This course examines the question of law and the social, historical, and cultural contexts within which norms about legality and illegality are produced. Specifically, we focus on how ideas of what law is and how it works emerge not just from doctrines in courtrooms, but are embedded in everyday practice including those of populations considered to lie outside the law — from drug dealers on street corners to pirates on the high seas. This course is organized into three parts. In Part I, we focus on questions of definitions such as: - What is law? - Does every society have laws? - What is the function of law? Part II then turns to a set of thematic topics from courtrooms to human rights tribunals, from constitutions to contracts, from the rights of prisoners to the legal status of software and human organs in order to study the social, political, and economic context within which law functions. Part III emphasizes populations deemed to lie outside the rule of law. Focusing on prisoners, refugees, terrorists, hackers, and pirates we ask how these “others” to the law work to both create and critique ideas about law and legality.
Class Format:
As a DC (Distance due to COVID) course, all aspects of this course will be fully compatible with remote online learning. The weekly lectures for this course will be recorded and made available asynchronously. We will also have weekly discussion sessions that require synchronous participation.