Time Schedule:
Shauna F Fisher
POL S 363
Seattle Campus
Inquiry into how law matters in social practice. Examines general theories of law, the workings of legal institutions, and the character of legally constituted practices and relationships in diverse terrains of social life. Offered: jointly with LSJ 363.
Class description
Description: This class explores the fundamental roles that law plays in organizing contemporary social life. We will consider various ways of understanding law’s complex presence in society: how law shapes and enables social interaction, how law constructs differences among people and their actions, how law mediates and enforces power relationships, and how law matters for the kind of society we have. Topics will include disputing processes; legal ideology and legal practice; law and violence; law, identity, and community; and rights. The course will examine official legal institutions (courts) and actors (judges, police, lawyers, etc.), but will emphasize how law works as a complex array of norms, symbols, discourses, and practices that infuse and shape all aspects of social life. We thus will address both the macro-politics of law at the national level and the micro-politics of legal interaction among citizens within neighborhoods, communities, workplaces, families, and the like. Most of the case materials draw from U.S. experience, but some comparative historical and cross-national perspectives may be introduced. The course will require close reading of texts and several written assignments. There are no formal prerequisites for this class, although grounding in a basic knowledge of American politics and social organization will be assumed. This class is a core requirement for the Law, Societies, and Justice Program.
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
