Law and Legal History

<p>Course cancelled. Online Course. This course will introduce students to how to use and make sense of legal sources: statutes, judicial opinions, legislative actions, legal studies, administrative rulings, and legal history, among others. This course is intended for undergraduates who are interested in incorporating law and legal research into their scholarship, from final papers to senior theses. The course will be divided into two “units,” the first of which will absorb the first third of the course, and second of which will absorb the final two-thirds of the semester. The first unit will work with statutory and common law, and will instruct students on how to think with and interpret these sources, especially as legal thought has distinct and often very rigid approaches to statutory and judicial sources. The second unit will explore legal history— both the origins of U.S. American legal thought and structures— but we will also delve into legal history itself, focusing on three case studies: the laws and court structures that codified slavery; the laws and legal structures that enacted and justified settler colonialism, settler land claims, the development of the federal administrative structure that controls Native lands, and tribal courts; and the laws and delegation of powers that structure (and continue to structure) immigration. These case studies are in no way meant to offer a comprehensive account of U.S. American legal history, or to offer a totalizing or full account of slavery, immigration, or settler colonialism. Rather, they are an opportunity for students to get direct experience with reading and interpreting the law; with legal research and the distinct architecture of sources for performing that research (HeinOnline); and with scholarship in legal history and legal studies. Throughout the course, we will also reflect more broadly on what legal sources and legal history is good for, and what it might simultaneously occlude. Finally, we will also explore the form and function of the law itself: what it does, what it cannot do, and how those who sought or seek to change it have strategically approached the promises and disappointments of legal reform and intervention.&#160;1 Credit. Session B: July 1 – August 2. Tuition: $5070. Technology Fee: $85.</p>