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Law, Letters, and Society Courses

I. The Introductory Course, 1995-96

242. Legal Reasoning. PQ: Open only to LL/Soc concentrators with consent of instructor. This course is an introduction to legal reasoning in a customary legal system. The first part examines the analytical conventions that lawyers and judges purport to use. The second part examines fundamental tenets of constitutional interpretation. Both judicial decisions and commentary are used, although the case method is emphasized. D. Hutchinson. Autumn.

II. Letters

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222. Church and State: Marsilius's Defender of the Peace (=Fndmtl 222). When Marsilius of Padua addressed the long standing tension between secular and ecclesiastical powers, this medieval Aristotelian not only attempted to redefine the Church, rejecting its "plenitude of power" and advocating ecclesiastical poverty, he also effected a radical departure from Aristotelian politics by making the primary criterion of legitimate government the consent of the governed. We investigate the connection between the problem of Church and State and Marsilius's proto-republicanism. J. Macfarland. Spring.

225. Tacitus: On Liberty and Autocracy in the Roman Empire (=ClCiv 270, Fndmtl 225, Hist 217). The substance of this course is an intensive reading of Tacitus's Life of Agricola and Annals, which is concerned with the Roman empire in the first century after Christ. The primary issue for discussion is the historian's view of the tension between the noble citizen's desire to lead a constructive public life and the compulsion to obey the emperor. R. Saller. Spring.

234. Origins of United States Constitutional Provisions (=SocSci 212). PQ: Consent of instructor. The provisions of the American Constitution, evolved from colonial and British precedents and Articles of Confederation experience, were adapted by the Founding Fathers to the conditions of the new nation. This course concentrates on the evolution of some of these provisions, attempting to discover the experiences epitomized by the words, the objectives sought to be obtained, the compromises indulged, the ambiguities unresolved. P. Kurland, R. Lerner. Autumn.

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251. The Idea of Property. J. Hart. Spring.

252. Theories of Justice from Plato to Rawls (=ClCiv 219, Class 319, Hist 219). This course examines major texts in classical political theory and considers them against the development of modern theories of the just society. Readings include texts by Aristotle, Plato, Sophocles, Cicero, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Arendt, and Rawls. D. Cohen. Spring.

265. Hobbes's Leviathan (=Fndmtl 265). This course focuses on a close reading of the Leviathan, with emphasis divided as nearly equally as possible among the book's several concerns: philosophical underpinnings, political theory, and religion. C. Gray. Spring.

292. Political Philosophy: Kant (=Fndmtl 292, PolSci 315). PQ: Consent of instructor. J. Cropsey. Winter.

293. Thucydides: Peloponnesian War (=Fndmtl 293, PolSci 219). This course is a study of one of the classic guides to domestic and international politics. Themes include progress and decline, justice and expediency, the role of rhetoric in domestic and foreign policy, strategy and statesmanship, the causes and domestic effects of war, and imperialism and alliances. N. Tarcov. Spring.

III. Society

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213. Managing the Environment (=EnvStd 213, NCD 213, PubPol 213). PQ: Econ 198 or higher. This course analyzes human interaction with and intervention into the environment. Topics include resource management, environmental and economic policy, environmental law, business initiatives, and global environmental legislation. Also assessed are major national legislation on Superfund, resource conservation and recovery, air quality, water quality, hazardous chemicals, and endangered species. D. Coursey. Winter.

215. The Law of Bondage and Freedom (=Hist 415). PQ: Third-year standing. This colloquium explores the history in America of legal categories of bondage and freedom and the cultural, social, and political conflicts that transformed the meaning of these terms. The course spans the period from the American Revolution to Reconstruction. It focuses on such themes as rights, coercion and contract, equality and difference, the relationship between law and other systems of language and belief, market paradigms of liberty and obligation, and the historical interplay of race and gender in the law of bondage and freedom. A. Stanley. Winter.

223. American Constitutional History (=Hist 186). This course is an introduction to American constitutional history from 1787 to the present, with special emphasis on the period before 1937. It explores the relationship between constitutional law and social change through a close, contextual analysis of some of the primary Supreme Court opinions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. W. Novak. Spring.

250. Early American Legal History. J. Hart. Winter.

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267. Law and Society: Early England (=Hist 234). English law before the common law is the center of the course, but with attention to comparative Germanic law, major sources for general Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman history, and pre-feudal social structures. C. Gray. Autumn.

268. Law and Society: High Medieval England (=Hist 235). The emergence and consolidation of the common law in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is the center of the course, but with attention to political history in the period from Henry II to Edward I, government and administration beyond the legal system proper, and the medieval Church as a part of the legal order and as rival and complement to secular government. C. Gray. Winter.

269. Medicine and the Law (=HiPSS 247, SocSci 269). This course is designed as an introductory investigation of the interrelations between two essential human institutions: law and medicine. Students read and discuss a series of instances where law and medicine come into conflict. The first part of the course concentrates on conflicts between individual needs, wants, and desires, on the one hand; and professional responsibility and authority or established community standards of conduct, on the other. The second focuses on legislative, administrative, and executive powers and policies involving medicine. A. Goldblatt. Spring.

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