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Instructor: Jonathan Beck
Office hours: By appointment (Zoom)
E-mail: jcbeck@uw.edu
Teaching Assistants:
Ayda Apa Pomeshikov (AG, AJ) ayda@uw.edu
Gozde Burcu Ege (AA, AC)
Michael Esveldt (AB, AE) mesveldt@uw.edu
Roman Pomeshchikov (AH, AI)
Lectures: MWF 1:30-2:20 in ARC 147
Course Overview
Law is central to social life: it shapes the distribution of power and resources, opportunities, relationships, punishment, and even our personal identities. Law is also shaped by social dynamics in complex ways. But what exactly is the law, and what different forms does it take? What gives law its power? How does it shape our everyday lives and identities? How does it create and enact violence, even as it seeks to suppress it? How can it be used to both protect and challenge rights, power, and privilege?
This course will introduce you to the social scientific study of law, as well as some of the main foci of the Law, Societies & Justice major, including violence, rights, and justice. Real world topics will be explored to illustrate the larger themes.
- What is law, and how does it matter? What are its intended and unintended consequences? Why does law on the books differ from law in action? How do social forces shape law’s meaning, application, and enforcement, and why is the impact of these social forces changing and uncertain? Why is legal discretion inevitable, and why does this matter?
- What is law’s relationship to violence? How and why does law entail and enact violence, even as it seeks to suppress it? Why does this matter?
- What are rights, and how are they related to law and justice? How do people make rights- claims in struggles over law and justice? What happens when rights claims conflict? How do struggles over rights relate to justice? How can rights-claiming enhance justice, and how can the assertion of rights trigger counter-mobilizations and undermine justice?
Required Reading: All required readings will be posted for free on Canvas. There are no required textbooks. There will be about 30 pages of reading per class session, and I will always provide reading questions to help guide you through the readings. These questions are not required for credit but should be considered a useful resource.
Assessment:
Engagement/Participation - 20%
Reading/Discussion Assignments (4 of 5) - 25%
Short Essay - 25%
Final Project - 30%
To receive credit for this course, you must complete all assessment components above. I include a brief description of each component below:
Engagement/Participation: We recognize that every student participates differently. Participation will reflect your active engagement with course material and support of your peers, and can include verbal contributions in class, note-taking in small groups, online discussions, peer review assignments, study groups, conversations with the instructor, among other activities.
Reading/Discussion Assignments: Throughout the course, there will be a total of five reading/discussion assignments, which the instructor will make available a week before each is due. Students must complete four (4), including the REQUIRED first assignment (due Sunday, January 9 at midnight). Students may complete the fifth for extra credit on their final project. These are low-stakes assignments meant to build confidence, help with comprehension, and provide you an opportunity for hands-on analysis of law and society. These assignments may sometimes ask you to engage material from outside the syllabus.
Short Essay: Mid-way through the course, you will write a short essay (1000-1500 words) that will ask you to summarize and analyze course readings and develop and defend a thesis statement related to course content up to this point.
Final Assignment: For the final assignment, students will choose from a selected list of course topics and compare how this legal topic is portrayed in popular sources (news, movies, tv, literature) with academic sources (academic encyclopedias, academic books, peer-reviewed journals). Analysis will include a thesis about what the key differences are and why that matters to everyday understandings and experiences of the law. The final assignment will include a 1500-2000 word typed paper, a 500 word personal reflection, and an annotated bibliography.