Jack Jin Gary Lee

Introduction to Legal Studies

LGLS 110

This course examines the law, legal profession and legal institutions from a variety of traditional social-science perspectives. The primary frame of reference will be sociological and social psychological. The objective of the course is to expose students to a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives on law and to encourage the examination of law-related phenomena through the literature of multiple disciplines. Topics to be covered include law as a social institution; law as a social-control mechanism; a history of law in the United States; the U.S. criminal justice system; philosophies of law; law and psychology; comparative legal cultures; and law and social change. This survey course is intended to encourage and facilitate a critical study of law in society and serve as a foundation from which to pursue the study of law and legal issues in other curricular offerings. This interdisciplinary course does not count toward the completion of any diversification requirement. This is required for the Law and Society Concentration. Prerequisite: sophomore standing. Offered every fall.

ST:FY Sem:Law, Culture&Meaning

LGLS 191

ST: FY Law, Culture, & Meaning

LGLS 191

Special Topic

LGLS 291

Exploring Law: Understanding Socio-legal Methods

LGLS 371

This course has been designed as a discussion course with a series of mini-research assignments. The course focuses on the role and contributions of sociology and the social sciences to the conceptualization of law and legal policymaking. Course materials will draw upon research performed primarily within the context of the American civil and criminal justice system. We also will examine some prevalent notions about what law is or should be, legal behavior and practices, and justifications for resorting to law to solve social problems. Through the use of mini-research assignments, students will gain an appreciation for the complexity and far-reaching impact that the social sciences have upon social policymaking and legal policymaking as well as the difficulty of determining or measuring law and its impact. This course is highly recommended for students participating in the John W. Adams Summer Scholars Program in Socio-legal Studies. This counts toward the methods requirement for the sociology major as equivalent to SOCY 271. This interdisciplinary course does not count toward the completion of any diversification requirement. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing. Offered every other year.

Senior Seminar Legal Studies

LGLS 410

This is an upper-level seminar that offers students in the concentration an opportunity to integrate the various topics and approaches to which they were exposed in the law-related courses they have taken. Each year, the senior seminar will be designed around a specific substantive theme or topic; the themes as well as the format and approach to the course will change from year to year, depending upon the faculty members teaching the course and their interests.This interdisciplinary course does not count toward the completion of any diversification requirement. Prerequisite: permission of instructor. Offered spring semester every year.

Individual Study

LGLS 493

The Law & Society Program's approach to the individual study course (IS) option is to emphasize flexibility while maintaining the academic integrity of the program's curriculum. The specific details of an IS course plan are to be negotiated between and among the students, faculty members and the program chair. IS courses may be offered within the Law & Society Program upon the request of a qualified student, depending primarily upon faculty interest and availability to supervise the student applying to take such a course. While we expect that a few highly motivated students will broach the possibility of doing individual study, faculty will bring to bear their concept of how any individual study course is to be conducted during the course of the semester. We view this as an exceptional opportunity that we provide our students and, as such, we emphasize that this option is never to be expected as an ordinary course of events. Because we believe that such courses are likely to and should require more than the customary amount of work, student time, initiative and commitment, students must think seriously about whether they have sufficient time within their schedules to pursue such a rigorous undertaking. Faculty considering supervising such a course should consider whether the student's prior academic performance and reasons for wanting to do an individual study suggest that the student is adequately prepared and motivated to succeed in its pursuit. Thus, IS course approval should be seen as the exception rather than the rule. While we do not wish to dampen the tenor of our students' enthusiasm to investigate novel approaches or subjects that are not ordinarily part of our curriculum in any given academic year, we do reserve the right to decline requests for individual study.\n\nIndividual study courses take one of a few forms in the Law & Society Program. For the majority of the program's faculty, an individual study is a chance for both faculty development and, in some cases, a test run of a course that may turn into a permanent curricular offering intended for a larger body of students. On other occasions, the IS course will explore a topic of interest to both the faculty member and the student(s). For these models of an IS course, the faculty member ideally knows something about the topic to be explored, but s/he need not be an expert on the topic. Thus, the individual study can become an opportunity for both the student(s) and the faculty member to become more familiar with the literature, prevailing theories, and methods on the topic at issue. The student will customarily submit discussion papers prior to each meeting with the faculty member guiding the individual course of study. In some cases, this may obviate the need for a final paper at the end of the semester.\n\nFor a few of us, the IS is a type of mini-honors course wherein the faculty guides one or two students through a focused and narrow subset of questions and issues on a given topic within that faculty member's teaching and/or research expertise. At the end of the semester, a substantial paper of 30-40 pages is to be submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the course.\n\nWhatever form the IS course is to take, individual study is to be based primarily upon the concept of independent work to be performed by the student. The IS is not meant to be a mini-tutorial wherein the faculty is expected to lecture each week on the topic at issue. Each meeting between the faculty member and the student(s) is to be a discussion based upon the material that has been assigned for the time period in question, whether the course meets weekly or bi-weekly during the course of a semester. In some cases, the students will be responsible for taking the preliminary steps toward determining the course of study for the semester because s/he will do the necessary research to determine

Sociology of Law

SOCY 226

This course examines the social conditions that give rise to law, how changing social conditions affect law and how law affects the society we live in. In the first few weeks, we focus on how classical social theorists, the so-called founders of sociology, viewed the law and its relationship to the rapid social change unfolding before their eyes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the following weeks, we explore how social actors such as the environmental, civil rights and free speech movements attempt to use the law, litigation and legal institutions as instruments of social change. Turning this question around, we then look at how legal processes, actors and institutions -- criminal trials, lawyers and the courts, to name a few -- interact with the media to shape public opinion, protest and collective action. We will explore the diverse ways individuals experience and interpret the law, and why this matters for understanding how law operates in the real world. In the final weeks of the semester, we probe how broader cultural shifts in American society are radically redefining the role and scope of our legal system. This counts toward the institutions and change requirement for the major. Prerequisite: 100-level sociology course. Offered every other year.

Special Topic

SOCY 291

This mid-level course will explore the methods that sociologists use to study popular culture and media products, and will examine the connections of popular culture and media to broader social patterns within American society. Course material will cover a range of subjects, including movies, television, the news, novels, and advertising. Students will become familiar with several approaches to the study of popular culture and mass media, and examine what these cultural products can reveal about social norms, trends, and relationships. In addition to empirical assessments of the content of cultural products, the course will examine the institutional structures that shape their production and distribution, as well as patterns of audience consumption and interpretation. This work will culminate with the opportunity to design a research project that uses sociological methods to critically interpret and analyze popular culture products. Prerequisite: foundation course in sociology or permission of instructor.