, and one-third on class participation throughout the semester.
Foundations of Analytic Jurisprudence An introductory seminar in the basic ideas and works of modern analytic jurisprudence. Issues include the relation between law and morality, positivism and natural law, theories of legal reasoning, the nature of rules, the obligation to obey the law, the characteristics of legal sources, and the foundations of a legal order. Works discussed will include those of H.L.A. Hart, Ronald Dworkin, Hans Kelsen, Lon Fuller, Joseph Raz, the American Legal Realists and the instructor. No prior background in philosophy is expected, but a tolerance for theory is essential.
Human Experimentation: Law and Ethics of Research in Biomedicine and Public Health In recent years, as the health care system, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology industries evolve, the way human research is conducted and regulated is under increasing scrutiny. We begin with a brief look at the origins of the current system, and then study the federal, state, and international regulatory structures. We explore central issues like risk-benefit assessment, informed consent, confidentiality, diversity in subject populations and how subjects are recruited and retained. We study research with vulnerable populations like children, prisoners and adults lacking decision-making capacity. We discuss how public health research is different and similar to biomedical research and what special problems may be raised by the differences. We look into concerns raised by international research such as recruitment of poor and underserved populations and equitable access to the results of the research. We examine some of the issues raised by new technologies such as genomics and personalized medicine, stem cell research and genetic engineering, nanotechnology and synthetic biology. Finally, we explore how the changing economics of research creates both conflicts of interest and potentially increased innovation.
Ideas of the First Amendment The principal goal of the course is to develop skills of close critical reading, as well as an understanding of the central ideas of the First Amendment tradition. The emphasis is on how those ideas emerged in various historical periods from particular political, legal and intellectual struggles. Each week is devoted to one major thinker in the tradition. Philosophical and polemical essays are studied as well as judicial opinions. We read essays and opinions by, among others, John Milton, James Madison, John Stuart Mill, Learned Hand, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis and Alexander Meiklejohn. We study the argumentative techniques employed by each major thinker; in part, this is a course in elementary rhetoric. Throughout the semester, we will explore how the ideas of these thinkers bear on issues of contemporary First Amendment controversy.
Human Experimentation: Law and Ethics of Research in Biomedicine and Public Health In recent years, as the health care system, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology industries evolve, the way human research is conducted and regulated is under increasing scrutiny. We begin with a brief look at the origins of the current system, and then study the federal, state, and international regulatory structures. We explore central issues like risk-benefit assessment, informed consent, confidentiality, diversity in subject populations and how subjects are recruited and retained. We study research with vulnerable populations like children, prisoners and adults lacking decision-making capacity. We discuss how public health research is different and similar to biomedical research and what special problems may be raised by the differences. We look into concerns raised by international research such as recruitment of poor and underserved populations and equitable access to the results of the research. We examine some of the issues raised by new technologies such as genomics and personalized medicine, stem cell research and genetic engineering, nanotechnology and synthetic biology. Finally, we explore how the changing economics of research creates both conflicts of interest and potentially increased innovation.
International and Comparative Health Law and Bioethics In today’s world of ever-changing technological, biomedical, and scientific advances, an understanding of how to regulate such changes—both legally and ethically—becomes of crucial importance to anyone interested in international relations, medicine, law, ethics, political science, and even business. This short course explores how health law and bioethics are dealt with in the international arena. It seeks to cultivate a more varied and nuanced understanding of health law and bioethical issues, both outside of the sphere of American culture and legislation as well as in comparison to it. To accomplish this we compare case law and national legislation in countries varying from Japan, Germany, Israel, the U.K., and Iceland, as well as international treaties and conventions which balance the interests of a diverse body of nations. We explore traditional issues such as patients' rights and organ donation as well as newer problems such as genetics, embryonic stem cell research, telemedicine (the role of computers and the Internet in medicine), and the function of international institutions such as the WHO and the U.N.
Law and Ethics in Medical Practice This interdisciplinary seminar addresses legal and ethical issues arising in the practice of medicine and surgery. During the first meeting of the seminar, the instructor orients the law students to the practice of medicine at the University, and to basic medical concepts pertinent to seminar topics. The following meetings bring together residents, fellows, and faculty from the various departments at the Medical School, including Neurology, Internal Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Family Practice, to explore such issues as what constitutes the “practice of medicine”; ethical, legal and logistical implications of work hour limitations for residents; patients and the profession, informed consent and capacity to consent to or refuse treatment (including life-sustaining treatment); ethical and legal challenges arising in managed care; prevention and acknowledgment of medical errors; the purpose and role of evidenced-based medicine in contemporary medical practice; conscientious refusals to treat; regulation of research; and end-of-life issues such as the definition and implications of the vegetative and minimally conscious states and the definition of death. Efforts are also made to identify areas of divergence and convergence in professional norms in law and medicine. Law students are expected to present assigned material to the class in a way that is accessible to those without legal training.
Law in Society This course examines law as a moving force and a responsive element in society. Topics include how law operates, how society presses upon law for response and how advising a client is very much tied to considering the role of law and the intended and unintended consequences of legal actions. The course explores several legal disciplines with a focus on understanding the questions that must be addressed in making informed decisions and in advising clients effectively. Areas of review include the operation of law and science, law and business, law and markets, and law and social issues, and illustrative materials range from the trial of Jeanne D’Arc to Mein Kampf to current Enron-type corporate scandals and problems relating to cloning, child pornography, and federal guidelines for killings. The course provides an understanding of the analytic skills that must be brought to bear in applying legal knowledge to actual fact situations presented by a variety of clients. The focus is on more effective problem-solving by an increased familiarity with the uncertainty, trade-offs, and unanticipated outcomes that may result from applying legal concepts.
Laws of War and the American Civil War Why and how did two American governments apply the international laws of war to a conflict that the Union at the time—and most commentators after the fact—have characterized as domestic in nature? Relying on primary sources (e.g., the war of the rebellion official records of the Union and Confederate armies and navies, memoirs, correspondence, and court cases) and secondary sources (e.g., excerpts from the instructor's book manuscript on the subject), this class will attempt to arrive at answers to these questions and to explore what those answers may mean for the United States' conduct of the Terror War today. Specific topics will include the Trent Affair and the laws of war at sea, the Lieber Code, the definition and treatment of “unlawful combatants,” occupation and the administration of justice, and enemy or former enemy access to the writ of habeas corpus.
Lawyers in the History of American Public Life This seminar considers connections between the legal profession and main themes in the history of American public life. Readings will be biographical, treating lawyers as politicians or writers or NGO managers and litigators. A substantial paper on a topic chosen and conceptualized in consultation with the instructor is required.
Lawyers, Law, and Film Contemporary culture is saturated with images of law, lawyers, and the work they do. Movies and TV shows peddle stories about law and lawyers, some real, some fictional, and others in-between. Films represent lawyers and other legal actors as heroes, as villains, and as goats. Then too, films give rise to legal disputes, films are used as evidence in legal proceedings, and films may give new meaning to the concept of “public” trials. This seminar explores some of the myriad connections between film and the legal domain. How have films influenced popular perceptions about and actual experiences of law and lawyers? How have films changed the ways in which lawyers and other legal actors work, the performances they give, the evidence they are expected to offer? Texts for the course will include movies and documentaries, as well as cases, works of fiction, and legal and literary scholarship. Students will write several short papers over the course of the semester.
Privacy and Surveillance Can we preserve dignity and privacy in the age of Facebook? This seminar considers the history and current applications of technologies and cultures of surveillance. How and why did we get to the point where almost all of our activities leave a trace? What is our level of tolerance of mass surveillance? Are we willing to let the state into our bedrooms? Are we more comfortable letting our stores and shopping services understand us? What sorts of laws and policies do we need to protect our sense of personal integrity? And is privacy worth anything these days anyway? This course allows students to survey a broad range of approaches and issues. We will read the latest work as well as some classic contributions to the field. Students will conduct two brief oral presentations and produce a full, 30-page research paper on some aspect of privacy and surveillance. Full Description
Rights This seminar examines the nature of and possible justifications for claims of right. Readings are from both classical and contemporary sources, including the works of philosophers, legal theorists and political theorists. Questions addressed concern the nature of rights (e.g., their roles in moral and legal theory and reasoning, their proper analyses and constituent parts, their possible contents, etc.), the (alleged) general varieties of rights (e.g., moral, natural, human, conventional, institutional, legal, cultural), the possible properties of rights (e.g., imprescriptibility, inalienability, forfeitability, absoluteness, etc.), and possible justifications for claims that particular rights exist. In addition, the seminar concludes with a careful consideration of one kind of right — to many theorists the most important (or, perhaps, the only) kind — namely, property rights. Full Description
Seminars in Ethical Values Seminars in Ethical Values are designed to enhance students' understanding of ethical issues and address the broader ethical and moral responsibilities of the lawyer as citizen and leader. The seminars are graded on a pass/fail basis; students earn one credit in the spring semester upon successful completion of the seminar.
Trials of the Century: Law and Literature This seminar examines a number of famous, even sensational, criminal trials in order to ask a set of intersecting questions. What makes a sensational criminal trial sensational? What commonalities, if any, are shared by those trials that capture our cultural imagination? What role do sensational criminal trials have in our popular conception of law and justice, and how, if at all, does this cultural significance matter for how we understand "ordinary" criminal trials? Do sensational trials ever prompt significant reforms in substantive crime definitions, criminal procedure rules or rules of evidence? We especially focus on rhetorical and narrative strategies for representing the facts — as well as the legal rules, adversarial norms and ideological stakes — in such trials. How are sensational criminal trials represented in legal materials, in nonfiction accounts, in literary depictions and on film? How are the facts of the case made and remade within various genres, from the testimony of the trial itself, through appellate briefs, through both fictional and journalistic accounts? What is the relation, if any, between genre and what is depicted and how? Does comparing the conduct of the trial itself to later depictions reveal anything of importance about how we construct our ideas of law, authority, evidence, or responsibility? Texts for the course include trial transcripts, cases, briefs, works of nonfiction, works of literature and films. We study, among others, the trials of Socrates, Lizzie Borden, Oscar Wilde, John Scopes, the Scottsboro boys, Leopold and Loeb, and O.J. Simpson. Students will be expected to undertake and present their own case study of a significant trial and its representations. Texts include: Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy; Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray; Merlin Holland, The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde; James Goodman, Stories of Scottsboro; William Shakespeare, Othello.