Law and Justice Studies

Topics include the structure of the criminal justice system; the impact of the Supreme Court on criminal justice; and the process of arrest, prosecution, and sentencing.

Credits: 4

An exploration of the day-to-day applications of civil law: who can sue and be sued, the basis for lawsuits, and how to win cases. Through case studies and mock litigation, students explore such issues as product liability, medical malpractice, negligence, strict liability, and legal procedure, including document production and the use of expert witnesses.

Credits: 4

A course that examines legal literacy and its conventions, and how law merges moral argument, interpretive practice, and the use of power in the regulation of social life. Students engage with primary legal texts and explore their interpretations, meanings and applications in the world, while building skills in analysis, argumentation, research and writing.

Credits: 3

Focuses on major Supreme Court decisions pertaining to civil liberties. Caselaw examined includes: privacy, free expression, free exercise of religion, reproductive rights, and same-sex marriage. Students gain a deeper understanding of the current state of the law on major civil liberties issues and a grasp on how Supreme Court decisions affect everyday life.

Credits: 4

Topics include the mechanism of the U.S. jury system; the truth-seeking process of juries; the concepts of mistrials, jury nullification, and hung juries; and a consideration of whether trial by jury is the best method for attaining justice. Students participate in a week-by-week mock trial, permitting hands-on experience in jury selection, opening statements, cross-examination, and summation.

Credits: 4

The law touches everyone from conception to the grave and beyond. Family interactions between spouses, parents, children, and elders are dictated by rights and duties defined in the law. This course explores how the law weaves in and out of family structures in an attempt to protect and preserve certain rights and values.

Credits: 4

U.S. environmental law and policy, the common-law foundations of environmental law, and the regulatory process and toolkit are examined. The focus is on major environmental statutes: the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, the Compensation and Recovery Act (Superfund), and the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Credits: 4

Students learn how to engage in the research process in the practice of law and assess law’s impact on a range of areas (e.g., consumer rights; the rights of women, students, minorities, and immigrants the rights of both the accused and the victims of crime).

Credits: 4

An examination of the historical, moral, and legal issues surrounding the death penalty. Students confront the major controversial issues in the current death penalty debate and learn to form arguments from both the pro– and anti–death penalty perspectives. Topics include retribution, deterrence, proportionality, discrimination, error, and public opinion. Students analyze Supreme Court decisions and scholarly treatments of capital punishment.

Credits: 4

Examines copyright law in artistic practice from a global and multidisciplinary perspective. Students examine rules that govern the protection of creative work and explore the role law plays in mediating questions of authorship, attribution, and creative control. Coursework covers applications of copyright in music, visual art, performance, literature, video games, fashion, and social media. Students engage in legal analysis and artistic experimentation in parallel.

Credits: 3

The study of law from a liberal arts perspective, emphasizing the role that law and the legal order play in the institutional arrangements and human relations of a society. The course examines the basic concepts, language, institutions, and forms of law that characterize the American legal order.

Credits: 4

Explores the American legal system and examines the role of each branch of government—executive, legislative, and judicial—in shaping the laws that govern the right to free speech and the right to privacy, along with conflicts between those two rights that arise in the media, the private sector, and public institutions.

Credits: 4

Focuses on current legal issues such as abortion, the death penalty, and affirmative action. The pivotal Supreme Court cases establishing the law in each area are read. In addition, research in sociology and psychology is examined to understand the conditions that led to the key court decisions and the impact of those decisions on society.

Credits: 4

A seminar that examines the legal, political, and social history of critical legal theory related to race, gender, indigeneity, and the environment. Students engage with case law and theoretical texts that explore the power dynamics embedded in law, historically and into the present day, with a focus on alternative frameworks that surface at the margins of dominant legal structures.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: LEG2015 Or LBS3024

Debates over historical monuments, statues, and collective memory have become flashpoints across the United States and the world. How do we understand the contentious historical landscapes that configure these debates? How do we reconcile painful truths from the past, reclaim erased histories, and address questions of representation and belonging? Coursework explores how law, policy and collective identity inform such questions.

Credits: 4

Issues related to immigration law are placed in context by reviewing their historical evolution. Students examine current law and issues related to family and labor-based petitions for permanent residence, political asylum and refugee applications, the status of undocumented workers, immigration and national security, and deportation policies and procedures.

Credits: 4

Protection of civil rights in the U.S. has been characterized by both civil disobedience and widespread violence. This course analyzes milestones in American history, periods of unrest, and the sociolegal changes associated with them. Landmark constitutional cases, law, and justice in U.S. culture are studied, and historical lawbreakers and high-profile dissidents are examined through various media.

Credits: 4

Examines the causes and controls of juvenile delinquency. Topics include a historical overview of children, their legal status, the evolution of the juvenile justice system, alternatives to incarceration and community-based solutions, and reform efforts. The effectiveness of prevention and deterrence efforts is evaluated.

Credits: 4

Sociologists have long understood that the study of censorship can yield an understanding of the structure and values of a society. Modern societies define and enforce limits on expression by defining certain forms of expression as obscene, pornographic, subversive, etc. Censorship in film, literature, and theatre is the major focus.

Credits: 4

An introduction to fundamental legal and business concepts that affect artists and arts managers, with an emphasis on copyright protection and infringement. Students learn the basics of copyright and contract law, analyzing both contracts and case law relevant to the creative industries. Additional course topics include privacy, defamation, moral rights, and free speech protection.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: AMG1100 Or LEG1520

Students apply the basic concepts of economics to examine the formation, structure, processes, and consequences of law and legal institutions. The interactions between the legal process and the market process are studied with respect to policy. Topics include intellectual property, environment protection, bankruptcy, tort law, regulation, and property rights.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: ECO1500 Or ECO1510 Or ECO2085 Or LEG2015

Examines the historical, philosophical, and legal bases for freedom of speech and of the press in the U.S. and the practical application of these principles to print, broadcast, and online media today. Topics include the First Amendment, libel, privacy, government regulation, news gathering, and journalism ethics. Not recommended for freshmen or sophomores.

Credits: 4

The modern conception of health and its resulting issues are examined from an interdisciplinary perspective. Topics include the origins of emerging health and related public policy issues; the impact on the local, national, and global economy and educational systems; national security; preventive efforts; and approaches to planning policy that address these health challenges now and in the future.

Credits: 4

Questions of justice are as old as civilization and involve historically and culturally contingent processes. How do we understand justice in light of widening disparities between groups of people across contemporary societies? Students examine how definitions of justice are interpreted, mediated and put into practice, particularly as part of public policy and the social institutions that structure our lives.

Credits: 4

A survey of our most important ethical notions and of the philosophers who were most important in shaping them.

Credits: 4

Systematic analyses of ordinary arguments, followed by a study of formal languages that are used to represent arguments symbolically.

Credits: 4

What is gender? What is power? What tools do we have for understanding and addressing gender injustice? This course employs philosophical, feminist, and queer theory to address these and related questions.

Credits: 4

Is there such a thing as objectivity, journalistic or otherwise? How do accounts of reality in the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities differ, and is any account more objective than the others? How do narratives tell the truth, and how do they lie? What might people mean by the term “truth,” anyway? Course readings are interdisciplinary; the course style is philosophical.

Credits: 4

Examines philosophers’ efforts to rethink fundamental ethical, legal, and political issues in the wake of total war and totalitarian domination in Europe between 1914 and 1945. Focusing on Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, questions about resistance, complicity, guilt, and punishment become central. Additional texts are selected from Jaspers, Beauvoir, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, Levinas, Adorno, and Butler.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: PHI1515 Or PHI2110 Or PHI3212

The judicial process and the function of the courts in a modern democratic system. Using Supreme Court cases, documents, and readings from academic journals, the course examines how judges, lawyers, and litigants act and react to create both law and public policy.

Credits: 4

Introduces the historical and political debates that resulted in the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. Case law and collateral readings relevant to the construction of the U.S. constitutional government are used to explore theories of jurisprudence, structures of courts, aspects of litigation, the nature and scope of judicial review and constitutional adjudication, and the role of the judiciary in the maintenance of national power.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: POL1570 Or POL2360

The legal and political dimensions of race and sex discrimination are examined beginning with the 14th (1868) and 19th (1920) amendments to the US Constitution, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as well as landmark Supreme Court decisions such as Plessey v. Ferguson (1896), Brown v. the BOE (1954), Roe v. Wade (1973), and Rajender v. University of Minnesota (1982). The way law is shaped by the politics of race and gender is considered. Topics discussed include the intersection of white supremacy, misogyny, capitalism, and the law from perspectives offered by legal studies, critical race theory, and feminism.

Credits: 4

Examine the evolution of American immigration and the related policies that governed, shaped, and restricted immigrant flows, and immigrants’ interactions with key institutions of American life, e.g., labor, education, and politics, along with the impact for the United States. We will discuss the impact of immigration policies on the lives of immigrants and their children on American institutions, e.g., education, labor, social services, and nonprofits and will explore the multiple levels at which immigration and immigrant policies operate. To provide a foundation for the hands-on research project, the theoretical and empirical literatures on immigrant political incorporation broadly speaking, probing the experience of the myriad immigrant and native-born minority groups in New York, will be explored in-depth.

Credits: 4

An introduction to the constitutional doctrines of rights and liberties as they have been articulated through First Amendment decisions of the Supreme Court. Relevant political analyses of the impact of court decisions and federal legislation on individual rights are included.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: POL1570 Or POL3050 Or POL2360

Although human rights have become a significant theme in international relations, ethnic slaughter and political repression continue to afflict the world. This course examines relevant theoretical issues and practical problems, including: How are human rights viewed from different cultural, political, and religious perspectives? In a multicultural world, can common ground be found to address human rights? What is the relationship between sovereignty and the pursuit of human rights?

Credits: 4

An exploration of various perspectives on human rights. Students examine some modern nation states in relation to geographies of identity and human rights. Global literature is read in colonial and postcolonial contexts that describe state control through the infringement of citizenship and rights of speech, thus violating basic human rights.

Credits: 4