Item 1: Syllabus

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-1-2025

Abstract

This syllabus is for a sociology of law and socio-legal change class, the latter focusing primary on the United States. The first part of the class weaves together introductory understandings of law and concepts from sociological approaches to law (e.g., types of law, legal pluralism, legal consciousness, rule of law) with six case studies of socio-legal change. Importantly, the case studies offer liberal, conservative, local, state, and federal exemplars, as well as different routes to legal change, e.g., regulatory, constitutional, legislative, and other laws. Using inductive approaches to the case studies, students learn to identify the legal goals being sought by the advocates, the jurisdiction or institutional setting where the change is, or changes are, being sought, and the methods by which advocates sought to pursue their goals, including how they responded to opponents. The emerging knowledge provides key tools for the students to develop their assignments, described separately, which requires students to research approaches to their own socio-legal change goal. The second part of the class introduces students to various sociologists of law, mostly canonical figures (e.g. Durkheim, Marx, Weber), and combines these with contemporary applications or interpretations of the sociology of law. The final part of the class considers the impact of democratic backsliding on socio-legal change and the rule of law. It also synthesizes the different components of the class, including students’ presentations of their semester-long research and writing assignments.

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