Undergraduate Minor in Legal Studies

How do lower-income people navigate and experience the civil and criminal legal systems? This course will consider what “access to justice” means and requires, both for the structure of our legal systems and at a practical level. Students will be introduced to a range of topics that may include the right to counsel, the role of non-lawyers, the use of technology, legal design, and legal literacy.

Artificial Intelligence and law are closely linked. For example, discussions abound in the legal profession about the extent to which AI will replace lawyers with respect to some of the work they do. But the relationship between AI and law is far more complicated. This course will discuss the diverse ways in which AI, law, and society influence one another, including questions of how law should regulate AI and which institutions should enforce any such regulation, as well as theoretical questions about personhood, agency, and autonomy. The course will explore these issues using the examples of military robots and self-driving cars.

Economic analysis of law has long influenced discussions of law, whether to explain how the law works or shape how it should work. Traditional principles of law and economics make certain assumptions about human behavior, positing that people function as rational actors in making decisions in the market. The role of law is to address the effects of such behavior on markets and participants. But human behavior is more complex, which has consequences for law. Behavioral law and economics concerns the psychological and cognitive biases that affect decision-making by consumers in markets as well as decision-making by lawyers, judges, and juries. This course will introduce traditional principles of law and economics to explore the importance of behavioral law and economics to law.

This course will offer an introduction to Constitutional Law. Students will study issues related to the structure of our federal government, including the powers of the 3 branches (Congress, the President, and the Courts) as well as the relationship among them and with the States. Students will also study the individual rights protected under the 14th Amendment, with a focus on equal protection of the law. [3]

A contract is an agreement between parties that creates a duty enforceable by law. Contract law, which consists of the legal principles that govern contracts, is among the most important to institutions and individuals alike. This course will cover various principles of Contract Law, including whether a contract exists, what makes it legally valid, how is it interpreted when questions arise, and what happens when a party breaks or “breaches” it?

This course will provide an introduction to Corporate Law. The course will focus on the core legal principles that govern the foundation of business entities. What is a “corporation”? What obligations or “fiduciary duties” do corporate directors and officers have to the corporation? What legal protections exist for shareholders of the corporation? In addition to covering the fundamental legal principles, this course will also consider theoretical issues such as whether corporations should prioritize maximizing economic value for shareholders over the interests of other stakeholders.

This course will consider the role of courts in our governmental system. Are they overstepping their boundaries when they take an active role in public policy formation and institutional management? Are they interfering with the proper functioning of other government institutions, such as Congress, the Presidency or state governments? Are they acting on the basis of law or merely expressing the political preferences of the judges? Are they upholding or violating the rule of law? Are they supporting or undermining democratic government? With the nation waiting in anticipation to see what the current Supreme Court will do, this is a crucial time for us, as a nation, to address these questions.

This course will acquaint students with the basic pillars of the criminal justice system: why we have criminal punishment, how we define crime, and the process we use to punish it. Criminal law subject matter will include the elements of crime, defenses (such as self-defense, the insanity defense, and defenses based on neuroscience), the death penalty and sentencing more generally, and whether we criminalize too much conduct. Criminal procedure subject matter will include an examination of police stop and frisk and surveillance practices, pretrial detention, how plea-bargaining works, and the operation of the jury. The course will also cover the system’s impact on people of color, the phenomenon known as mass incarceration, and the current movement to abolish aspects of the criminal legal system.

American schools have long been battlegrounds for the nation’s most highly charged political and cultural conflicts. New fights over student speech and the rights of transgender students have piled on top of continuing struggles over racial segregation, school prayer, special education, and educational finance. In this class, we will explore a range of legal and policy issues facing American public and private K-12 schools. More broadly, we will grapple with pressing questions about the relationship between schooling and the state in a pluralist democracy.

This course will address treaties, human rights, climate change, and trade from the perspective of domestic U.S. law and international law.

This course will study the rules, institutions, and legal theories that seek to protect basic liberties for all people in connection with the interrelated field of international humanitarian law. The course will emphasize (1) specific "hot button" subjects within human rights law (including the death penalty, hate speech, refugee rights, and gender rights); (2) judicial and legislative authorities that interpret and implement legal rules relating to these subjects; and (3) public and private actors who seek redress for those whose rights have been violated.

This course will introduce students to the study of American law. It is a required course designed to give students the knowledge and skills that will prepare them for the other courses that contribute to a Minor in Legal Studies, as well as applying to and succeeding in law school. What are the institutions (such as the legislature and the courts) and sources of law (such as statutes and judicial decisions) that comprise the American legal system? How do you read a judicial decision and understand how law develops over time? How do you “think like a lawyer”? This course may focus on a particular subject matter, such as administrative law or negotiations, to introduce the basic concepts.

Is the Constitution just? To what extent does the Constitution embody and protect justice to individuals and groups in our society? To answer these questions, this course examines the ways in which the Constitution advances and protects different aspects of justice, including procedural justice, retributive justice, distributive justice, libertarian justice, and racial and gender-based justice. The materials will include foundational philosophical work on these different aspects of justice and Supreme Court doctrines that bear on these issues. The overriding goal is to understand the Constitution’s account of justice.

This course will offer an introduction to “juvenile justice” systems in the United States. Juvenile justice refers to the legal mechanisms for responding to children who violate the criminal law—thefts, assaults, even homicides—or who break rules that apply only to children—such as running away, truancy, or possessing alcohol or firearms. Juvenile justice systems aspire to reflect the deep differences between children and adults, and to preserve children’s ability to grow into healthy, responsible adults. Those systems also frequently fall short, both reflecting and exacerbating racial disparities. Students will learn to understand and critique concepts such as the “school-to-prison pipeline,” as well as the societal choice to treat some children as legal adults subject to serious criminal sentences such as life without parole.

This course will invite student to explore the various ways in which law as a system reflects theories of human behavior, is driven by human behavior, and shapes human behavior. This underlying human element in how law is made, enforced, and experienced is often implicit, resting on folk theories that may be out of sync with the psychological sciences. Students will examine important concepts in criminal and civil law in light of scientific studies that bear on the behaviors at issue—such as what conditions actually cause a person to confess to a crime they didn’t commit. We will also explore the way that ordinary humans decide legal issues—for example, how judges’ emotions may affect their work. Students will gain valuable insight into law as a human enterprise.

This course will introduce students to the basics of legal research and writing. Students will learn how to find relevant caselaw and analyze legal issues. They will learn how to draft documents in diverse areas of the law and legal practice. Written assignments may include preparing a legal brief for a court, a memorandum to a senior law partner, a letter to a client, and a request from a public agency.

This course will provide a broad overview of U.S. patent law. The course will explore the structure and theory of the U.S. patent system, what types of inventions can be patented, the requirements for a valid patent, the patent application process, how to read a patent document, and the scope and enforcement of patent rights. Knowledge of patent law can be a tremendous advantage for scientists, engineers, doctors, entrepreneurs, and other professionals who regularly interact with technology and innovation.

Mass Incarceration is one of the most serious legal and social issues in the United States today. Our excessive rate of imprisonment, exacerbated by equivalently high rates of probation, makes us an extreme outlier among democratic nations. Mass incarceration affects nearly all groups in our society, but disproportionately impacts racial minorities, wreaking havoc on the lives of individuals, their families and their communities. This course is an inquiry into the causes and effects of this strange and destructive policy. It’s divided into six units. The first explores the idea of punishment and the use of incarceration as a mode of punishment, relying on a wide variety of sources that include philosophy, religion, history, sociology and literature, and delineating the basic types of arguments that these sources deploy. The second unit provides a description of the nature and effect of mass incarceration as it exists at present, based on observers’ accounts, first person narratives by prisoners, and documentary films. The third unit discusses the prisoners’ rights litigation of the 1960s through 80s, and its impact on prison conditions and prison populations. The fourth considers various explanations that have been advanced to explain mass incarceration in the U.S., including racism, classism, political manipulation, mass media and voter preferences. In the final unit, alternatives to imprisonment will be assessed, including electronic monitoring, restorative justice and prison abolition.

Political philosophers have long posited that the powers of the state should be divided into different institutions. The course begins by surveying foundational theories of division of state authority, culminating in theories that inspired the framers of the U.S. Constitution. It then considers the extent to which contemporary constitutional doctrines of separation of powers reflect these theories. Finally, the course engages contemporary work in political science which describes the dynamics among the branches of government in practice. The course aims to provide an understanding of the goals of separating governmental powers and an appreciation of the ways in which our current doctrines and institutions do and do not achieve those goals.