Course Description
American legal thought, institutions, and education, focusing on the impact of social, political, and economic forces on the legal system. The English background, colonial period, legal foundations of the new nation, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students will write a research paper.
Athena Title
AMER LEGAL HISTORY
Semester Course Offered
Offered every odd-numbered year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
In this course we study the history of the law in America, from the Salem witchcraft trials to the Nazis marching in Skokie, Illinois, and affirmative action on trial. We’ll focus on a series of “landmark” cases, each of which gives us a chance to examine not only the law, but the people who made it and the people who were affected by it. Some of the cases are “public,” involving the government, others are “private,” and feature various groups and individuals attempting to use the law and the courts to further their aims or establish their rights. The landmark case approach allows us to see the legal system at its best and its worst, handling cases that tested the mettle of individuals and the values of entire communities. A principal objective of the course is to teach students to think critically for themselves about the relationships between the past and the present, to learn to ask questions of the past that enable them to understand the present and mold the future, and to become attuned to both the limitations and possibilities of change. The course seeks to acquaint students with the ways in which past societies and peoples have defined the relationships between community and individual needs and goals, and between ethical norms and decision-making. In general students will be expected to: 1. read a wide range of primary and secondary sources critically. 2. polish skills in critical thinking, including the ability to recognize the difference between opinion and evidence, and the ability to evaluate--and support or refute--arguments effectively. 3. write stylistically appropriate and mature papers and essays using processes that include discovering ideas and evidence, organizing that material, and revising, editing, and polishing the finished papers.
Topical Outline
What is law and what is legal history? The origins of American law; colonial law and courts Religion and courts What is your verdict? Finish Times and Trials Criminal law and deviance theory; law and community The revolution in the law; the revolution and the law Slavery and the Constitution; slavery in the states Slavery and the crisis of the Union the Fourteenth Amendment and substantive due process; labor vs. capital; economic theory and law The rise of the regulatory state; legislatures and courts Jim Crow and legal racism; the NAACP campaign against segregation. Begin Brown The meaning of integration; from massive resistance to busing The long road to freedom of speech Freedom of speech matures The origins of affirmative action; the Bakke case The fate of affirmative action
Syllabus