Comparative Law: History and Anthropology (Ruskola)
Additional Information
Skills Training
Oral Presentations
Expository Writing
Grading
40% Participation,
50% Exam,
10% Paper
Exam
Essay,
Take Home,
Partial Open Book (You may consult all the readings and materials covered in the course but no outside sources.)
No
Class meets in person.
Course Continuity
Students are encouraged to stay home if you are ill or experience flu-like symptoms. If you miss a class for any reason, it is still your responsibility to make up the work missed.
I offer the following to students who miss class due to illness:
- Please make an appointment to meet with me and I will review/answer questions about what you missed.
Meeting Times/Location
TR 10:30AM - 11:50AM
Silverman Hall 270
Category
Upper-Level
Credits
3.0
We take the existence of law as a given. In law school, we are aware that its edges can be hazy and that its enforcement is uneven and sometimes questionable. However, we generally assume that law is a universally applicable category, one that is useful for analyzing and evaluating a wide range of societies and political formations. In this course, we suspend these assumptions, not in order to question the value of law as such but in order to understand better the shifting historical and cultural foundations of the legal world in which we live. Stated most broadly, we will be investigating law as an institution as well as a structure of the political imagination—a particular way of thinking about the world and of existing in it. The principal method for our inquiry will be comparison, or examining legal, and less-than-legal, phenomena across space, time, and culture. The course is broadly interdisciplinary. The bulk of the texts we will study will be historical and anthropological, supplemented by jurisprudential, philosophical, and theoretical works that will help us frame our inquiry.
To begin, we will consider some of the basic differences between Anglo-American common law and continental civil law, which is the principal topic in mainstream comparative law courses. Going beyond this frame, we will examine, among other things, the jurisprudential underpinnings of various types of religious law and international law, especially in the context of colonialism, which has been the principal engine in the the globalization of modern legal institutions and the modern state form itself. Some of questions we will consider include: What is law? Is it present in all societies? Who gets to decide who was has law, and what are the normative implications of having, or not having, it? Why and how do some communities become constituted as sovereign while others do not? How does law construct national subjects, racial subjects, and gendered subjects? How does it both restrict and authorize violence and force? What is the legal relationship between humans, animals, and the environment? What happens when legal institutions of different political, social, and cultural groups come in contact with each other? What happens when multiple legal orders coexist in the same space? I have pre-selected a number of specific topics for inclusion in the course. I have also left a blank in the syllabus, to be filled in later.
The core of the course consists of in-class discussion of the assigned readings. Regular attendance is therefore essential, and you may not miss class without instructor's permission. Each student will need to write a short reflection paper and present it in class. There will be a self-scheduled 24-hour take-home final.
International and Comparative Law Learning outcomes: Demonstrate a core understanding of international and comparative law, both substantively and procedurally; Perform legal analysis in the context of international and comparative law; Communicate effectively on topics related to international and comparative law; Demonstrate an understanding of the role of international and comparative law, and their interconnection with domestic law.
Textbooks
"The Civil Law Tradition" by John Henry Merryman & Rogelio Perez-Perdomo |