Law, Letters, and Society

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Courses

I. The Introductory Course, 1996-97

242. Legal Reasoning. PQ: Open only to LL/Soc concentrators with consent of instructor. This course is an introduction to legal reasoning in a customary legal system. The first part examines the analytical conventions that lawyers and judges purport to use. The second part examines fundamental tenets of constitutional interpretation. Both judicial decisions and commentary are used, although the case method is emphasized. D. Hutchinson. Autumn.

II. Letters

224. Rhetorical Theories of Legal and Political Reasoning (=Hum 214, Id/Met 324). This course uses Plato's Gorgias to raise the question of whether practical thinking is possible and considers responses to this question by such writers as Aristotle, Cicero, and Machiavelli. We study the methods and concepts that each writer uses to defend the cogency of legal, deliberative, or more generally political prudence against explicit or implicit charges that practical thinking is merely a knack or form of cleverness. W. Olmsted. Winter.

239. Introduction to Constitutional Law I (=PolSci 288). This course is an introduction to the constitutional doctrines and political role of the U.S. Supreme Court, focusing on its evolving constitutional priorities and its response to basic governmental and political problems, including maintenance of the federal system, promotion of economic welfare, and protection of individual and minority rights. G. Rosenberg. Winter.

240. Introduction to Constitutional Law II: Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (=PolSci 292). PQ: PolSci 288 or equivalent, and consent of instructor. This course examines selected civil rights and civil liberties decisions of U.S. courts with particular emphasis on the broader political context. Areas covered include speech, race, and gender. G. Rosenberg. Spring.

241. Law and Literature (=Law 480). PQ: Open to LL/Soc concentrators only with consent of program chairman. Class limited to twelve students. An examination of the role of literary narratives, and the perceptions and emotions they evoke, in legal reasoning. The first third of the course studies a long-standing philosophical debate about the role of literary works in good public reasoning, examining the relationship between textual form and ethical content in works by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, and Seneca. The second third of the course applies these insights in analyzing several modern works of literature that might be thought to have a bearing on legal reasoning: works by Charles Dickens, Henry James, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Wright, and some related theoretical writings. The last third of the course examines the implications of these analyses for legal issues, including the role of compassion and mercy in the criminal law, the role of narrative understanding in constitutional law, the adequacy or inadequacy of economic reasoning as a mode of legal reasoning. M. Nussbaum. Spring.

243. American Law and the Rhetoric of Race. This course examines the ways American law has treated legal issues involving race. Two episodes are studied in detail: the criminal law of slavery during the antebellum period and the constitutional attack on state-imposed segregation in the twentieth century. The case method is used, although close attention is paid to litigation strategy and judicial opinion. D. Hutchinson. Winter.

247. The First Amendment. This course is a study, using the case method, of the theory and doctrine of the free speech, free press, and religion clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, with special emphasis on current controversies over symbolic speech, hate speech, and the right to privacy as it relates to the media. D. Hutchinson. Winter.

254. The Russian Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649 (=Fndmtl 254, Hist 240, SocSci 264). Consisting of 967 articles grouped into twenty-five chapters, the Ulozhenie of 1649 is probably the most important single text to survive from Russia prior to 1800. Its laws are of Byzantine, Lithuanian, and Muscovite origin. The codification reflected Russian political, economic, social, and legal realities of the time and served as the basis of Russian law for the next 180 years. This course entails a close reading of the text (in the Hellie English translation) and examination of its context. R. Hellie. Spring.

262. Justinian's Institutes (=Fndmtl 262, Hist 222). This course is an introduction to the elements of Roman law by close reading of the part of the Corpus Juris designed as the basic text. Some background is given on the history of Roman law and on the age of Justinian, but the main focus is on reading through the Institutes with an interest in fundamental legal concepts as much as in the specific principles of the Roman system. C. Gray. Winter.

273. Lincoln (=SocSci 202). A close reading of Lincoln's speeches and related texts. R. Lerner. Autumn.

292. Political Philosophy: Spinoza (=Fndmtl 262, PolSci 312). PQ: Consent of instructor. An inquiry into Spinoza's Ethics as a contribution to the foundations of the Enlightenment. J. Cropsey. Winter.

III. Society

213. Managing the Environment (=EnvStd 213, NCD 213, PubPol 213). PQ: Econ 198 or higher. This course analyzes human interaction with and intervention into the environment. Topics include resource management, environmental and economic policy, environmental law, business initiatives, and global environmental legislation. Also assessed are major national legislation on Superfund, resource conservation and recovery, air quality, water quality, hazardous chemicals, and endangered species. D. Coursey. Not offered 1996-97; will be offered 1997-98.

217. Constitution of Community (=Fndmtl 237, Hum 222, Id/Met 311). Attention is once again being directed to how a "we," a community, establishes itself. This interest often assumes that discussion will play a major, if not the major, role and often coincides with the notion that the organization of the community should be through government by discussion. This course is concerned with one major example of the constitution of a community, the United States. Texts of the Articles of Confederation, the "debates" in Philadelphia in 1787 (especially Madison's Notes), the ratification conventions (especially the Federalist), and the actions in the newly formed Congress (especially the House), are discussed with special consideration to how what these people do enables fruitful conversation and thus is itself an example of community. D. Smigelskis. Autumn.

257-258. United States Legal History I, II (=Hist 283-284/383-384). This two-quarter sequence explores the role of law in history, and of history in law, through a survey of American legal developments from the colonial era to the present. It treats law not as an autonomous process or science, but as a social phenomenon inextricably intertwined with other historical forces. Through lectures and discussions, this course examines the impact of law on significant events and institutions in American history while tracing historical changes within the law itself. Attention is paid to developments in private law, public law, jurisprudence, the judiciary, and the interrelationships of law, society, economy, and polity. W. Novak. Winter, Spring.

269. Medicine and the Law (=PubPol269, SocSci 269). This course is designed as an introductory investigation of the interrelations between two essential human institutions: law and medicine. Students read and discuss a series of instances where law and medicine come into conflict. The first part of the course concentrates on conflicts between individual needs, wants, and desires, on the one hand; and professional responsibility and authority or established community standards of conduct, on the other. The second focuses on legislative, administrative, and executive powers and policies involving medicine. A. Goldblatt. Spring.

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