Please visit our website at http://legalstudies.berkeley.edu
Bachelor of Arts (BA)
Legal Studies is an interdisciplinary, liberal arts major that engages the meanings, values, practices, and institutions of law and legality. The Legal Studies curriculum examines how law shapes and is shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces. The major is designed to stimulate the critical understanding of and inquiry about the theoretical frameworks, historical dynamics, and cultural embeddedness of law.
The Legal Studies faculty and students grapple with important questions of social policy within the framework of significant concerns in jurisprudence and theories of justice. These concerns include individual liberty, privacy, and autonomy; political and social equality; the just distribution of resources and opportunities within society; the relationship between citizens and the state; democratic participation and representation; the moral commitments of the community; and the preservation of human dignity.
The major’s course offerings examine law and legality from both humanist and empirical perspectives. Courses are organized into interdisciplinary topical areas that transcend disciplinary boundaries in the interest of collaborative inquiry.
The Legal Studies major is under the academic supervision of the School of Law faculty. There is no minor.
Declaring the Major
Students may declare the major after completing two of the four prerequisites with a 2.0 grade point average (GPA) between the two courses and an overall UC Berkeley GPA of 2.0. For details regarding the prerequisites, please see the Major Requirements tab on this page. All courses taken for the major must be taken for a letter grade.
A score of 3 or higher in the following AP exams will fulfill three of the four prerequisites:
Statistics: AP Statistics History: AP U.S. History or AP European History Social Behavioral: AP Micro Econ or US Govt & Politics Philosophy: Cannot use AP credit
Please visit LegalStudies.berkeley.edu for more details under 'About the Major' then 'Declaring the Major'.
Honors Program
A student majoring in Legal Studies with an overall UC Berkeley grade point average (GPA) of 3.5 and a GPA of 3.5 in Legal Studies courses by the end of the spring semester junior year may apply and may be admitted to the honors program. The student must have completed at least half of the major requirements before being admitted to the honors program.
To graduate with departmental honors, students must:
Enroll in LEGALST H195A honors seminar in the fall semester before writing the thesis;
Enroll in LEGALST H195B and LEGALST H195C in the spring semester following successful completion of the LEGALST H195A honors seminar and meet the GPA requirements;
Meet periodically throughout the semester with the faculty supervisor during the spring;
Complete an honors thesis, with a minimum of 40 written pages, approved by the student’s faculty supervisor; and
Finish their final semester with at least a 3.5 UC Berkeley GPA and at least a 3.5 major GPA.
The thesis is read by the faculty supervisor who will assign a letter grade. There are three levels of departmental honors: honors, high honors, highest honors. The level of honors is based on the final upper division major/honors GPA and the quality of the thesis as decided by a student’s faculty supervisor.
For more detailed information regarding the honors program and thesis requirements, please go to LegalStudies.berkeley.edu and click on the Research tab.
In addition to the University, campus, and college requirements, listed on the College Requirements tab, students must fulfill the below requirements specific to their major program.
General Guidelines
All courses taken to fulfill the major requirements below must be taken for letter-graded credit, other than courses listed which are offered on a Pass/No Pass basis only.
No more than one upper division course may be used to simultaneously fulfill requirements for a student's major and minor programs.
A minimum overall grade point average (GPA) of 2.0 must be maintained in both upper and lower division courses used to fulfill the major requirements.
For information regarding residence requirements and unit requirements, please see the College Requirements tab.
A score of 3 or higher on the following AP exams can be used to fulfill the following prerequisites for the Legal Studies major:
STATISTICS: AP Statistics Exam PHILOSOPHY: none HISTORY: AP Euro or AP U.S. History Exam SOCIAL/BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE: AP Micro Economics or AP U.S. Government & Politics
IB credit may be used to fulfill prereqs with a score of 5 or higher.
Summary of Major Requirements
Course List
Code
Title
Units
Prerequisites
Four courses
Upper Division Requirements
Eight courses distributed among the following categories, totaling 30 upper division units:
Core Legal Studies Requirements: Four courses
Distribution Requirements: Four courses (may include Capstone Experience)
Capstone Experience (optional): One seminar course or research
Prerequisites
Course List
Code
Title
Units
Select one distinct course, from each of the following areas:
Select two courses in one of the following areas, and one course each in two distinctly different areas, for a total of four courses. LEGALST H195B (Honors Thesis) or LEGALST 199 (Independent Study) for 4 units may substitute for one of the two courses selected from the same Area. The Areas for LS 190 Special Topics Seminars can be found in 'Course Offerings' on the Legal Studies website for each semester they are offered. The Areas for LS 190 Seminars will not be listed here. The Areas for the Law-Related courses from other departments will be listed in 'Course Offerings' on the Legal Studies website as well.
Students may use up to two preapproved law-related courses from outside of the Legal Studies Program to count toward the distribution requirements, for a maximum of 8 units. Outside courses should normally be drawn from the preapproved list of law-related UC Berkeley courses, but may be approved from other four-year institutions, or from study abroad programs. If the course is not on the preapproved list, students must submit a syllabus and a description to the Legal Studies student academic adviser for approval. For the list of preapproved law-related courses, see below.
Capstone Experience (Optional)
Legal Studies students are encouraged to enroll in one legal studies seminar course (LEGALST 190), preferably in their senior year, to complete their remaining units. Alternatively, students who meet eligibility requirements are encouraged to enroll in LEGALST H195A & LEGALST H195B, the honors program, for their capstone experience. Students who have a faculty mentor and a desire to do a research project but do not meet the eligibility requirements for honors may enroll in 4 units of LEGALST 199 for their capstone experience provided that they meet the eligibility requirements for independent study. For details regarding eligibility requirements, please see the department's website.
Undergraduate students must fulfill the following requirements in addition to those required by their major program.
For detailed lists of courses that fulfill college requirements, please review the College of Letters & Sciences page in this Guide. For College advising appointments, please visit the L&S Advising Pages.
All students who will enter the University of California as freshmen must demonstrate their command of the English language by fulfilling the Entry Level Writing requirement. Fulfillment of this requirement is also a prerequisite to enrollment in all reading and composition courses at UC Berkeley.
The American History and Institutions requirements are based on the principle that a US resident graduated from an American university, should have an understanding of the history and governmental institutions of the United States.
All undergraduate students at Cal need to take and pass this course in order to graduate. The requirement offers an exciting intellectual environment centered on the study of race, ethnicity and culture of the United States. AC courses offer students opportunities to be part of research-led, highly accomplished teaching environments, grappling with the complexity of American Culture.
College of Letters & Science Essential Skills Requirements
The Quantitative Reasoning requirement is designed to ensure that students graduate with basic understanding and competency in math, statistics, or computer science. The requirement may be satisfied by exam or by taking an approved course.
The Foreign Language requirement may be satisfied by demonstrating proficiency in reading comprehension, writing, and conversation in a foreign language equivalent to the second semester college level, either by passing an exam or by completing approved course work.
In order to provide a solid foundation in reading, writing, and critical thinking the College requires two semesters of lower division work in composition in sequence. Students must complete parts A & B reading and composition courses in sequential order by the end of their fourth semester.
College of Letters & Science 7 Course Breadth Requirements
The undergraduate breadth requirements provide Berkeley students with a rich and varied educational experience outside of their major program. As the foundation of a liberal arts education, breadth courses give students a view into the intellectual life of the University while introducing them to a multitude of perspectives and approaches to research and scholarship. Engaging students in new disciplines and with peers from other majors, the breadth experience strengthens interdisciplinary connections and context that prepares Berkeley graduates to understand and solve the complex issues of their day.
Unit Requirements
120 total units
Of the 120 units, 36 must be upper division units
Of the 36 upper division units, 6 must be taken in courses offered outside your major department
Residence Requirements
For units to be considered in "residence," you must be registered in courses on the Berkeley campus as a student in the College of Letters & Science. Most students automatically fulfill the residence requirement by attending classes here for four years, or two years for transfer students. In general, there is no need to be concerned about this requirement, unless you go abroad for a semester or year or want to take courses at another institution or through UC Extension during your senior year. In these cases, you should make an appointment to meet an adviser to determine how you can meet the Senior Residence Requirement.
Note: Courses taken through UC Extension do not count toward residence.
Senior Residence Requirement
After you become a senior (with 90 semester units earned toward your BA degree), you must complete at least 24 of the remaining 30 units in residence in at least two semesters. To count as residence, a semester must consist of at least 6 passed units. Intercampus Visitor, EAP, and UC Berkeley-Washington Program (UCDC) units are excluded.
You may use a Berkeley Summer Session to satisfy one semester of the Senior Residence requirement, provided that you successfully complete 6 units of course work in the Summer Session and that you have been enrolled previously in the college.
Modified Senior Residence Requirement
Participants in the UC Education Abroad Program (EAP), Berkeley Summer Abroad, or the UC Berkeley Washington Program (UCDC) may meet a Modified Senior Residence requirement by completing 24 (excluding EAP) of their final 60 semester units in residence. At least 12 of these 24 units must be completed after you have completed 90 units.
Upper Division Residence Requirement
You must complete in residence a minimum of 18 units of upper division courses (excluding UCEAP units), 12 of which must satisfy the requirements for your major.
The following sample plan is just one way to go about planning your courses. See Lauri, the undergraduate academic adviser, for variations specific to your plans.
Fall | Freshman Year
Prerequisites
Spring | Freshman Year
Prerequisites
Fall | Sophomore Year
Prerequisites
Spring | Sophomore Year
Prerequisites
Fall | Junior Year (Junior Transfers start here.)
Upper Division Core (4 units)
Upper Division Area (3-4 units)
Spring | Junior Year
Upper Division Core (4 units)
Upper Division Area (3-4 units)
Fall | Senior Year
Upper Division Core (4 units)
Upper Division Area (4 units)
Spring | Senior Year
Upper Division Core (4 units)
Upper Division Area (capstone course) (4 units)
Student Learning Goals
Please visit our website at http://legalstudies.berkeley.edu
Mission
Legal Studies is an interdisciplinary liberal arts major that engages the meanings, values, practices, and institutions of law and legality. The Legal Studies curriculum examines how law shapes and is shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces. The major is designed to stimulate critical understanding of and inquiry about the theoretical frameworks, historical dynamics, and cultural embeddedness of law.
The Legal Studies faculty and students grapple with important questions of social policy within the framework of significant concerns in jurisprudence and theories of justice. These concerns include individual liberty, privacy, and autonomy; political and social equality; the just distribution of resources and opportunities within society; the relationship between citizens and the state; democratic participation and representation; the moral commitments of the community; and the preservation of human dignity.
The major’s course offerings examine law and legality from both humanist and empirical perspectives. Courses are organized into interdisciplinary topical areas that transcend disciplinary boundaries in the interest of collaborative inquiry.
Legal Studies’ Pedagogic Objectives
Convey how law relates to social context: Students will learn about the transformation of legal processes and systems across time and space (e.g., globalization, transnational processes). They will also study how law shapes and is shaped by economic, political, and cultural forces, as well as how and why law in action often differs from legal doctrine.
Adopt an explicitly interdisciplinary approach: Students will focus on pervasive problems of legal and social policy across traditional curricular and disciplinary boundaries. Although the program encompasses multiple disciplinary perspectives (e.g., history, economics, sociology), it is designed to transcend academic identities rather than compartmentalize the study of law into the discrete perspectives of established disciplines. To accomplish this integration, the major is organized around areas of focus that explore common themes but include coursework across disciplinary boundaries.
Integrate empirical and humanities-oriented perspectives: Students will be exposed to both empirical and humanities-oriented perspectives on law and legal institutions through distribution requirements within the major. Empirical perspectives encompass public policy analysis, training in the epistemological commitments of social science (e.g., empirical methods, the logic of social inquiry), and familiarity with the central questions and tenets related to law in disciplines such as economics, sociology, and political science. Humanities perspectives include maintaining the program’s historical focus on clarifying fundamental values, examining philosophical questions related to law, and understanding the operation and effects of social and cultural practices as they relate to law, legal institutions, and the phenomenon they regulate. After students fulfill the basic distribution requirements, they may, but will not be required to, concentrate their efforts in either empirical or humanities-oriented perspectives.
Promote engagement with social policy: Students will be encouraged to engage deeply with social policy guided by significant themes in jurisprudence and theories of justice. These themes include individual liberty, privacy, democracy, and the relationship between the citizen and the state. Engaging with these themes ensures that policy studies are basic and critical, rather than confined to preexisting policy formulations and assumptions. This new objective of engagement with social policy is intended to connect humanistic inquiries regarding justice, morality, and values, with empirical inquiries into patterns of social behavior and the effects of law on society. This goal will be accomplished through both coursework and field work options.
Encourage civic engagement and an appreciation of the values at stake in legal concerns: Consistent with the mission of a public university, the major will develop informed and engaged citizens with sufficient knowledge and background to participate in civic institutions and the development of law and policy during and after their education at Berkeley. This participation could take many forms, including interacting with public officials, joining the legal profession, working for legal institutions, engaging in policy analysis, advocacy, social movement building, community organizing, political activism, and the like. Civic engagement includes confronting the relationship between law and justice, and understanding how law affects the public interest and social utility.
Provide a liberal arts education: The major will continue to have a liberal arts orientation. Students will learn to analyze and understand legal rules and legal institutions, but from a broader perspective than is typically taught in a traditional law school setting.
Learning Goals for the Major
The faculty strongly supports an undergraduate liberal arts education that teaches students to develop their intellectual capacities: how to research topics independently, how to ask penetrating questions, how to analyze problems, how to construct arguments based on critical thinking, how to make well-founded judgments, how to identify issues of importance for the future. The intent of the program is that courses be framed with this perspective. In addition, the program is committed to introducing students to multiple disciplinary approaches to the study of law and legal institutions, as well as conveying important basic knowledge about the core features of the American legal system.
Critical Thinking Skills
In concert with the goals identified above, these critical thinking skills focus on particular forms of analysis central to engaging with law and legal institutions from multiple disciplinary perspectives.
Identify and evaluate arguments, synthesize ideas, and develop well-substantiated, coherent, and concise arguments, whether in oral or written form.
Identify and follow a logical sequence or argument through to its end; recognize faulty reasoning.
Develop the ability to critically evaluate proposed legal reforms and policies.
Develop the ability to formulate generalized, abstract principles in a way that clarifies the major issues at stake and identifies the most relevant elements of a concept or text.
Promote exploration of the role of law in American society from both social science and humanities perspectives.
Learn to draw from multiple disciplinary approaches and fields of study across philosophy, history, economics, political science, and sociology; synthesize, bridge, and question disciplinary boundaries to identify new inquiries or insights.
Basic Knowledge about Law and Legal Institutions
These goals address important basic knowledge about law and legal institutions that the program seeks to convey. These goals are not intended to provide a pre-professional education but instead to produce citizens literate in the basic functions and structure of legal systems.
Understand core theories about the relationship between law and society.
Be introduced to core features of the American legal system.
Understand basic legal terminology, legal concepts, legal actors, and modes of legal reasoning.
Become acquainted with legal systems other than our own, including how they compare to the current American legal system.
Develop insights into how law has evolved through time, including the temporal and geographical transformation of legal processes and systems.
Engaged Citizenship
The faculty believes that our role as a program in a public institution should include training students to be engaged, active, and critical citizens in our society. Many legal studies students engage in civic participation and service while at Berkeley, and many go on to careers in public service. We seek to develop more opportunities for students to develop practical skills and knowledge relevant to those experiences in addition to the broader intellectual skills conveyed by a liberal arts education.
Experience the law in action through service learning, exposure to legal clinics, problem solving, and social policy engagement.
Enable civic engagement and participation in developing and critiquing social policy.
Research Methods
A key part of a liberal arts education is learning how to conduct independent research and analysis. The program seeks to expose students to a multidisciplinary range of methods of research.
Develop an understanding of methods of research and forms of evidence across multiple disciplines.
Develop skills necessary to find and to assess relevant jurisprudential, social science, and humanities materials related to law and legal institutions.
Develop basic abilities in statistical analysis and reasoning.
Understand the logic of inquiry in the social sciences.
Humanities
(Defined as philosophy, political theory, and history.)
These goals provide general guidance for curricular focus and development in the humanities as they relate to law and legal institutions.
Encourage understanding of and reflection on fundamental normative concepts such as fairness, due process, equality, and utility.
Encourage understanding of and reflection on rights, duties, punishment, and justice.
Encourage understanding of and reflection on the ethical dimensions of the relationship between citizens and the state, and the forms and limits of sovereignty.
Understand the historical contexts and forces within which legal systems operate and how legal systems influence history and societies.
Social Sciences
(Defined as sociology, political science, psychology and economics.)
These goals provide general guidance for curricular focus and development in the social sciences as they relate to law and legal institutions.
Develop the ability to connect theory about law and legal institutions with empirical predictions about the state of the world and to evaluate those predictions with data.
Understand how, and why, the law in action often differs from the law on the books.
Develop an expansive understanding of the social contexts in which law and legal institutions can be studied empirically.
Please visit our website at http://legalstudies.berkeley.edu
Major Map
Please visit our website at http://legalstudies.berkeley.edu
Major Maps help undergraduate students discover academic, co-curricular, and discovery opportunities at UC Berkeley based on intended major or field of interest. Developed by the Division of Undergraduate Education in collaboration with academic departments, these experience maps will help you:
Explore your major and gain a better understanding of your field of study
Connect with people and programs that inspire and sustain your creativity, drive, curiosity and success
Discover opportunities for independent inquiry, enterprise, and creative expression
Engage locally and globally to broaden your perspectives and change the world
Reflect on your academic career and prepare for life after Berkeley
Use the major map below as a guide to planning your undergraduate journey and designing your own unique Berkeley experience.
Please visit our website at http://legalstudies.berkeley.edu
Advising
Please visit our website at http://legalstudies.berkeley.edu
Students are encouraged to take charge of their academic careers by reading through the rich information that the Legal Studies website provides. Students are also welcome to come in for advising during Lauri’s drop-in office hours, 9 to 12 and 1:30 to 4 p.m., Monday through Thursday. Lauri’s office is located in the back of the first floor at 2240 Piedmont, the big house right next to the Law School and just across the street from Memorial Stadium. Students should let Lauri know when they arrive, and if she’s with a student, they should have a seat out on the purple couch in the lobby. Prospective students or students not able to come in should e-mail Lauri with their questions at Lauri@berkeley.edu.
Academic Opportunities
Please visit our website at http://legalstudies.berkeley.edu
LEGALST 199 Supervised Independent Study and Research is open to officially declared Legal Studies seniors with a 3.0 University grade point average (GPA) and a 3.0 GPA in upper division courses for the major. In order to enroll, the student must first develop a research topic, then find a Legal Studies faculty member who is willing to serve as a supervisor. The student should have already taken at least one course from the faculty member in the area in which s/he wishes to do research. The student should submit a written proposal to the faculty member outlining the scope and length of the research project. A general guideline is 1 unit of credit per 10 pages of text in the final research paper, up to a maximum of 4 units. For further information regarding this course, please visit the department's website.
Undergraduate Legal Studies Research Conference
In addition to writing a thesis, Legal Studies Honors Program participants also present their work at the annual Undergraduate Legal Studies Research Conference usually at the end of April. This event will showcase original research from students in Legal Studies as well as students from a number of other departments on campus. This is a wonderful opportunity for students to see what their colleagues have accomplished and what work they might pursue as a Legal Studies major.
The annual Legal Studies Undergraduate Research Conference celebrates the scholarship and creativity of the Legal Studies Honors students through an afternoon that focuses on law-related research. Berkeley Law and the Legal Studies Department co-sponsor the conference.
Berkeley Legal Studies Association (BLSA)
The Berkeley Legal Studies Association strives to create a community of individuals interested in law. Some events each semester include LSAT workshops with popular test preparation companies, lunches with Legal Studies professors, speaker panels, and The Living Catalogue. BLSA hopes that students will join the club and enjoy the friendly and intellectual environment that they are committed to providing. Please visit BLSA on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/berkeleylegalstudies/
Courses
Please visit our website at http://legalstudies.berkeley.edu
Legal Studies
Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This course is designed to fulfill the first half of the Reading and Composition requirement. Students will learn to identify an author's point of view and main arguments; evaluate an author's credibility and the merits of his or her argument, write a unified essay with intro, thesis statement, transitions between paragraphs, a concluding paragraph and develop an argument about an issue related to the course. Reading and Composition in Connection with the Law as a Social Institution: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Satisfaction of the Entry Level Writing Requirement
Requirements this course satisfies: Satisfies the first half of the Reading and Composition requirement
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Final exam not required.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
This course is designed to fulfill the second half of the Reading and Composition requirement. Students will develop their skills at critical reading, writing, and analysis, and will complete a series of essays culminating in a research paper relating to law, legal actors, and legal institutions. Emphasis will be placed on the process of writing, including developing research questions, constructing an argument, and revising for content and style. Reading and Composition in Connection with the Law as a Social Institution: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Previously passed an R_A course with a letter grade of C- or better. Previously passed an articulated R_A course with a letter grade of C- or better. Score a 4 on the Advanced Placement Exam in English Literature and Composition. Score a 4 or 5 on the Advanced Placement Exam in English Language and Composition. Score of 5, 6, or 7 on the International Baccalaureate Higher Level Examination in English
Requirements this course satisfies: Satisfies the second half of the Reading and Composition requirement
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Final exam not required.
Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session
The United States operates under the constraints imposed by a written constitution. We will explore the ways in which the Constitution affects the relationship between us as individuals and the state. We will focus on the 14th Amendment’s commands that the state provide us all equal protection of the laws, and that it not encroach on our substantive, fundamental rights without due process of the law. Civil Rights Civil Liberties: Equality & Fundamental Rights: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: Apply equality and autonomy doctrines to novel social problems. Evaluate the effect of Supreme Court decisions on the balance between state power and individual liberty. Identify the rights guaranteed in the 14th amendment and explain how those rights have changed over time.
Hours & Format
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session
The United States operates under the constraints imposed by a written constitution. We will explore the ways in which the Constitution affects the relationship between us as individuals and the state. We will focus on issues of free speech and the relationship between the government and religion. We will do a deep dive into speech on college and high school campuses and throughout the religion unit we will likewise take a look at how these doctrines play out at school.
Course Objectives: Apply speech and religion doctrines to modern social problems. Evaluate the effect of Supreme Court decisions on the balance between state power and individual speech and religion rights. Identify the rights guaranteed in the first amendment and explain how those rights have changed over time.
Hours & Format
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2016, Fall 2001, Fall 2000
The Berkeley Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small-seminar setting. Berkeley Seminars are offered in all campus departments, and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Freshman Seminars: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 1 hour of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: The grading option will be decided by the instructor when the class is offered. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2009, Spring 2006, Fall 2001
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester. Freshman/Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Priority given to freshmen and sophomores
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2-4 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester. Freshman/Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Priority given to freshmen and sophomores
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2-4 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2012
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester. Freshman/Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Priority given to freshmen and sophomores
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2-4 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester. Freshman/Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Priority given to freshmen and sophomores
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2-4 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester. Freshman/Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Priority given to freshmen and sophomores
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2-4 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2022
We will explore how data are used in the criminal justice system by exploring the debates surrounding mass incarceration and evaluating a number of different data sources that bear on police practices, incarceration, and criminal justice reform. Students will be required to think critically about the debates regarding criminal justice in the US and to work with various public data sets to assess the extent to which these data confirm or deny specific policy narratives. Building on skills from Foundations of Data Science, students will be required to use basic data management skills working in Python: data cleaning, aggregation, merging and appending data sets, collapsing variables, summarizing findings, and presenting data visualizations. Crime and Punishment: taking the measure of the US justice system: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Credit Restrictions: This course is meant to be taken concurrently with Computer Science C8/Statistics C8/Information C8: Foundations of Data Science. Students may take more than one 88 (data science connector) course if they wish, ideally concurrent with or after having taken the C8 course.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2 hours of seminar per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 4 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
Small group instruction in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses. Topics may vary from year to year. Directed Group Study: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Credit Restrictions: Enrollment is restricted; see the Introduction to Courses and Curricula section of this catalog.
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 1-4 hours of directed group study per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Offered for pass/not pass grade only. Final exam not required.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
This is a liberal arts course designed to introduce students to the foundational frameworks and cross-disciplinary perspectives from humanities and social sciences that distinguish legal studies as a scholarly field. It provides a comparative and historical introduction to forms, ideas, institutions, and systems of law and sociological ordering. It highlights basic theoretical problems and scholarly methods for understanding questions of law and justice. Foundations of Legal Studies: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Prior to 2007
The United States has a legal system that developed from its English roots into a complicated set of rules and organizations that must serve the needs of a large, federal state with a dynamic market economy. This course surveys American law, both substantive and procedural, and the institutions that shape and implement it, including legislatures, courts, lawyers, and litigants. The course also provides students with a basic background in law and how it operates in the contemporary United States. American Law and Legal Institutions: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: Students will be able to demonstrate an understanding of the development of legal rules and institutions in the United States. Students will be able to demonstrate an understanding of the legal rules that channel government activity and the relationship between the state and the individual. Students will be able to evaluate the role and effectiveness of legal institutions, including courts, procuracy, police, and the bar.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Summer 2023 First 6 Week Session
This course examines the American social institution of policing with particular emphasis on urban law enforcement. It explores the social, economic, and cultural forces that pull policing in the direction of state legal authority and power as well as those that are a counter-weight to the concentration of policing powers in the state. Special attention is given to how policing shapes and is shaped by the urban landscape, legal to cultural. Policing and Society: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
An historical examination of major interpretations of law, morals and social development, with special emphasis on the social thought of the 18th and 19th centuries and including the writings of Marx, Maine, Durkheim, Weber and other contemporary figures. Theories of Law and Society: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Summer 2019 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2018 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2017
This course challenges adult-centered representations of urban youth of different ethnicities, their problems, and the supposed solutions to those problems. It departs from the conceptualizations and methods used to study youth in mainstream criminology and developmental psychology. Attention is given to youth conflict, peer relations, identity building within and across ethnic groups, claims on territory, the salience of law and rights, and adaptations to adult authorities and practices. Youth Justice and Culture: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
Criminal law raises fundamental theoretical issues that have occupied philosophers over the years. In this course we will discuss a selection of articles that bring to bear such a philosophical perspective on important aspects of criminal law. Topics include justification of punishment, foundations of blame and responsibility, substantive values protected by criminal law, significance of actual harm, liability of groups and other collectivities, and virtues and limits of the rule of law. Theoretical Foundations of Criminal Law: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2019, Spring 2018
This course explores philosophical themes bearing on the nature of the law and its relationship to morality: e.g., What is law—does its claim rest only on social processes or does law necessarily embody moral claims? Do we have an obligation to obey the law? What are the moral limits of legal punishment? The course will sharpen students’ skills in practical reasoning through the analysis of logical argument. The materials consist of readings from the assigned text and additional readings available on bCourses. The format will be a combination of lecture and classroom discussion, with a substantial number of ungraded group debates and simulations. Philosophy of Law: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2024
The purpose of this Writing Intensive discussion section is to spend extra time working together to practice all stages of the writing process, including drafting, revising, and editing. Through additional writing assignments, workshops of your ideas and paper drafts, and structured in-section debates, you will confront not only the course materials but also yourself as thinker. You will be asked to offer reflections on the readings, on your own writing, and on your classmates’ writing. The aim of these exercises will be to develop your ability to articulate clear and compelling arguments—both in your own writing and speech, and in providing feedback to others. Philosophy of Law: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: Offer constructive feedback on your classmates’ writing and incorporate others’ feedback into your own writing Produce well-reasoned analytical prose Reconstruct complex philosophical arguments in writing and speech Write clearly, concisely, and convincingly about the strengths and vulnerabilities of philosophical arguments
Rules & Requirements
Credit Restrictions: Students will receive no credit for LEGALST 106WI after completing LEGALST 106.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3-3 hours of lecture and 1-2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Fall 2023, Summer 2023 First 6 Week Session
This is a lecture course in political philosophy, focusing on liberal political theory which emphasizes the protection of individual freedom as against social demands, the maintenance of social and economic equality, and the neutrality of the state in conditions of cultural and religious pluralism. By studying mainly modern authors, we will attempt to understand the importance of these goals and the possibility of their joint fulfillment. Attention will be paid to the work of John Rawls, to the problem of moral and political disagreement, and the relation between “ideal” thinking about justice and thinking about justice in conditions of racial and gender hierarchies. Theories of Justice: Read More [+]
Terms offered: Fall 2020
This is a course in political philosophy, focusing on liberal political theory which emphasizes the protection of individual freedom as against social demands, the maintenance of social and economic equality, and the neutrality of the state in conditions of cultural and religious pluralism. By studying modern authors, we will attempt to understand the importance of these goals and the possibility of their joint fulfillment. Attention will be paid to the work of John Rawls, to the problem of moral and political disagreement, and the relation between “ideal” thinking about justice and thinking about justice in conditions of racial and gender hierarchies. A deficient grade in LS 107WI cannot be removed by taking LS 107 or Poli Sci 117. Theories of Justice: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: Students will come to understand, critically, their own political commitments. Students will learn how to read long and complex arguments, to understand their strengths, and to identify their argumentative vulnerabilities. Students will learn that fundamental claims about politics, and political justice, can be the object of sustained rational argument, and not merely opinion-voicing.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3-3 hours of lecture and 1-2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
Analysis of the capacity of criminal law to fulfill its aims. What are the aims of criminal law? How are they assigned relative priority? What principles can be identified for evaluating the effort to control disapproved activities through criminal law? Aims and Limits of the Criminal Law: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2010, Fall 2008, Spring 2008
This course focuses on the history of legal thought and discourse from the late medieval period to the Enlightenment. Topics to be considered include the relationship between legal thought and intellectual developments and the relationship between political and constitutional developments and legal discourse. Although the emphasis is on England, there will be some consideration of differences between English and continental European legal thought. Legal Discourse 1500-1700: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2016, Spring 2010
This is an introduction to important aspects of the philosophical and constitutional thought of classical Athens. We will pay particular attention to accounts of the origins of the Athenian legal system; criticisms and defenses of the democracy; arguments about the nature of justice, law, and legal obligation; and the context of the Athenian way of organizing trials, taxation, and administration. Readings from Aeschylus, Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plato, Lysias, Aristotle, and others. Philosophy and Law in Ancient Athens: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam not required.
Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
Data, Prediction and Law allows students to explore different data sources that scholars and government officials use to make generalizations and predictions in the realm of law. The course will also introduce critiques of predictive techniques in law. Students will apply the statistical and Python programming skills from Foundations of Data Science to examine a traditional social science dataset, “big data” related to law, and legal text data. Data, Prediction & Law: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Student Learning Outcomes: By the end of Data, Prediction, and Law, students will be able to critique the use of data and predictive tools in sociolegal processes, including the identification and punishment of crime.
By the end of Data, Prediction, and Law, students will be able to use common statistical and computational techniques to analyze different types of data (traditional survey data, big data, and text data) related to law.
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Students must have taken one of the following courses before enrolling in Legal Studies 123: Computer Science C8 Foundations of Data Science, or Statistics C8 Foundations of Data Science, or Information Science C8 Foundations of Data Science
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 4 hours of seminar per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 10 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
This seminar offers an introduction to the concept and practice of human rights research and investigations, with an emphasis on the collection and analysis of online open source information. In addition to lectures and readings, the course will engage students in the Human Rights Investigations Lab at Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center, an effort that supports the work of Amnesty International, the Syrian Archive, and a number of other organizations that are working to bring awareness to and collect evidence in support of international atrocity cases, including human rights law firms and international commissions of inquiry. In the seminar and lab, students will have an opportunity to engage in one or more real-world investigations. Human Rights and War Crimes Investigations: Methods: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Student Learning Outcomes: Construct a research and investigations plan, which includes a clear and interesting research question, a description of open source research methods that can be used to answer that question, and an assessment of ethical issues raised by the research
question and proposed research methodologies.
Draft professional quality memoranda and research reports for real-world clients.
Use a diverse set of open source research methodologies, including reverse image searching, geolocation, chronolocation, source analysis, and network analysis.
Use a diverse set of open source research tools, including but not limited to InVid, Google Earth Pro, Tweetdeck and Maltego, and perform advanced online searches on Google,
Facebook and Twitter.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of laboratory per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 7.5 hours of lecture and 2.5 hours of laboratory per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Fall 2024
We will study the history of law and American imperialism in the Pacific Rim from the first Pacific whalers, fur traders, and missionaries of the early 1800s to the occupation of Japan and Philippine independence following the end of World War II. Over this period, the states and societies of the Pacific Rim experienced multiple legal and social revolutions and we will explore these across case studies of Oregon Territory, California, Hawai’i, Alaska, and the Philippines. We will critically examine the transformation from the “First” American continental empire to the “Second” American overseas empire, usually dated to 1898, through the lenses of race, indigeneity, capitalism, legal pluralism, and power. Law & American Pacific Empire through World War II: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Fall 2024
We will explore the intersection of antisemitism and the law, by covering the history of law as a vehicle for institutionalizing antisemitism, law as a vehicle for combating antisemitism, and law as a political tool to combat antisemitism. Historical topics will include the Dreyfus case, the Holocaust denial trial of Irving v. Lipstadt, the Damascus blood libel trial of 1840, the blood libel trial of Mendel Beilis, and the impact of the lynching of Leo Frank. We will also review discriminatory laws in the United States and other areas and countries against Jews, including in Nazi Germany. Antisemitism and the Law: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 4 hours of seminar per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 9 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2020
This course highlights aspects of the development and implementation of human rights in society. Cases reveal the question facing all nations: to what extent should indigenous peoples be secure in their land, cultural integrity, political and economic rights. Fundamentally, this inquiry depends on recognizing the existence of inalienable and indivisible rights afforded to all humans. Human Rights: The Native Experience: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: Analyze how the U.S.'s position as leaders of "human rights" can be reconciled with its history and treatment of natives. Apply the language of "human rights" to develop a framework for healing historical wrongs through reparative and restorative justice. Explain UNDRIP’s role within the context of human rights and international doctrines.
Explain the role of culture in human rights discourse. Identify and assess the narratives used to justify the unequal application of human rights. Using specific examples in Native history, explain the strategies of institutional oppression in the human rights framework.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 12 weeks - 4 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Spring 2024
This course will introduce you to key concepts, issues, and legal frameworks around forced migration from legal, sociological, and normative perspectives. Using historical and contemporary examples, interdisciplinary scholarship, legal cases, media depictions of forced migration, and the voices of persons experiencing displacement, we will critically examine narratives about and responses to population displacement in international and domestic contexts. Forced Migration: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: Acquire substantial understanding of key definitions and conceptual differences of various forms of human mobility; international norms around refugees and forced migration; the role of migrants’ agency and identity differences when assessing the impact of migration and responses to displacement; legal and policy responses to migration, media narratives, representation of migration issues; and securitization of human mobility. Be able to apply frameworks and approaches to a variety of forced migration scenarios and differentiate between the needs and capabilities of different groups in different regions.
Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
We often hear that America is a "nation of immigrants." This representation of the U.S. does not explain why some are presumed to belong and others are not. We will examine both historical and contemporary law of immigration and citizenship to see how law has shaped national identity and the identity of immigrant communities. In addition to scholarly texts, we will read and analyze excerpts of cases and the statute that governs immigration and citizenship, the Immigration and Nationality Act. Immigration and Citizenship: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2022, Spring 2022, Spring 2021
This course will explore the relationship between social movements and the law: it will take as its focus the movement for immigrant rights, increasingly led by undocumented activists. It will ask how legal action -- statutes, regulations, judicial decisions, and policies and practices of enforcement, at both state and federal levels -- has spurred the formation of a social movement, and how that movement has sought to influence, resist, and transform the law. Law and Social Change: The Immigrant Rights Movement: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of fieldwork per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2.5 hours of fieldwork per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2020
We will explore questions about migration and membership in the contemporary world by drawing on empirical and normative perspectives. By “empirical,” we investigate what social science evidence tells us about the drivers of migration or the benefits of citizenship. By “normative,” we think through questions of what a society ought to do: what is the morally right, just, or fair thing to do about issues of migration and citizenship? Membership and Migration: Empirical and Normative Perspectives: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
This course introduces the study of comparative constitutional law in Latin America and will prepare students to acquire substantial training on the existing legal traditions in the world: the common law and the civil law systems.
We will study how political, social, and historical dynamics shape the work of state actors, such as the executive, legislative, judicial powers, as well as the legal profession, and civil society groups to mobilize legal and social change. Law, Judicial Politics, and Rights in Latin America: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Fall 2021
This course investigates the logic and lived reality of authoritarian law, with the goal of complicating the popular notion that authoritarian law is simply an instrument of state repression. We will mix more theoretical readings on approaches to law and the logic of courts with empirical studies of how law works in two historical settings (Nazi Germany and East Germany) and two contemporary cases (China and Russia). Part of our focus will be on elite politics, particularly the reasons leaders devolve power to courts and the control strategies they deploy to keep judges, lawyers and plaintiffs in check. At the same time, we will pay close attention to everyday law and how ordinary people experience the legal system.
Course Objectives: Gain a solid understanding of different theoretical frameworks used to think about the origins of authoritarianism, the relationship between authoritarian law and politics, and authoritarian backsliding. This course should make it easier for you to read the newspaper and think critically about current events.
Learn how law and politics intersected in five case studies critical to understanding modern authoritarianism: Nazi Germany, East Germany, China, Russia and the United States.
Learn to think comparatively, a mode of analysis in political science premised on the idea that the act of comparing two or more cases can help us wrestle with important questions about political phenomena. Rather than viewing the United States as sui generis, the comparative method will help us understand how our politics fit into global trends, and challenge (or support) what social scientists know about modern authoritarianism.
Strengthen your critical-thinking skills. Students will learn to identify the causal claims of authors and to challenge their approaches and assumptions. These are skills you will bring to your other courses, and to your life after college.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
Comparative Equality Law uses a problem-based approach to examine how the law protects equality rights in different jurisdictions. The course will comparatively examine US, European, and other national, regional and international legal systems (including those of India, Brazil, Colombia, Canada and South Africa) and provide a global overview of legal protection from and legal responses to inequalities. The course covers 5 topic modules: Theories and sources of equality law; Employment discrimination law (race, sex, age, disability, LGBTQ+); Secularism, human rights and the legal rights of religious minorities; Sexual harassment/Violence; Affirmative action (race, caste, origin), and gender parity. Comparative Equality Law: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: Better understand their own connections to a global community of research and learning. Compare how different legal systems address problems of inequality and discrimination. Connect with students from around the globe as friends/colleagues to discuss ongoing issues of inequality in light of the material they studied together. Read articles about inequality and discuss the issues raised in light of the underlying theories of equality, using examples from several legal systems. Read discrimination case decisions and analyze the theories of equality underlying the decision. Read proposed statutes, constitutional amendments and treaties and analyze the theories of equality underlying the proposal. Reflect on teaching and learning methods used by students and faculty from several nations.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2024
This course examines a number of leading U.S. Supreme Court decisions in terms of what policy alternatives were available to the Court and which ones it chose. Prospective costs and benefits of these alternatives and who will pay the costs and who gets the benefits of them are considered. Among the areas considered are economic development, government regulation of business, national security, freedom of speech and discrimination. Readings are solely of Supreme Court decisions. The Supreme Court and Public Policy: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2015, Spring 2014
This course is an introduction to the comparative study of different legal cultures and traditions including common law, civil law, socialist law, and religious law. A section of the class will be dedicated to the comparison of the colonial and post-colonial legal process in Latin America and in Africa. Comparative Perspectives on Norms and Legal Traditions: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam not required.
Terms offered: Fall 2021, Fall 2020, Fall 2019
This course will explore the relation between property law and limits of liberty in different cultures and at different times. The course will cover theories of property law, slavery, the clash between aboriginal and European ideas of property, gender roles and property rights, common property systems, zoning, regulatory takings, and property on the internet. Readings will include legal theorists, court cases, and historical case studies. Property and Liberty: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2019, Spring 2005
As longstanding symbols in American history and culture, “Wall Street” and “Main Street” typically refer to streets that intersect at right angles and places that represent the antithesis of each other. Wall Street is home to nefarious big banks run by greedy financiers with deep pockets, while Main Street is home to unassuming “mom-and-pop” shops patronized by ordinary people of modest means who live in the surrounding wholesome small towns. What’s good for one is not good for the other. This course, which will be co-taught by a historian and corporate law professor, will examine critical junctures in the intersection of Wall Street and Main Street in American history and culture over the course of the twentieth century. Wall Street / Main Street: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course surveys the history of US monetary law from its inception to the coming about of cryptocurrencies. We begin with a discussion of monetary affairs in colonial times and during the American Revolutionary War. We then examine the framework established at the Constitutional Convention. We cover the 19th century and New Deal Supreme Court cases that shaped US monetary law as we know it today. Finally we discusses contemporary legal dilemmas such as the regulation of bitcoin and stablecoins, the creation of central bank digital currencies, the workarounds of the US debt ceiling and the debate over the spectrum of the Fed’s legal authority. We conclude by revisiting some classic questions concerning the nature and functions of money. Monetary Law & Regulation: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: Teaches students to conceptualize monetary law as an instrument of power as well as a technique for promoting efficient social exchanges. To enable students to critically understand the law and regulation of money, including the policy choices that underlie court interpretations. To equip students with a general understanding of current monetary affairs.
Terms offered: Spring 2023
This course surveys the history of political economy before the middle of the twentieth century aiming to give students a broad introduction to the way in which modern economics emerged, and the varieties of schools of political economy that have been advanced since roughly the middle of the eighteenth century. It also surveys the critique of political economy in various eras, including recent criticisms of welfare economics and of economic inequality. History of Political Economy: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: Students will gain a broad familiarity with a variety of important thinkers and themes in the history of political economy while also deepening their ability to read and analyze primary texts.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session
The course will apply microeconomic theory analysis to legal rules and procedures. Emphasis will be given to the economic consequences of various sorts of liability rules, remedies for breach of contract and the allocation of property rights. The jurisprudential significance of the analysis will be discussed. Law and Economics I: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Together Law and Econ I and II provide comprehensive introduction to economic analysis of law. Courses need not be taken in numerical order; nor is one a prerequisite to the other
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2011
We will discuss how the creation of knowledge, artistic, literary, and musical works are supported in a competitive economy especially in the digital age. We will discuss intellectual property, copyrights, trade secrets, trade marks, and geographic indications, in historical and institutional contexts. We will consider the problems of competition that arise in the digital economy, such as Google Books, the Microsoft antitrust cases, and search advertising. The Law and Economics of Innovation: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Economics 1 or a course in microeconomics
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2022, Summer 2021 Second 6 Week Session
Law and Economics I is not a prerequisite for Law and Economics II. Students may take either or both courses. Government uses many mechanisms to influence the provision of goods and services. Economists and lawyers have developed a critique of these mechanisms which has prompted substantial reforms in recent years, e.g., deregulation in transportation. The course examines this critique. Law and Economics II: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2023, Fall 2021, Fall 2020
Entrepreneurship plays an increasingly essential role in today’s global economy. New companies and startups play valuable roles in the formation of new industry, also spurring established incumbent companies towards further growth. This course is designed to explore the role of law in facilitating the development of entrepreneurial enterprises, paying special attention to the complex interaction between innovation and regulation. The purpose of this course is to provide students with a thorough foundation for understanding the role that law plays in the construction and growth of entrepreneurial enterprises. Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: Students will develop skills in generating business plans, negotiating, and addressing complex issues that arise during the operation of a business enterprise. Students will learn about the conceptual and theoretical elements of entrepreneurship. Students will learn how to address the formation of an entrepreneurial venture and identify the core legal issues that must be addressed, at every stage – from idea to exit.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Spring 1992
This course will investigate the phenomenon of intimate partner violence (also known as family violence, or domestic violence), by studying empirical evidence; theories of violence; and the disparate impacts on different communities. Through a trauma-centered and intersectional approach, students will be positioned to assess and analyze the responses by our legal system to this persistent and prevalent social problem. Intimate Partner Violence & the Law: Read More [+]
Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2018, Fall 2017
Contemporary moral and political philosophy has been increasingly interested in how conceptions of the self relate to various aspects of our social and political life. These issues have an important bearing on legal theory as well. Law is shaped by certain implicit assumptions about the nature of individuals and collectivities, while it also actively participates in forming the identities of persons and in structuring collective entities such as families, corporations, and municipalities. This course will explore some theoretical approaches to this reciprocal relationship between law and the different social actors that it governs. Law, Self, and Society: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2017
Scientific advances promise great increases in social good, but whether those advancements herald a better or worse world, depends on how scientific knowledge is applied. Applying scientific knowledge in the service of humanity is challenging, and requires an informed, deliberate method. Through lectures, discussions, case studies, and field research, students will gain an understanding of the international human rights framework, historical and social context for contemporary human rights violations, insights into the role of race, gender, and technology in structural inequality, opportunities to work across disciplines on real-world design challenges, and experience assessing needs and designing for specific, selected human rights apps. Human Rights & Technology: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016
This course offers a comparative perspective on law and legal institutions. Looking comparatively helps shed light on our own system and question what is “normal” or “natural.” From what it means to be a lawyer to notions of what is “just” or “fair,” courts and dispute resolution outside the U.S. can be both very different and, at times, surprisingly familiar. After an overview of concepts and classic approaches to the study of law and society, the course will explore these differences and similarities in three Asian settings: China, Japan, and India. Topics include lawyers, illicit sex, and environmental protection, to see how each country’s history, political structure, values, and interests shape how legal issues are defined and play out Law and Society in Asia: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2022, Spring 2019
This course provides an overview of international human rights, including the field's historical and theoretical foundations; the jurisprudence of international human rights; empirical insights from disciplines such as sociology, psychology, history, and anthropology; and emerging trends in human rights practice. Human Rights, Research & Practice: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2013, Fall 2012, Fall 2011
How has the law constructed and deconstructed "family" relationships? What are the common law, statutory, and constitutional principles that affect the formation, regulation, and dissolution of families? How do these principles, as well as diverse cultural and social values, guide the state in determining marriage, family, and child welfare policies? Government and the Family: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Summer 2011 First 6 Week Session
Law now plays a prominent role in medicine and science. Recent years have witnessed a major expansion of law's involvement. Law (statutory and court-made) articulates and interprets norms of conduct. This course will examine a number of topics where law and medicine intersect involving many of our most fundamental values including body, life, death, religion, reproduction, sexuality, and family. In each area, we will include both traditional issues, like "right to die" and more current disputes such as physician assisted suicide. Bioethics and the Law: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2023
This course will evaluate and assess modern theories of international law. We will examine the work of legal scholars and look to political science and economics to see how these disciplines inform the study of international law. We will also examine a host of fundamental questions in international law, including, for example, why states enter into international agreements, why states comply with international law, and what kind of state conduct is likely to be influenced by international law. International Relations and International Law: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Minimum sophomore standing
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
Focusing on developing countries, this course considers the relationship between legal institutions and rules--including informal and traditional ones--and development--defined by different actors by economic growth, education, health, or a wide spectrum of freedoms. It examines efforts by national leaders, international organizations, foreign aid agencies, and NGOs to "reform" law to promote development, along with the resistance and unplanned consequences that often ensue. Law and Development: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course focuses on the legal regulation of sexuality, and the social and historical norms and frameworks that affect its intersection with sex, gender, race, disability, and class. We will critically examine how the law shapes sexuality and how sexuality shapes the law. Our subject matter is mostly constitutional, covering sexuality’s intersection with privacy, freedom of expression, gender identity and expression, equal protection, reproduction, kinship, and family formation, among other subjects. We will study case law, legal articles, and other texts (including visual works) that critically engage issues of sexuality, citizenship, nationhood, religion, and the public and private spheres domestically and internationally. Law & Sexuality: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Student Learning Outcomes: Upon completion of this course, students will be able to articulate scholarly and activist theories regarding the regulation of law and sexuality, and recognize how scholarship, social norms, public culture, private intimacies, and legal decisions affect the social world that we live in.
Upon completion of this course, students will be able to critically analyze and reflect upon the law’s regulation of sexuality and its intersection with other identity-based categories, such as race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion, geography, disability, and age, among others.
Upon completion of this course, students will be able to develop legal reasoning skills through analysis of case law, law review articles, and related texts.
Upon completion of this course, students will be able to identify and respond to key points and arguments in scholarly articles, integrating current news events regarding law, gender and sexuality.
Upon completion of this course, students will be able to practice legal writing, research, and oral presentation skills through engagement with the Socratic teaching method.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2024
This course surveys the development of Western penal practices, institutions, and ideas (what David Garland calls "penality") from the eighteenth-century period to the present. Our primary focus will be on penal practices and discourses in the United States in the early 21st century. In particular we will examine the extraordinary growth of US penal sanctions in the last quarter century and the sources and consequences of what some have called "mass imprisonment." Punishment, Culture, and Society: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week 8 weeks - 6 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Summer 2021 First 6 Week Session
The course examines concepts that form the basis of the Chinese legal system, traditional theories and institutions of pre-1911 society, and the expression and rejection of the traditional concepts in the laws of the Nationalist period and the People's Republic. Law in Chinese Society: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course advances the claim that the criminal justice system is both a product and a powerful engine of racial hierarchy in American society, and that strategies of restorative justice, which have recently garnered attention in settings from prisons to middle schools, hold out promise as practices of racial justice. We explore this thesis by examining the ways in which criminal justice systems shape the emotions and social relations of victims, offenders, and members of the larger community. Restorative Justice: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 4 hours of seminar per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 9 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Fall 2018, Fall 2017, Fall 2016
This course examines the premises, doctrine, and operational behavior of juvenile courts, particularly in relation to the commission of seriously anti-social acts by mid-adolescents. Topics include the history of theories of delinquency; the jurisprudence of delinquency; the incidence and severity of delinquency; police response to juvenile offenders; the processes of juvenile courts and youth corrections; and reforms or alternatives to the juvenile court system. Adolescence, Crime and Juvenile Justice: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2021, Summer 2021 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2020
We will investigate the profound role of law and legal institutions in shaping and defining racial minority and majority communities. Students will interrogate the definition and meaning of race in U.S. society (e.g., whether race is biological, cultural, environmental, based on White supremacy, or a social construct that is constantly being transformed) and will critically examine the connection between law, race and racism, both in the historical and modern context. The course is a collaborative effort to learn the truths of our collective history; to share the truths of our individual experiences and lives; and, to determine if we desire a more just society, and if so, how to create our own paths and contributions to this endeavor. Juvenile Justice & the Color of Law: The Historical Treatment of Children of Color in the Judicial System - Delinquency & Dependency: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: Apply critically relevant law to hypothetical scenarios involving racial groups. Demonstrate understanding of relevant law that has been previously applied to racial groups. Describe the four major schools of thought on law and race (i.e., neoconservative, liberal, critical legal studies, and critical race theory). Explain the connection between law, race and racism in different analytical frameworks, including the frameworks listed in Course Objective #1.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2024
How do people and communities envision and enact justice in response to state-sponsored and state-sanctioned violence? How have TRCs (Truth and Reconciliation Commissions) and analogous approaches taken shape in the U.S., in response to state-sponsored violence, including “legal violence”? With South Africa’s TRC as a foundational model, this course will examine an array of community-based strategies for surfacing truths about historical harms, pursuing accountability through apologies and reparations, and restoring relationships, communities, artifacts, and lands. We will address the challenges when establishing official commissions, reaching out to communities, and following through with recommendations. Truth, Justice & Reconciliation: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: Students will learn to “think globally and act locally” by presenting examples of TRCs around the world and in the US, and engage in research on the possibilities of TRC approaches for the Berkeley campus and Bay Area.
Terms offered: Spring 2023, Fall 2022, Summer 2022 First 6 Week Session
This course examines recent American legal and social history with respect to reproductive and sexual behavior. We will consider two theoretical aspects of the problem: first, theories of how law regulates social behavior and second, more general theories about how reproduction is socially regulated. Armed with these theoretical perspectives, the course will then examine closely a number of legal/social conflicts, including sterilization, abortion and contraception. Sex, Reproduction and the Law: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This course will examine policing and mass incarceration in the contemporary United States. The first half of the course will explore policing, considering how the modern police emerged, whether police reduce crime, and why police violence persists. The second half of the course will turn to mass incarceration, examining how the U.S. came to incarcerate people at a greater rate than any nation in history, along with the individual and social consequences of incarceration. For both policing and mass incarceration, we will devote significant focus to the prospects for reform. Criminal Justice in the United States: Policing, Mass Incarceration, and Paths to Reform: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: Students will be able to critically evaluate arguments about policing and incarceration made by both scholarly and popular commentators. Students will be able to describe the problems currently facing the systems of policing and prisons in the United States. Students will be able to propose and defend reforms to bring about more just and effective systems of policing and incarceration. Students will be able to take sides in current debates over policing and incarceration.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023
Introduction to the etiology of crime and criminal justice administration. What is crime? What are the main features and problems of the process by which suspected criminals are apprehended, tried, sentenced, punished? Past and current trends and policy issues will be discussed. Crime and Criminal Justice: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Fall 2015, Fall 2011
Most contemporary legal systems derive from one or the other of the two legal orders that developed in continental Europe and England over the course of the centuries. This course introduces students to some of the main features of the continental European or civil law tradition, a tradition that has its origins in Roman law. We will look at the English common law tradition, which began to diverge from the law of continental Europe in the middle ages, and acquired its own distinctive character. European Legal History: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2023
This course seeks to engage students in a critical investigation of the origins of the University of California through a settler colonial lens, and with the aim of decolonizing the University’s narrative history. Decolonization is a process by which narratives, world views, cultures, and institutions, once erased by colonization are returned, respected, and honored. Drawing upon the work of the UC Berkeley Truth & Justice Project, this Course will explore the history of UC and its racial and colonial foundations. We will focus on decolonization and therefore center Indigenous and other racialized communities, discussing injustice in various communities and from various perspectives. Decolonizing UC Berkeley: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Student Learning Outcomes: Apply these learning objectives to research and create a storytelling project about the racial and colonial foundations of California and UC Berkeley with an eye toward decolonization. The projects should aim to challenge the settler-colonial narrative through storytelling and to move from theory into praxis.
Demonstrate an understanding of how race and colonization impact the narrative story of UC Berkeley;
Demonstrate an understanding of how the history of race and colonization are interconnected with the law and their impacts on society today;
Demonstrate an understanding of the importance of resistance and truth, healing, reconciliation, and reparation movements, and decolonization;
Students should be able to demonstrate an understanding of settler-colonialism and decolonization;
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
This is an intro to the origins, development, and expansion of European settlement on the North American mainland. We will concentrate on the impulses – commercial, ideological, and racial – that drove European colonizing; the migrations (voluntary and forced) that sustained it; and the political and legal “technologies” that supplied it with definition, explanation, and institutional capacity. We will pay attention to themes of sovereignty, civic identity, race, and “manifest destiny” and will discuss how law provided both the language and technical capacity to transform territory into property, people into slaves, and the land’s indigenous inhabitants into “others” who existed “outside” the civic order of the American Republic. Making Empire: Law and the Colonization of America: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Credit Restrictions: Students who complete Legalst 173 will not receive credit for Legalst 173AC.
Requirements this course satisfies: Satisfies the American Cultures requirement
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
This course will provide an introduction to constitutional law using Israel as a case study. Topics include: Constitutionalism and judicial review, state neutrality and self-determination, minority rights, state and religion, Human Rights Law, the concept of “defensive democracy" and ban of non-democratic political parties, legal aspects of the fight on terror, freedom of expression, equality and anti-discrimination, social rights, and constitutional limitations on privatization. Comparative Constitutional Law: The Case of Israel: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Spring 2023
This class first introduces students to the origins of the access to justice problem, paying attention to disparate impacts along the lines of race, class, and gender. It examines how the costs of legal services, and in turn of law school tuition, steadily rose in the last several decades. Drawing on both historical and comparative case studies, students will then be encouraged to think creatively about who can represent individuals at law. Further inspiration comes from contemporary case studies outside North America and Europe. Finally, students will have an opportunity to execute a guided research project on a historical, comparative, or contemporary aspect of access to justice that helps shed light on potential solutions today. Access to Justice: Comparative and Historical Perspectives: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: Students can expect to sharpen their critical reading and writing skills. Students will learn to better express themselves orally. Students will practice developing and executing their own research project.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Summer 2018 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2015 10 Week Session, Summer 2015 Second 6 Week Session
Development of American law and the constitutional system in the 20th century. Topics include Progressive Era Regulatory policy, criminal justice and relations, freedom of speech and press, New Deal legal innovations, modern tort liability, environmental regulation, judicial reform, and federalism. Twentieth-Century American Legal and Constitutional History: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing. It is recommended that students have completed at least one course in legal studies or political science that deals with American history or American government prior to taking 176
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2022
Overview of American legal and constitutional history from colonial times to the present. Topics include colonial legal institutions, early constitutional history, history of the common law, business regulation, race and the law, history of the legal profession, and the modern constitutional order. Survey of American Legal and Constitutional History: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2013, Spring 2010, Spring 2009
This course will provide advanced reading and independent research in the history of American law. Preference may be given to students who have taken 177. Seminar on American Legal and Constitutional History: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. Enrollment is limited
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam not required.
Terms offered: Spring 2014, Spring 2013, Spring 2012
An examination of constitutional decision-making in a number of countries based on selected high court opinions. Comparative Constitutional Law: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2018, Fall 2014
Implicit bias, automatic or unconscious stereotyping, and prejudice that guides our perception of and behavior toward social groups, is a fast growing area of law and psychology. Students will look at research in substantive areas of employment discrimination, criminal law, and questions regarding communications, voting, health care, immigration, property, and whether research findings showing unconscious gender, racial, and other biases can be used as courtroom evidence to prove discrimination. Implicit Bias: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2017, Fall 2013
Psychology is the study of the human mind and its effect on behavior. Law attempts to regulate behavior through norm setting, policing, and punishment. This course gives a survey of the natural connection between law and psychology. Here, we will study the psychology of legal systems, of crime and policing, and of what happens in the courtroom, including criminal charging, jury selection, eyewitness testimony, prosecution, and conviction. Throughout, we will analyze the theoretical and empirical evidence as it applies generally and to special populations (children, the impaired, those with mental illnesses, and racial and sexual minorities). Psychology and the Law: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: Students will be able to identify many of the psychological assumptions underlying the application of law, what evidence exists for their validity, and the areas where law fails to understand or regulate human behavior.
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Minimum sophomore standing
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam not required.
Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2022 First 6 Week Session
We will explore the nature and function of law and legal systems. What is the nature of legal authority? Where does it originate? Why do we obey it? From where does law come? How are laws made? How do judges reason? We will also focus on law and conflict resolution: How do people bring cases to court? How do judges decide cases? Are there alternatives to the legal process? Finally, a traditional conception of law is that it is a timeless set of principles, yet society is always changing. How then does law change? How do courts respond to social change? To what extent can courts bring about social change? Readings are from a variety of fields: philosophy, history, judicial opinions, and scholarly articles. Law, Politics and Society: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2015, Spring 2014
Course will examine concepts of race and culture, various understandings of and approaches to diversity found in the law, and the role of sociocultural structures in shaping the operation of antidiscrimination law and social policy. Topics include: psychology of desegregation, colorblindness and equal protection, affirmative action, stereotyping, sexism in the workplace, prejudice toward immigrants, social class and poverty. Psychology of Diversity and Discrimination in American Law: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of seminar per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 7.5 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam not required.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
This course explores major issues and debates in the sociology of law. Topics include theoretical perspectives on the relationship between law and society, theories of why people obey (and disobey) the law, the relationship between law and social norms, the "law in action" in litigation and dispute resolution, the roles of lawyers, judges, and juries in the legal system and in society, and the role of law in social change. The course will examine these issues from an empirical perspective. Sociology of Law: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Credit Restrictions: Students will receive no credit for Legal Studies 184 after completing Legal Studies C184/Sociology C114. A deficient grade in Legal Studies C184/Sociology C114 may be removed by taking Legal Studies 184.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1.5 hours of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week 8 weeks - 6 hours of lecture and 1.5 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2017, Spring 2014
Taking a broad interdisciplinary approach, this course introduces students to the long history of the prison in the American experience, questioning the shadows of inevitability and normality that cloak mass incarceration in the contemporary United States and around the globe. While directly addressing the prison system, and related institutions like the police and probation, this course intends to engage with the full range of carceral geographies in which social life is penetrated with the state’s power to surveil, arrest, judge, and punish its citizens and the organizations and capacities through which that power is carried out. Prison: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Instructors: Simon, Feldman, Sacks, Jones
Also listed as: AFRICAM 181AC/ETH STD 181AC/SOC WEL 185AC
Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Taking a broad interdisciplinary approach, this course embraces the longue duree of critical prison studies, questioning the shadows of normality that cloak mass incarceration both across the globe and, more particularly, in the contemporary United States. This course thus explores a series of visceral, unsettling juxtapositions: "freedom" and "slavery"; "citizenship" and "subjugation"; "marginalization" and "inclusion", in each case explicating the ways that story making, political demagoguery, and racial, class, and sexual inequalities have wrought an untenable social condition. Prison: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Credit Restrictions: Students will receive no credit if they have already taken ETH STD 181AC, LEGALST 185AC, or ARCH 185AC.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2016, Summer 2004 10 Week Session
Dimensions of diversity at the heart of this course are perceptions of commonality and attributions of difference defined by race and immigration. Emphasis is given to contemporary law and politics in the U.S., but with an eye toward how the law and politics of the here and now is rooted in history. "Race" is broadly defined by concepts of identity, immigration, citizenship, class, ethnicity, and gender. "Politics" is broadly defined both by a center stage of elite actors in government and the laws and policies they make and implement, and by the relevant contexts and audiences that define that stage, inclusive of elections, civic engagement, protests, political talk, and organizational behavior. Diversity, Law & Politics: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: In this course, students will learn to explore, discuss, and better understand the relationship between peoplehood and politics in a dynamic, diversifying polity.
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Minimum sophomore standing
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2014, Summer 2013 10 Week Session, Summer 2013 First 6 Week Session
This course will explore the ways in which feminist theory has shaped conceptions of the law, as well as examine a range of feminist legal theories, including equality, difference, dominance, intersectional, poststructural, postcolonial theories. It will ask how these theories have shaped legal interventions in areas including workplace/educational access, sexualized coercion, work/family conflict, "cultural" defenses, and globalized sweatshop labor. Feminist Jurisprudence: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Minimum sophomore standing
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course provides Legal Studies honors students with the opportunity to learn about the conduct of legal studies research, how to write an honors thesis proposal, and prepare for writing an honors thesis in the spring. Honors Seminar: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Senior standing, acceptance into Honors Program in Legal Studies
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
Study of an advanced topic under the supervision of a faculty member leading to the completion of a senior honors thesis. Honors Thesis: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 8 hours of independent study per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 21.5 hours of independent study per week 8 weeks - 15.5 hours of independent study per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
The goal of the seminar is to provide students additional support as they conduct the research for and write their senior honors theses, and prepare presentations for the Spring Studies Undergraduate Research Conference. Students enroll in the two unit Legalst H195C seminar during the second semester of the Honors Program along with the three units of Legalst H195B. Legal Studies Honors Research and Writing Seminar: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 1 hour of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Offered for pass/not pass grade only. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2019
Small group instruction in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses. Topics may vary from year to year. Directed Group Study: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Credit Restrictions: Enrollment is restricted; see the Introduction to Courses and Curricula section of this catalog.
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 1-4 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Legal Studies/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Offered for pass/not pass grade only. Final exam not required.
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