| LAWP 222-01 |
Constitutional Law
Instructor: Stephanie Saxton
Course Description:
Cross-listed with POSC 220-01. This course provides an overview of Constitutional Law. We will first examine the roots of the American Constitution in English common law and existing political arrangements. We will cover the different ways scholars interpret and read the Constitution, and how social movements use the Constitution. The Constitution has been interpreted to the ends of inclusion or exclusion over time, and we will be guided by questions such as the legal scholar, Dahl, asked: "How democratic is the American Constitution?" This course provides an overview of Constitutional Law. We will first examine the roots of the American Constitution in English common law and existing political arrangements. We will cover the different ways scholars interpret and read the Constitution, and how social movements use the Constitution. The Constitution has been interpreted to the ends of inclusion or exclusion over time, and we will be guided by questions such as the legal scholar, Dahl, asked: "How democratic is the American Constitution?"
Prerequisite: 120, or permission of the instructor. This course is cross-listed as POSC 220.
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10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 104 |
| LAWP 248-01 |
The Judiciary
Instructor: Jonathan Baughman
Course Description:
Cross-listed with POSC 248-01. This course explores the laws interpretation in and influence on contemporary American society. It considers the nature of the law, the structure of courts, legal terminology, sources of law, and approaches to legal reasoning through an engagement with both watershed cases and contemporary issues in civil and criminal law. Some of the questions we will address include: how do everyday individuals interact with the law? What is the relationship between judicial process that is, the engagement with and navigation of the legal system and justice? How do we understand the redress of harms or the application of punishment as part of the achievement of justice and fairness? What political, legal, social, or rhetorical barriers exist to full inclusion of individuals within the processes of law, and is full inclusion even desirable?Prerequisites: POSC 120 or permission of the instructor. This course is cross-listed as POSC 248.
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12:30 PM-01:20 PM, MWF
DENNY 313 |
| LAWP 258-01 |
Rise and Fall: Political History in the Ancient Mediterranean
Instructor: Scott Farrington
Course Description:
Cross-listed with CLST 213-01 and HIST 224-01. Part of the Sicily Mosaic. A study in the political history of the societies of the ancient Mediterranean world. We focus on the episodes of constitutional creation and change, the intersection of politics and the judiciary, concepts of citizenship and enfranchisement, and the legalities of war from declaration to cessation. Regular topics will include the Achaemenid Empire, Carthage, Athens after Salamis, and the Women of the Republic and Principate. Readings will be chosen primarily from the ancient biographers, ancient constitutions, the epistolary tradition, and modern scholarship. We will also frequently consider evidence from the material record. This course is cross-listed as CLST 213 and HIST 224.
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03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
ALTHSE 204 |
| LAWP 290-02 |
Public Policy and Policymaking
Instructor: Diego Vega
Course Description:
Cross-listed with POSC 265-01. This course examines the politics around public policies and policymaking in the United States and abroad. The semester starts by exploring how political forces and ideas operate in the creation of new policies, using political science theories as tools to understand policymaking processes. After that, the course explores multiple issue areas (e.g., educational policy, social policy, economic policy, environmental policy, etc.), analyzing policies implemented in countries like Bangladesh, Brazil, South Africa, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This comparative perspective will be central to evaluating policy designs and outcomes, with a focus on the differences between the Global North and Global South.
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03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
DENNY 110 |
| LAWP 290-03 |
Health & The Criminal Legal System
Instructor: Chloe Craig
Course Description:
Cross-listed with HEST 250-01 and SOCI 230-02. In this class, students will learn how the criminal legal system impacts health. We will first unpack distal and proximate determinants of health and Fundamental Causes theory. We will then analyze health outcomes as they relate to three parts of the criminal legal system: neighborhood surveillance and policing, incarceration, and reentry. We will read works on intersectionality and talk about differences in health outcomes by race, class, and gender. We will spend several weeks on reproductive health and incarceration. Students will be required to engage in weekly discussions based on readings and produce a final research paper on health and the criminal legal system on a topic that interests them. By the end of the class, students should have a deep understanding of how institutions can influence health at the individual level and should be able to demonstrate the relationship between health and the criminal legal system.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 104 |
| LAWP 290-04 |
Dickinson and the Law
Instructor: Stephanie Saxton
Course Description:
This class will use the people of Dickinson and its location in Pennsylvania as a lens through which to learn about law and justice. While Dickinson is a narrow sliver of the United States, its founders, alumni, faculty, and neighbors not only provide a view into the rich study of law, but they have shaped American law. Through these actors' writings, and field trips within and around the college, we will cover a variety of concepts in judicial politics, constitutional law, and the criminal justice system.
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01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
DENNY 204 |
| LAWP 290-05 |
Introduction to Public Law
Instructor: Stephanie Saxton
Course Description:
Cross-listed with POSC 290-03. This class will analyze the intersection of people and law by asking, "who is the public in public law", and "how do people make sense of American law"? Students will learn the court system, historic struggles for rights, and trace the ways in which the American people use legal language and institutions. Several of the Friday seminars will be devoted to visits from legal practitioners-from pro bono lawyers to public defenders to non-profit leaders- to get a better sense of how people are presently reading and using law in the realms of housing, the environment, and civil rights.
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11:30 AM-12:20 PM, MWF
DENNY 104 |
| LAWP 290-06 |
Comparative Law
Instructor: Natalie Chwalisz
Course Description:
Cross-listed with POSC 290-04. This course introduces the field of comparative law by examining major Western legal traditions. First, we consider civil and common law. Thereafter, we will critically analyze the interaction of colonial and indigenous legal systems and explore legal pluralism. The final part of the course considers how legal institutions in democratic nations address challenges related to social polarization and democratic backsliding, analyzing differences in their legal institutions and practices (such as approaches to free speech). The course aims to provide a broad understanding of global legal systems and traditions (both Western and non-Western) and equip students with comparative analysis skills.
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09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
DENNY 311 |
| LAWP 290-07 |
Politics of Migration
Instructor: Natalie Chwalisz
Course Description:
Cross-listed with POSC 290-01. Currently, both forced and voluntary migration is at historic highs. Simultaneously, immigration control is becoming a global phenomenon. The rise of border control contrasts with the vulnerability of many migrants today. This course will give an overview of migration and forced migration and then look at issues and rationales in migration control from a comparative perspective. The questions we will ask are: What drives migration? What are the historical roots of migration? What is the purpose of immigration control? What are the politics of migration control in comparative perspective? This course incorporates various levels of analysis (international, national, subnational, transnational) and draws on interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks. Students will gain an understanding of migration and the legal frameworks governing the process. Students will then explore how migration relates to state sovereignty, human rights, and international law. Students will also interrogate the process of creating immigration policies, and the actors and stakeholders driving this process.
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10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 304 |
| LAWP 290-08 |
Law and Justice in East Asian Cinema
Instructor: Neil Diamant
Course Description:
Cross-listed with EASN 206-01. Focusing on films in China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, this course looks at how a wide variety of films in several genres (gangster movies, police procedurals, documentaries, social commentaries, dramas, LGBTQ-themed) have addressed the relationship between justice and law. We will examine the extent to which courts and lawyers are as prominent in securing justice in East Asian films as they are in American cinema, whether ordinary people feel that governments are a solution or a cause of their problems, and whether interpersonal and community-based justice, such as getting revenge or demanding an apology, is seen as a legitimate substitute to seeking redress through the legal system. Befitting the expertise of the instructor, this course stresses the political, legal, and economic contexts of the films, not the elements of cinematic form.
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10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
STERN 103 |
| LAWP 400-01 |
War and Justice
Instructor: Toby Reiner
Course Description:
Cross-listed with POSC 390-02. "All's fair in love and war," goes the common saying, suggesting that standards of justice or morality are inapplicable to military conflict, which is a realm of survival in which anything goes. Others hold that no war can possibly be just, at least in the contemporary era in which weapons of mass destruction mean that wars wreak a human and environmental impact that cannot possibly be sustainable or legitimate. In this class, we consider both these approaches - realism and pacifism, respectively - and juxtapose them to the just-war tradition, which holds that defensive and limited wars may be justified so long as they follow certain moral guidelines such as proportionality and non-combatant immunity. We will consider when it might be just to go to war, how just wars must be waged, and what, if anything, justice after war consists in. We will approach these questions using both the laws of war and philosophical works about war. We will consider military conflicts from across the globe, including the World Wars, Vietnam, Rwanda, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, and more, and from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages to the present day. We will consider topics such as humanitarian intervention and the protection of human rights during war, the moral status and responsibility of ordinary combatants, war crimes tribunals, genocide and ethnic cleansing, civil war, emerging technologies of war, and the possibility of moving towards a world in which war is no longer necessary.
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01:30 PM-04:30 PM, T
DENNY 204 |
| LAWP 400-02 |
War and Justice
Instructor: Toby Reiner
Course Description:
Cross-listed with POSC 390-03. "All's fair in love and war," goes the common saying, suggesting that standards of justice or morality are inapplicable to military conflict, which is a realm of survival in which anything goes. Others hold that no war can possibly be just, at least in the contemporary era in which weapons of mass destruction mean that wars wreak a human and environmental impact that cannot possibly be sustainable or legitimate. In this class, we consider both these approaches - realism and pacifism, respectively - and juxtapose them to the just-war tradition, which holds that defensive and limited wars may be justified so long as they follow certain moral guidelines such as proportionality and non-combatant immunity. We will consider when it might be just to go to war, how just wars must be waged, and what, if anything, justice after war consists in. We will approach these questions using both the laws of war and philosophical works about war. We will consider military conflicts from across the globe, including the World Wars, Vietnam, Rwanda, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, and more, and from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages to the present day. We will consider topics such as humanitarian intervention and the protection of human rights during war, the moral status and responsibility of ordinary combatants, war crimes tribunals, genocide and ethnic cleansing, civil war, emerging technologies of war, and the possibility of moving towards a world in which war is no longer necessary.
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01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
DENNY 212 |