LS 101
St Jerome’s University at the University of Waterloo
Legal Studies 101: An Introduction. Now taught at University of Waterloo, St Jerome’s as CEL online course (2022-2027).
What is legal studies? What is law? There are no easy answers. This course breaks down these questions by tackling the Who? What? When? Where? How? Why? of law.
Students are challenged to engage with weekly lectures, readings and discussions through learning academic research and writing skills as well as by keeping a Reflective Journal. This reflective journal serves as a personal check-in through which students are invited to consider how their thinking/critical thinking skills are being sharpened and honed throughout this course — as theories, approaches, methodologies and debates on law, and the study of law, are introduced and explored.
All Rights Reserved. A. Tataryn 2020.
“I have learned so much throughout the duration of this course, not just about the law, but also about various relevant and pressing issues that are arising in the world, which have synonymously made me more critical and aware of the spaces around me.”
— final year student, taking LS 101 at the University of Waterloo. April 2020.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
Upon completion of the course, students will be able to:
· Demonstrate familiarity with key terms, debates, and theoretical approaches in the field of legal studies.
· Identify and analyse popular and scholarly conceptions of law, and the roles law plays in society.
· Discuss ways in which law both shapes society and is shaped by society.
· Identify the different forms law takes in daily life and the ways different people experience the law.
· Critically discuss major themes and debates in legal studies. This may include the relationship between law and justice, law and economics, law and literature; law and environment; how law is used as a tool of the powerful and by those that are marginalized; the difference between formal and substantive equality in law; and the way the study and analysis of law has evolved alongside social, cultural, political and economic change.
REQUIRED TEXTS
Textbook: Pavlich, George. 2011. Law & Society Redefined. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.
COURSE SCHEDULE
Lecture
WEEK 1: Introduction to Legal Studies
The What? Why? Who? How? Where? When? Of Law
No readings.
WEEK 2: What is Law?
Natural law, divine law and the idea of justice
Pavlich, George. 2011, Law & Society Redefined. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.
· Chapter 1: Classic Natural Law
· Chapter 2: Natural Law Theory
WEEK 3: What is Modern Law?
Positivism, realism and normative order
Pavlich, George. 2011, Law & Society Redefined. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.
· Chapter 3: Positing Law
· Chapter 4: Realizing Sociological Jurisprudence
WEEK 4: Why Law?
Justice, ethics, morality (Or, why should we care about other people, in other places?)
Nielsen, L. B., Patel, N. A., & Rosner, J. 2017, “Ahead of the Lawmen”: Law and Morality in Disney Animated Films 1960–1998. Law, Culture and the Humanities, 13(1): 104–122.
Wenar, Leif, 2017, ‘John Rawls’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/rawls/
Supplementary
Nussbaum, Martha. 2002, ‘Capabilities and Social Justice’ International Studies Review 4: 2, 123-135.
WEEK 5: Whose Law?
Power, capital, colonialism and patriarchy
Pavlich, 2011.
· Chapter 6: Law, Ideology and Revolutionary Social Change
· Chapter 8: Critical Confrontations: Law, Race, Gender and Class
Bennett, J and Chambers, V. 2020, ‘In Her Own Words: Left Out. ‘This is Not Some History of Nagging Spinsters; it’s a badass history of revolution staged by political geniuses’’ The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/us/women-voting-rights-suffrage-centennial.html
Supplementary: Rose, Jacqueline. 2018, ‘I am Knife’ London Review of Books. 40:4. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n04/jacqueline-rose/i-am-a-knife
Pavlich, George. 2011. Law & Society Redefined. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.
· Chapter 7
WEEK 6: Whose Law, Part 2
MacKinnon, Catherine A. 1983, ‘Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State’ Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 7(3): 515-544.
Harris, Angela, 1990, ‘Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory’. Stanford Law Review, 42:3, 581-616. doi:10.2307/1228886
Supplementary: Drabinski, John. 2019, ‘Frantz Fanon’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/frantz-fanon/
Harris, Angela. 1999, “Women of Color and the Law,” in Feminist Jurisprudence, Women, and the Law: Critical Essays, Research Agenda, and Bibliography Betty Taylor, Sharon Rush, and Robert J. Munro, (eds.) Fred B. Rothman & Co.
WEEK 7: Where Law? Environment, cities and spaces
Brown, N., Griffiths, R., Hamilton, K., Irish, S., & Kanouse, S. 2007, ‘What makes justice spatial? What makes spaces just? Three interviews on the concept of spatial justice.’ Critical planning, 14(6).
Wacquant, Loïq. 2001, “Deadly symbiosis: When ghetto and prison meet and mesh.” Punishment and Society 3(1): 95-134.
Supplementary: Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Andreas. 2015, Spatial Justice: Body, Lawscape, Atmosphere Walking the Lawscape. Oxon: Routledge.
Kern, Leslie. 2020, ‘Upward Thrusting Buildings Ejaculating into the sky: Do cities have to be so sexist?’ The Guardian July 6, 2020 https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/jul/06/upward-thrusting-buildings-ejaculating-cities-sexist-leslie-kern-phallic-feminist-city-toxic-masculinity
Davies, Margaret. 2015, ‘The Consciousness of Trees’ Law & Literature, 27(2): 217-235.
WEEK 8: How Law, Part I. Social inequality, oppression and silenced voices
Bhandar, Brenna. 2016, 'Status as Property: Identity, Land and the Dispossession of First Nations Women in Canada.' darkmatter Journal, 14.
Hanson, Erin. 2009, ‘The Indian Act’ Indigenous Foundations: UBC https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_indian_act/
Supplementary: Drabinski, John. 2019, "Frantz Fanon", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/frantz-fanon/
Burrows, John. 2013, ‘Aboriginal and Treaty Rights and Violence Against Women’ Osgoode Hall Law Journal 50: 699.
WEEK 9: When Law? The Space and Time of Law
Pavlich, George. 2011. Law & Society Redefined. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.
· Chapter 10: Contested Sovereignties, Violence and the Law
Borrows, John. 1999, ‘Sovereignty's Alchemy: An Analysis of Delgamuukw v. British Columbia’ Osgoode Hall Law Journal 37:3, 537-596.
https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol37/iss3/3
Supplementary: Simpson, Audra. 2016, ‘The State is a Man: Theresa Spence, Loretta Saunders and the Gender of Settler Sovereignty’ Theory and Event 19: 4.
WEEK 10: How Law, Part II Where? How? When Law?
NFB film screening: Two Worlds Colliding, directed by Tasha Hubbard
WEEK 11: Law is Everywhere
Pavlich, George. 2011. Law & Society Redefined. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.
· Chapter 9: Michel Foucault: The Power of Law and Society
Rose, Nikolas and Mariana Valverde. 1998, “Governed by Law?” Social and Legal Studies 7(4): 541-551.
Supplementary: Peck, Jamie and Nik Theodore. 2019, ‘Still Neoliberalism?’ South Atlantic Quarterly 118 (2): 245–265.
WEEK 12: Who/What/When/Where/How/WhyLaw
Pavlich, George. 2011. Law & Society Redefined. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.
· Chapter 11: Just Events: Law and Society
Gudynas, E. 2011, ‘Buen Vivir: Today’s Tomorrow’ Development 54: 441.
WEEK 13:
Final Take-Home Exam
Reflective Journal Due – highlight three (3) key entries
“Your class ignited a passion and fascination regarding law (and how it can be used as an oppressive tool) in me that I did not know I would find in an introductory course. So, thank you! Thank you for everything you taught me and showed me! Thank you for an amazing class I will never forget and a great term!”
Undergraduate student in LS 101, University of Waterloo Canada (April 2020)