Introduction to U.S. and comparative legal institutions and practices. Examines diverse areas of law from torts to civil rights to international human rights. Why is America portrayed as having an activist legal culture; why is law used to decide so many questions from presidential elections to auto accidents; can law resolve disputes that, historically, have led to war and violence; is the legal system fair and/or effective, and, if so, for whom and under what conditions?
Instructor
Jacqueline Gehring
Quarter offered
Fall, Spring
Analysis of legal issues related to gender, sexuality, and sexual orientation. Introduction to the key areas of gender and sexuality regulated by law and critical analysis of how law and policy should and do treat these issues.
Offers systematic exploration of alternative conceptions of the nature of law, including positivism, natural law, formalism, realism, pragmatism, and theories of justice. Additional focus on the nature of law; relation of law and morality, rights and other legal concepts; and philosophical debates such as critical legal studies and critical race theory.
Explores the status of American civil liberties as provided by the Bill of Rights. Particular attention will be given to issues of concern relating to the aftermath of 9/11, including issues relating to detainees, freedom of information requests, wiretapping authority, watch lists, profiling, and creation of a domestic intelligence agency.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 111B
Instructor
Elizabeth Beaumont
Examines variety of topics in constitutional law that are not covered in LGST 111A and
LGST 111B. Focuses primarily on Supreme Court decisions and common-law debates.
Examines relevant court cases as well as local, state, and federal laws that define boundaries for legal recognition of sexual orientation and personal sexuality. Explores legal assumptions behind current and historical cases defining personal sexuality and sexual orientation and considers the social and political impetus in each era that drove the courts and legislatures to make such decisions.
Explores how Jews have influenced and been impacted by the American legal system. Students explore significant cases, debates, and trends in the law as it relates to Jewish identity, religious freedom, and conceptions of justice.
Examines the Nazi philosophy of law, and how it was used to pervert Germany's legal system in order to discriminate against, ostracize, dehumanize, and ultimately eliminate certain classes of human beings, and the role of international law in rectifying the damage. Enrollment restricted to legal studies majors during priority enrollment only.
Explores how countries organize their societies through legal rules. Particular attention is given to constitutional design, differences between common and civil law systems, changes brought about by the European Union, and the convergence of legal norms globally.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 116
Instructor
Jacqueline Gehring
General Education Code
CC
Quarter offered
Winter, Summer
Investigates the relationship between sports, law, and politics, focusing on racism, colonialism, post-colonialism, and globalization.
Instructor
Jacqueline Gehring
Explores variety of texts including novels, short stories, and essays as a source for reflection about the nature of law and legal practice. Readings include such writers as Herman Melville, Harper Lee, Richard Wright, Arthur Miller, Nadine Gordimer, and James Alan McPherson, among others.
Explores the history and theory of U.S. state punishment from its 17th-century beginnings to the present and notes evolving models of criminal deviance, focusing on how punishment systems legitimate particular models of criminal deviance, crime, and its correction.
Explores the complex relationship between race and the law in American society. Included subjects are critical race theory, civil rights and voting rights law, issues of the criminal justice system, intersections with issues of class and gender, and the social construction of race through law and legal decisions. (Formerly Race and the Law.)
Instructor
Elizabeth Beaumont
Introduction to wildlife, wilderness, and natural resources law, policy, and management. Examines rules governing resource allocation and use including discussion of fundamental legal concepts. Explores laws and management policies affecting wildlife and wilderness, including their origins and impacts. Examines how conflicts over natural resources are being negotiated today.
Instructor
Ruth Langridge
Explores the role of law in both enabling and constraining the actions of elected politicians in the U.S. Among issues examined are voting rights, redistricting, and campaign finance. Course asks how the law shapes and limits our ability to choose our elected leaders, and in turn, how the law is shaped by political forces.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 133
Explores the legal relationship between native peoples and the state. Examines the development of that relationship and several of the key legal issues currently confronting native peoples as they attempt to redress the injustices of the past.
Indian law refers to the body of law dealing with the status of Indian tribes, their inherent powers of self-government, their special relationship to the federal government, and the actual or potential conflicts of governmental power. Primary objective will be to address tribal reassertion of aboriginal sovereignty over culture and land in the context of increasing world recognition of indigenous rights.
International environmental law (IEL) endeavors to control pollution and depletion of natural resources within a framework of sustainable development and is formally a branch of public international law—a body of law created by nation states for nation states, to govern problems between nation states. Examines landmark developments of IEL since 1972 within a historical continuum to better understand their strengths and weaknesses.
Explores complex international human rights/humanitarian law issues surrounding genocide and other mass violence, beginning with the Nuremberg trials following World War II up to recent atrocities in Rwanda, Bosnia, and elsewhere. Covers basic legal framework of human rights law, examines specific situations on a case by case basis, and discusses what options the international community, the nations themselves, and individuals have in the wake of such catastrophes.
Introduction to topics in the philosophy of law. Begins by discussing some famously difficult legal cases. These motivate students to consider more generally how to theorize about law and legality. Course ends by examining a handful of modern legal issues from a philosophical perspective. Course asks students to formulate and defend their positions on classic and contemporary legal debates and provides them tools from moral and legal philosophy with which to work.
Instructor
Kyle Robertson
Explores how local land use and planning objectives are defined and determined by federal, state, and (most importantly) local law. Focuses on California, and on California municipal law issues. Housing, transportation, water supply, regional government, environmental protection, natural resource protection, urban sprawl, and growth management issues are addressed as students learn how federal, state, and local laws relate to city urban planning problems.
Cross Listed Courses
ENVS 148
Explores the legal rights of children. Topics may include juvenile justice, gang offenses, free speech and Internet censorship, religious rights, child custody and support, adoption, foster care, abuse and sexual harassment, special needs, public benefits, and medical care.
A study of the role of courts in society and the uses of litigation to address and deflect social problems. Focus is on recent developments in American litigation, but comparative materials may be considered.
Explores U.S. laws and policies regarding immigration and citizenship from historical and contemporary perspectives. Includes studying landmark court cases, key statues and regulations governing immigration and citizenship, and scholarly treatments in order to critically examine historical developments and contemporary debates.
Instructor
Heather Rogers
Lawyers stand between the legal system and those who are affected by it. Examines this relationship descriptively and normatively, and from the point of view of sociological theory. Concentrates on the U.S. profession, with some comparative material.
Explores some aspects of early American constitutional thought, particularly immediately preceding the American Revolution situating early colonial constitutional thought within some of the larger themes and controversies of the 17th-century English constitutionalism, then considering some aspects of American constitutional thought in the founding period against the background of the colonial experience. Prerequisite(s): permission of instructor: selection based on the ability to do very advanced work. Enrollment restricted to legal studies majors during first and second pass enrollment.
The rise of the regulatory state brings with it a host of questions regarding the exercise of state power and separation of powers. Takes up some of these questions; in particular, questions about administrative agencies and their relationship to the judiciary, the legislature and private individuals and groups. (Formerly Administrative Jurisprudence.)
Explores some themes in legal and political theory, especially on the relationship of theories of justice, law, and ethics.
Examines why we choose to memorialize some aspects of our history, but not others. What impact do those choices have on our contemporary politics and society? How may memorials help create a stronger democracy?
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 158
Instructor
Jacqueline Gehring
General Education Code
CC
Begins with an examination of the concept of property, then covers how different cultures characterize property and determine ownership and the laws and policies that define property in modern society. Topics include theories of property law, common property, property and natural resources, zoning, regulatory takings, and intellectual and cultural property
Advanced study of the concepts, practices, and history of intellectual property. Topically, it is a study of how, when, and why you can own something like an idea, a story, a mathematical algorithm, a business process, or an arrangement of cells. Course is organized around different kinds of things one might own: artistic creation and representation (copyright), scientific discovery and invention (patents), and business processes and secrets (trademark and trade secrets). Studies different intellectual property regimes and the philosophical and moral issues underlying claims to intellectual property.
Instructor
Kyle Robertson
Introduction to how individuals, societies, and states answer fundamental questions about disability, including what is or is not a disability, what causes disability, and what the proper responses to the existence of disabilities are.
Cross Listed Courses
POLI 173
Instructor
Jacqueline Gehring
General Education Code
PE-H
A practicum seminar for students seeking field experience in law- and policy-making settings. Designed to be combined with an internship; provides structured class meetings and work, including weekly field notes and a final paper.
General Education Code
PR-S
Offers a basic introduction to key aspects of the Legal Profession, generally, as well as an introduction to the specific area of the profession known as Legal Aid -- the system and services through which under-served communities gain access to legal services. Course covers key elements of the legal profession and legal aid work, offering practical information and training on topics such as professional responsibility, ethics, confidentiality, interviewing skills, record keeping, communication, and working with diverse clients. It is particularly designed as a preparation or companion course for law-related internships and field student through courses such as
OAKS 188B / LGST 188B (3 credits),
OAKS 199, or
LGST 185 Internship (5 credits). Enrollment by permission of the instructor.
Cross Listed Courses
OAKS 188A
Field research performed off-campus, under the supervision of a member of the legal studies faculty.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Provides a means for a small group of students to study a particular topic in consultation with a faculty sponsor. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Preparation of a senior thesis over one, two, or three quarters, beginning in any quarter. When taken as a multiple-term course extending over two or three quarters, the grade and evaluation submitted for the final quarter apply to each of the previous quarters. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Preparation of a senior thesis over one, two, or three quarters, beginning in any quarter. When taken as a multiple-term course extending over two or three quarters, the grade and evaluation submitted for the final quarter apply to each of the previous quarters. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Preparation of a senior thesis over one, two, or three quarters, beginning in any quarter. When taken as a multiple-term course extending over two or three quarters, the grade and evaluation submitted for the final quarter apply to each of the previous quarters. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Examines related legal topics from an interdisciplinary perspective. Each focuses broadly on the relationship between law as a distinct system and law as an attempt to achieve justice, which requires that law remain open to claims of political morality generally. To what extent are legal norms internal to a separate system called law and to what extent are claims of political right in general relevant to question of what law is?
Instructor
Jacqueline Gehring, Elizabeth Beaumont, Gary Patton, Jaimie Morse
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Individual studies undertaken off-campus for which faculty supervision is not in person, but by correspondence. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Individual studies undertaken off-campus for which faculty supervision is not in person, but by correspondence. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
A student normally approaches a faculty member and proposes a
LGST 199 course on a subject he or she has chosen. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
A student normally approaches a faculty member and proposes a
LGST 199 course on a subject he or she has chosen. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Cross-listed Courses
This course is structured around four critical moments--missionization, Rancho-Era, Gold Rush, and World War II--through the eyes of the ethnic and racial minorities who experienced them. Special attention is given to oral, archival, and archaeological sources which reveal California's multiethnic pasts.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 112
Instructor
Tsim Schneider
General Education Code
ER
Course takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying contraband and smuggling. Focusing on concepts used to describe illegality we examine how "shadow economies" are central to the making of states and sovereignty, the legal and illegal being blurred.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 126C
General Education Code
CC
The ideas, in selected non-Western societies, about the nature of power, order, social cohesion, and the political organization of these societies.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 138
An ethnographically informed consideration of law, dispute management, and social control in a range of societies including the contemporary U.S. Topics include conflict management processes, theories of justice, legal discourse, and relations among local, national, and transnational legal systems.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 142
Studies the causes, consequences, and governmental response to urban poverty in the U.S. Topics include how public policy, the macroeconomy, race, gender, discrimination, marriage, fertility, child support, and crime affect and are affected by urban poverty. Emphasizes class discussion and research.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 128
The structure and conduct of American industry with strong emphasis on the role of government, regulation, anti-trust, etc. The evolution of present-day industrial structure. The problems of overall concentration of industry and of monopoly power of firms. Pricing, output decisions, profits, and waste. Approaches include case study, theory, and statistics.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 160A
A study of law and the legal process, emphasizing the nature and function of law within the U.S. federal system. Attention is given to the legal problems pertaining to contracts and related topics, business association, and the impact of law on business enterprise.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 162
The application of the theories and methods of neoclassical economics to the central institutions of the legal system, including the common law doctrines of negligence, contract, and property; bankruptcy and corporate law; and civil, criminal, and administrative procedure.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 169
Study of gender roles in economic life, past and present. Topics include occupational structure, human capital acquisition, income distribution, poverty, and wage differentials. The role of government in addressing economic gender differentials is examined.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 183
Surveys a wide range of topics in environmental law, including state and federal jurisdiction, administrative law, separation of powers, state and local land use regulation, public land and resource management, pollution control, and private rights and remedies. Students read a large number of judicial cases and other legal documents.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 149
Instructor
Douglas Bushey
Offers placement, standards, and support during on-site experiential training in professional skills and ethics for students working in the legal field or with legal information to empower under-served communities. Previous or concurrent enrollment in LGST 188A or OAKS 188A and by permission of instructor.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 188B
General Education Code
PR-S
A study of selected classical and contemporary writings dealing with topics such as the nature and legitimacy of the liberal state, the limits of political obligation, and theories of distributive justice and rights. (Formerly Social and Political Philosophy.)
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 144
Explores tensions between reason and revelation, justice and democracy, and freedom and empire through close readings of ancient texts. Emphasis on Athens, with Hebrew, Roman, and Christian departures and interventions. Includes Sophocles, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, the Bible, and Augustine.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 105A
Instructor
Dean Mathiowetz
Studies republican and liberal traditions of political thought and politics. Authors studied include Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Examination of issues such as authorship, individuality, gender, state, and cultural difference.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 105B
Studies in 19th- and early 20th-century theory, centering on the themes of capitalism, labor, alienation, culture, freedom, and morality. Authors studied include J. S. Mill, Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, Hegel, Fanon, and Weber.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 105C
Examines the condition of modernity as it is understood, dwelled upon, and critiqued by political theorists since the second half of the 20th century. Explores how the modern condition was viewed by Euro-American thinkers, who saw themselves as its originators and heirs, as well as Chinese, Indian, Arab, and African thinkers for whom European modernity was an inescapable, if not an insurmountable, imposition to be engaged, transformed, and critiqued. (Formerly Late-20th Century Political Thought.)
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 105D
Instructor
Yasmeen Daifallah
Examines current problems in law as it intersects with politics and society. Readings are drawn from legal and political philosophy, social science, and judicial opinions.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 110
An introduction to constitutional law, emphasizing equal protection and fundamental rights as defined by common law decisions interpreting the 14th Amendment, and also exploring issues of federalism and separation of powers. Readings are primarily court decisions; special attention given to teaching how to interpret, understand, and write about common law.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 111A
Study of political development, behavior, performance, and significance of central governmental institutions of the U.S. Emphasizes the historical development of each branch and their relationship to each other, including changes in relative power and constitutional responsibilities.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 120A
Examines the role of social forces in the development of the American democratic processes and in the changing relationship between citizen and state. Course materials address the ideas, the social tensions, and the economic pressures bearing on social movements, interest groups, and political parties.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 120B
Instructor
Melanie Springer
Examines the relationship between state and economy in the U.S. from the 1880s to the present, and provides a theoretical and historical introduction to the study of politics and markets. Focus is on moments of crisis and choice in U.S. political economy, with an emphasis on the rise of regulation, the development of the welfare state, and changes in employment policies.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 120C
Examines racism as a logic of governance in American politics and traces racial reasoning in transcendent notions of "justice" in the U.S. from the nation's founding into the 21st century. (Formerly offered as Race & Justice in America.)
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 121
General Education Code
ER
Explores the rich history and fundamental legal concepts surrounding water in California. Students identify, evaluate, and debate some critical water policy questions faced by Californians today and in the future.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 132
Instructor
Ruth Langridge
Examines the United States Congress and the nature of the representative and legislative processes. Topics include: districting and elections; bicameralism; party organization; institutional and behavioral influences on legislative action; and the efficacy of Congress as a legislative body. Focuses on the contemporary Congress with comparisons to other legislative and representative institutions.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 134
Uncovers the important debates in politics and law around the functions of courts, litigation, and rights--and the political nature of law itself. Course is interdisciplinary, and draws from literature in political science, law, and sociology.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 151
Origins and development of international law: international law is examined both as a reflection of the present world order and as a basis for transformation. Topics include state and non-state actors and sovereignty, treaties, the use of force, and human rights.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 160B
Examines key issues in international trade, including the distribution of gains, fair trading practices, and preferential trade agreements. Focuses on the political dimensions of trade, the rules of the international trade system, and conflicts within countries that international trade generates.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 167
Embraces an interdisciplinary approach to the study of human rights. Captures the malleable nature of human rights and the contours of its dual role as both law and discourse.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 175
Interrogates the presuppositions of punishment as legitimate state power. Decentering crime as punishment's conceptual predicate, wider analysis of the penal state's social-scientific, jurisprudential, and philosophical foundations force us to ask: What is punishment? Why punish? How, and whom, to punish?
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 182
General Education Code
PE-H
What defines just political rule in Islam? How do modern Muslim thinkers conceive the role of Islamic normative guidelines (Shariah) in the context of secular modern nation-states? Course surveys how major trends in modern Islamic thought try to answer this question.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 184
Instructor
Yasmeen Daifallah
Examines the politics surrounding both global health problems and policy responses.Traces the evolving interrelationships between these problems and policies from colonial health to the impacts of austerity on postcolonial health systems to today's globally targeted responses.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 186
Interdisciplinary investigation into functions of law across political, historical, and cultural contexts. Examines the international and comparative turn in public law scholarship and the role of law-based strategies in state building. Reviews literature in law, political science and legal anthropology.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 190R
Current and future relationships between law and psychology, paying special attention to gaps between legal fictions and psychological realities in the legal system. Topics include an introduction to social science and law, the nature of legal and criminal responsibility, the relationship between the social and legal concepts of discrimination, and the nature of legal punishment.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 147A
Continuing discussion of current and future relationships between law and psychology and to contrasting psychological realities with legal fictions. Special attention is given to the criminal justice system including crime causation, the psychology of policing and interrogation, plea bargaining, jury selection and decision making, eyewitness identification, and the psychology of imprisonment.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 147B
Explores the social forces that shape legal outcomes and the ways law, in turn, influences social life. Traces the history and political economy of American law; the relation between law and social change; how this relation is shaped by capitalism and democracy; and how class, race, and gender are expressed in welfare and regulatory law.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 122
Explores the history of the use and abuse of consciousness-altering substances like alcohol and other drugs. Social-psychological theories of addiction are reviewed in tandem with political-economic analyses to identify the social conditions under which the cultural practices involved in drug use come to be defined as public problems. An introductory sociology course is recommended prior to taking this course.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 127
Introduction to contemporary analysis of Japan's race relations, ethnic conflicts, and a government's failure to restore remedial justice for war victims in Japan, Asia, and the U.S. Specific issues include comfort women, national or state narratives on Hiroshima, forced labor during World War II, and Haydon legislation that allows war victims to sue the Japanese government and corporations in California.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 126
Introduces survey research methods including problem formulation, research design, instrument construction, data collection, codification, data processing, computer analyses, and report writing. The greater emphasis is placed on statistical analyses and questionnaire constructions.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 128A
General Education Code
SR
Provided an overview of socio-political theories and thoughts from Athenian Direct Democracy in 500 BC, to Classical Liberalism, Social Contract, Libertarian Socialism, Anarcho-Syndicalism, Neo-Liberalism, Anarcho-Primitism, and lastly Indigenism in relation to the revival of indigenous knowledge, theMother Earth law, and the restoration of the nature's rights as espoused by many governments in the Third World today.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 128C
General Education Code
CC
An introduction to comparative and historical analyses of the relation between race and law in the U.S. Emphasis on examinations of continuous colonial policies and structural mechanisms that help maintain and perpetuate racial inequality in law, criminal justice, and jury trials. (Formerly Race and Justice)
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 128I
Instructor
Hiroshi Fukurai
General Education Code
ER
Adoption of the jury and its varied forms in different nations provides ideal opportunities to examine differences between systems of popular legal participation. Course considers reasons why the right to jury trial is currently established in Japan or Asian societies, but abandoned or severely curtailed in others. American jury contrasted with other forms of lay participation in the legal process.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 128J
Examines war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the evolution and role of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Examines the evolution of the concept of international law, the rationale for its birth and existence, roots of international conflicts and genocides, possible remedies available to victims, mechanisms for the creation and enforcement of international legal order, as well as the role of colonialism, migration, poverty, race/ethnic conflicts, gender, and international corporations in creating and maintaining conflicts and wars.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 128M
Instructor
Hiroshi Fukurai