Spring 2004

Sociolegal Studies I:

The Sociolegal Seminar

G62.1001/ L06.3570/G53.2358

Furman Hall, 324

 

Professor Paul Chevigny                                                        Professor Christine B. Harrington

Vanderbilt Hall, 419                                                                Vanderbilt Hall, 422A

212-998-6249                                                                         212-998-6698

Paul.Chevigny@nyu.edu            Christine.Harrington@nyu.edu

Office Hours: Thurs. 4:00-5:00                                              Office Hours: Wed. 3:00-5:00

 

Description

The central intellectual goals of the seminar are to: 1) survey theoretical approaches to understanding social and legal relations; and 2) study sociolegal methodologies. The readings examine the extent to which social science and law have common theoretical and methodological foundations. They also focus on analytical, doctrinal, institutional, and philosophical perspectives of the Law and Society field. The interface between legal and economic, political, cultural, psychological and social phenomena is studied through critical debates, empirical research and from historical and comparative perspectives.

 

Students are expected to develop a competence in the languages and discourses of Law and Society and to begin working independently in this transdisciplinary field. The seminar provides students with foundational knowledge of the theoretical, methodological and substantive areas of research in the field of Law and Society.

 

Requirements

Students are required to write either 2 critical essays (12-15 pages), or a sociolegal research paper (25-30 pages). The time-table for when papers are due will be posted on Blackboard. The “A Credit Paper” time-table will also be posted on Blackboard.

 

Verbal and written contributions to each week’s seminar are very important and will be a factor (30 %) in evaluating student’s performance and progress. Students are required to submit 1-3 questions or themes drawn from each week’s assigned readings via e-mail to both Professors Chevigny and Harrington no later than 6:00pm the Monday before Tuesday’s seminar.

 

Assigned Readings

Kalman, Laura (1996) The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism. New Haven: Yale University Press.

 

Fitzpatrick, Peter (2001) Modernism and the Grounds of Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Mamdani, Mahmood (1996) Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of         Late Colonialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Materials to be distributed

 

Recommended Readings

Hunt, Alan (1993) Explorations in Law and Society. NY: Routledge.

 

Seminar Outline

 

INTRODUCTIONS Week 1, January 13

 

I. Legal and Social Relations

 

A. Legal Jurisprudence and Social Science Jurisprudence (weeks 2-4)

 

            Assumptions Week 2, January 20

Hart, H. L. A. (1961) “Laws, Commands, and Orders,” in The Concept of Law. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 47-86.

 

Pound, Roscoe (1911 and 1912) “The Scope and Purpose of Sociological Jurisprudence,” 24 Harvard Law Review 591-594; and 25 Harvard Law Review 489-516.

 

Cotterrell, Roger (1992) “The Social Basis of Law,” Chapter 1, in Sociology of Law.

 

Background

            Fuller, Lon (1964) “The Morality That Makes Law Possible,” in The Morality of     

            Law. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 33-93.

 

Ehrlich, Eugen (1936) Fundamental Principles of the Sociology of Law. Transl. by W.L. Moll. NY: Arno Press edn 1975.

 

Weinrib, Ernest (1988) “Legal Formalism: On the Immanent Rationality of Law,”             97 Yale Law Journal 949.

 

            Effects Week 3, January 27

           

Kalman, Laura (1996) The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism. New Haven: Yale             University

Press.

 

Brigham, John and Christine B. Harrington (1989) “Realism and Its Consequences: An Inquiry into Contemporary Socio‑Legal Research,” 17 International Journal of the Sociology of Law 41.

 

Background

Ehrlich, Eugen (1936) Fundamental Principles of the Sociology of Law. Transl.

by W.L. Moll. NY: Arno Press edn 1975.

Gordon, Robert (1983) “Legal Thought and Legal Practice in the Age of American Enterprise, 1870-1920,” in Professions and Professional Ideologies in America (ed. G. L. Geison). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. pp.70-110.

 

Chevigny, Paul (1993) GIGS: Jazz and the Cabaret Laws in New York City. NY:        

Routledge.

                      

Harrington, Christine B. (1988) “Moving From Integrative to Constitutive Theories of Law,” 22 Law & Society Review 963.

 

Harrington, Christine B. and Barbara Yngvesson (1990) “Interpretive Sociolegal

Research,” 15 Law and Social Inquiry 135.

 

Hunt, Alan (1993) “Law As a Constitutive Mode of Regulation,” in Explorations in Law and Society. NY: Routledge. pp. 301-333.

 

Practices Week 4, February 3

 

Twiss, Benjamin R. (1942) Lawyers and the Constitution: How Laissez Faire Came to           the

Supreme Court. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chapters 1 and 2.

 

NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. 301 U.S. 1 (1937)

 

Klare, Karl (1978) “Judicial Deradicalization of the Wagner Act and the Origins of             Modern

Legal Consciousness, 1937-1941,” 62 Minnesota Law Review 265.

 

Cotterrell, Roger (1992) Chapter 2, in Sociology of Law.

 

B. Political Economy and Law (weeks 5-6)

 

Macroeconomics Week 5, February 10

 

Marx, Karl (1857) “The Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy,” in A  

Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Transl. by N.I. Stone. NY: International Library Publishing Co. edn 1904, 265-304.

 

Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge 11 Peters 420 (1837) (edited).

 

Pashukanis, E.B. (1929) "Commodity and Subject," in Law & Marxism, Chapter 4 (pp. 109-124).

 

Background

Hurst, James Willard (1956) Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the             Nineteenth-Century United States. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

 

Cain, Maureen and Alan Hunt (eds.) (1979) Marx and Engels on Law. NY:            

Academic Press.

 

Orren, Karen (1991) Belated Feudalism: Labor, the Law, and Liberal Development in the United States. NY: Cambridge University Press.

 

No Class February 17^th (Tuesday is Monday)

 

Microeconomics Week 6, February 24

 

Kornhauser, Lewis (1986) “Economic Analysis of Law,” 16 Materiali Per Una

Storia della Cultura Giuridica 233.

 

            Guthrie, Chris (2003) “Prospect Theory, Risk Preference, and the Law,” 97       

            Northwestern Law Review 1115-1163.

 

            Matsushita v. Zenith 106 S.Ct. 1348 (1986)

 

            Palazzolo v. Rhode Island 533 U.S. 606 (2001)

 

McNollgast (1995) “Politics & Courts: A Positive Theory of Judicial Doctrine and the Rule Law” 68 Southern California Law Review 1631-1689.

 

            Background

Cooter, Robert (1989) “Best Right Laws,” 64 Notre Dame Law Review 817.

 

Cooter, Robert and Thomas Ulen (1988 ) “Does the Common Law Tend Toward Efficiency?,” in Law and Economics. Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman. pp. 492-496.

 

            Farber and Frickey (1988) “Legislative Intent & Public Choice,” 24 Virginia Law Review 423-469.

 

Friedman, David D. (2000) Law’s Order: What Economics Has to do With Law and Why it Matters. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

 

Mashaw, Jerry (1997) Greed, Chaos and Governance: Using Public Choice to Improve Public Law. New Haven: Yale University Press.

 

C. Power and Politics in Law (weeks 7-9)

 

Behavioralists v. Structuralists Week 7, March 2

                        Shapiro, Martin (1964) “Political Jurisprudence,” 52 Kentucky Law Review 294.

 

Segal, Jeffrey and Harold Spaeth (2002) “The Supreme Court and Constitutional            

Democracy,” in The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revised. NY: Cambridge University Press.

 

Richards, Mark J. and Herbert M. Kritzer (2002) “Jurisprudential Regimes in Supreme Court Decision Making,” 96 American Political Science Review 305-320.

Heydebrand, Wolf (1990) “Government Litigation and National Policymaking: From Roosevelt to Reagan,” 24 Law & Society Review 477-495.

         

            Background

Dahl, Robert (1957) “Decision-Making in a Democracy: The Supreme Court as National Policy Maker,” 6 Journal of Public Law 277.

 

Casper, Jonathan (1976) “The Supreme Court and National Policy Making,” 70 American Political Science Review 50.

 

Maveety, Nancy ed. (2003) The Pioneers of Judicial Behavior. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

 

                                    Shapiro, Martin and Alec Stone Sweet (2002) On Law, Politics, and                                          Judicialization. NY: Oxford University Press.

 

Provine, Doris Marie (1988) “Judicial Government,” 51 Law and Contemporary Problems 83-109.

 

Whittington, Keith E. (2000) “Once More Unto the Breach: Post Behavioralist Approaches to Judicial Politics,” 25 Law & Social Inquiry 601-634.

 

Kennedy, Duncan (1979) “The Structure of Blackstone=s Commentaries,” 28 Buffalo Law Review 205.

 

Olsen, Frances (1983) “The Family and the Market” 96 Harvard Law Review 1497-1507, 1529-1578.

 

Block, Fred (1987) Revising State Theory: Essays in Politics and Postindustrialism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

 

Post-Structuralists Week 8, March 9

 

Foucault, Michel (1978) “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect (eds. G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 87-104.

 

Garland, David (1997) “’Governmentality’ and the Problem of Crime:                   

Foucault, Criminology, Sociology,” 1 Theoretical Criminology 173.

 

Bourdieu, Pierre (1987) “The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field,” 38 Hastings Law Journal 805-853.

 

            Background

Foucault, Michel (1975) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York: Pantheon.

 

Foucault, Michel (1983) “Structuralism and Poststructuralism: An Interview,” 55 Telos 211.

 

            Foucault, Michel (1980) “Two Lectures,” in Power and Knowledge. NY:                                              Pantheon. pp. 78-108.

 

Harrington, Christine B. (1994) “Outlining a Theory of Legal Practice,” in Lawyers in a Postmodern World: Translation and Transgression (eds. M. Cain and C.B. Harrington). NY: New York University Press. pp. 49-69.

 

Rose, Nikolas (1987) “Beyond the Public/Private Division: Law, Power and the Family” 14 Journal of Law and Society 61-76.

 

Teubner, Gunther (1997) “The King’s Many Bodies: The Self-Deconstruction of Law’s Hierarchy,” 31 Law & Society Review 763-787.

 

           No Class March 16^th (Spring Break)

 

            Post-Modernists Week 9, March 23

 

De Sousa Santos, Boaventura (1987) “Law: A Map of Misreading:            Toward a Postmodern Conception of Law,” 14 Journal of Law and Society 279.

 

Fitzpatrick, Peter (2001) Modernism and the Grounds of Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Latour, Bruno (1993) “Constitution,” in We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 13-48.

Background

            Adler, Amy M. (1990) “Post-Modern Art and the Death of Obscenity

            Law,” 99 Yale Law Journal 1359.

 

            de Sousa Santos, Boaventura (1995) “Three Metaphors for a New Conception of Law: The Frontier, the Baroque, and the South,” 29 Law & Society Review 569.

 

            de Sousa Santos, Boaventura (1995) Toward a New Common Sense: Law, Epistemology and Science. NY: Routledge.

 

Frug, Mary Jo (1992) Post-Modern Legal Feminism. New York: Routledge.

           

            Matoesian, Gregory M. (1995) “Language, Law, and Society: Policy

            Implications of the Kennedy Smith Rape Trial,” 29 Law & Society Review             669.

 

Warrington, Ronnie and Costas Dizenios (1991) Post-Modern Jurisprudence. London: Routledge.

 

D. Cultural Constructions of Law Week 10, March 30

 

            Comaroff, John and Simon Roberts (1981) Rules and Process: The Cultural Logic of        

            Disputes in an African Context. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

 

Upham, Frank (1976) “Litigation and Moral Consciousness in Japan: An Interpretive Analysis of Four Japanese Pollution Suits,” Law & Society Review 579-619.

 

Ellickson, Robert (1986) “Of Coase and Cattle,” 38 Stanford Law Review 626.

 

Background

Abu-Odeh, Lama (1997) “Comparatively Speaking: The “Honor” of the “East” and the “Passion” of the “West,” 2 Utah Law Review 287.

 

Conley, John M. And William M. O=Barr (1993) “Legal Anthropology Comes

Home: Brief History of the Ethnographic Study of Law,” 27 Loyola of Los

Angeles Law Review 41.

 

Feldman, Eric (1994) “Legal Transplants, Organ Transplants,” 3 Social and Legal

Studies 71.

 

Gibson, James L. And Gregory A. Caldeira (1996) “The Legal Cultures of

Europe,” 30 Law & Society Review 55.

 

Gross, Ariela (1995) “Pandora=s Box: Slave Character on Trial in the Antebellum

Deep South,” 7 Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 267.

 

Lazarus-Black, Mindie and Susan F. Hirsch (eds.) (1994) Contested States: Law,

Hegemony and Resistance. NY: Routledge.

 

Nelken, David (1995) “Disclosing/ Invoking Legal Culture: An Introduction,” 4

Social & Legal Studies 435.

 

People v. Marie Barberi 149 NY 256, NY Ct. of Appeals (1896)

 

Preis, Ann-Belind (1996) “Human Rights as Cultural Practice: An Anthropological Critique,” 18 Human Rights Quarterly 286.

 

Yngvesson, Barbara (1989) “Inventing Law in Local Settings,” 98 Yale Law Journal 1689-1709.

 

            Zhiping, Liang (1993) “The Cultural Interpretation of Law,” Chinese Social Sciences Quarterly.

 

 

E. Psychological Matters in Law Week 11, April 6

 

Bowman, Cynthia Grant and Elizabeth Mertz (1996) “A Dangerous Direction: Legal   

Intervention in Sexual Abuse Survivor Therapy,” 109 Harvard Law Review 549.

 

U.S. v. Downing 753 F. 2d 1224, 3rd Cir. (1985)

 

Tyler, Tom (1990) “Multiculturalism and the Willingness of Citizens to Defer to Law and Legal Authorities,” Law and Social Inquiry.

 

Background

Amsterdam, Anthony and Jerome Brunner (2000) Minding the Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

 

Casper, Jonathan, Shari Diamond and Lynne Ostergren (1989) ABlindfolding the

Jury@ 52 Law and Contemporary Problems 247.

 

Krieger, Linda Hamilton (1995) “The Content of Our Categories: A Cognitive

Bias Approach to Discrimination and Equal Employment Opportunity,” 47 Stanford Law Review 116.

 

Tyler, Tom (1990) Why People Obey the Law. New Haven: Yale University Press.

 

Wortley, Scot, John Hagan and Ross Macmillan (1997) “Just Des(s)erts? The Racial Polarization of Perceptions of Criminal Injustice,” 31 Law & Society Review 637-676.

 

 

II. Forms of Legal Ordering

 

A. Custom, the Rule of Law and Post-Colonial Law Week 12, April 13

 

            Diamond, Stanley (1971) “The Rule of Law Versus the Order of Custom,” 38

            Social Research 42.

 

            Moore, Sally Falk (1973) “Law and Social Change: The Semiautonomous  

            Social Field as an Appropriate Subject of Study,” 7 Law & Society Review 719.

 

O=Malley, Pat (1996) “Indigenous Governance,” 3 Economy and Society Vol. 25.

 

Mamdani, Mahmood (1996) Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of

Late Colonialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chapters 1, 3 and 4.

 

Background

Abel, Richard (1974) “A Comparative Theory of Dispute Institutions in Society,”

8 Law & Society Review 217.

 

Darian-Smith, Eve and Peter Fitzpatrick (1999) eds. Laws of the Postcolonial. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

           

            Fitzpatrick, Peter (1992) The Mythology Of Modern Law. London: Routledge. Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 5.

 

            Kagan, Robert A., Martin Krygier and Kenneth Winston eds. (2002) Legality and Community: On the Intellectual Legacy of Philip Selznick. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

 

Merry, Sally (1988) “Legal Pluralism,” 22 Law & Society Review 869.

 

Shamir, Ronen (2000) The Colonies of Law: Colonialism, Zionism, and Law in Early Mandate Palestine. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

B. Social Structure and Law Week 13, April 20

 

            Durkheim, Emile (1893) “Organic Solidarity Due to the Division of Labor,” in Division         

            of Labor in Society. Transl. by G. Simpson. NY: Free Press edn 1964. pp. 111-132.

 

            Trubek, David (1972) “Max Weber and the Rise of Capitalism,” 1972 Wisconsin Law    

            Review 720-753.

 

            Wacquant, Loic (2001) "Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh,"           

            3 Punishment & Society 95-134.

 

            Cotterell, Chapter 3, “The Acceptance and Legitimacy of Law”.

 

Background

Greenberg, David F. and Nancy Anderson (1981) “Recent Marxist Books on

Law: A Review Essay,” 5 Contemporary Crises 293.

 

            Hay, Douglas (1975) “Property, Authority and the Criminal Law,” in Albion's Fatal T          ree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth Century England (ed. D. Hay). New York: Pantheon, pp.17-63.

 

Thompson, E.P. (1975) Whigs and Hunters. New York: Pantheon, pp. 258-269.         

 

                       Henry, Stuart (1983) Private Justice. London: Routledge.

 

Heydebrand, Wolf (1979) “The Technocratic Administration of Justice,” 2

Research in Law and Sociology 29.

 

Merry, Sally (1984) Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness

Among Working-Class Americans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

 

Nelken, David (1986) “Beyond the Study of ‘Law and Society’,” Review essay

1986 American Bar Foundation Research Journal 324.

 

            Schneider, Elizabeth (2000) Battered Women & Feminist Lawmaking. New            

            Haven: Yale University Press.

 

Weber, Max (1966) Law in Economy and Society (ed. Max Rheinstein).

Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

 

Dezalay, Yves and Bryant G. Garth (1996) Dealing in Virtue: International Commercial Arbitration and the Construction of a Transnational Legal Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

C. Identity and Law as a Constitutive Force Week 14, April 27

 

            Brigham, John (1996) The Constitution of Interests: Beyond the Politics of Rights. NY:    

            NYU Press.

Kendall, Thomas (1992) “Beyond the Privacy Principle,” 1992 Columbia Law Review 1431.

 

Lawrence v. Texas 123 S. Ct. 2472 (2003)

 

Background

Bell, Derrick (1987) And We Are Not Saved. New York: Basic Books.

 

Darian-Smith, Eve (1999) Bridging Divides: The Channel Tunnel and English Legal Identity in the New Europe. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

 

Fineman, Martha (1995) The Neutered Mother, the Sexual Family. NY: Routledge.

 

Kennedy, Randall (2002) Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. NY: Pantheon Books.

 

Pavlich, George (1996) “The Power of Community Mediation: Government and

Formation of Self-Identity,” 30 Law & Society Review 707.

 

Williams, Patricia J. (1991) The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Cambridge:

            Harvard University Press.