Introduction to U.S. and comparative legal institutions and practices. Examines diverse areas of law from torts to civil rights to international human rights. Why is America portrayed as having an activist legal culture; why is law used to decide so many questions from presidential elections to auto accidents; can law resolve disputes that, historically, have led to war and violence; is the legal system fair and/or effective, and, if so, for whom and under what conditions?
Cross-listed Courses
This course is structured around four critical moments--missionization, Rancho-Era, Gold Rush, and World War II--through the eyes of the ethnic and racial minorities who experienced them. Special attention is given to oral, archival, and archaeological sources which reveal California's multiethnic pasts.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 112
General Education Code
ER
Course takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying contraband and smuggling. Focusing on concepts used to describe illegality we examine how "shadow economies" are central to the making of states and sovereignty, the legal and illegal being blurred.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 126C
General Education Code
CC
The ideas, in selected non-Western societies, about the nature of power, order, social cohesion, and the political organization of these societies.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 138
An ethnographically informed consideration of law, dispute management, and social control in a range of societies including the contemporary U.S. Topics include conflict management processes, theories of justice, legal discourse, and relations among local, national, and transnational legal systems.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 142
Explores strategies artists use to engage political subject matter in the 21st century. Students create their own projects, research and test approaches, techniques and strategies learning from the ways national and international artists encode and convey information in creating political work. Methods range from community collaboration; to tactical culture jamming, participatory collaborative projects, activism and intervention, symbolic and gestural work, artist-led projects, performances and community projects.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 181
Instructor
Dee Hibbert Jones
General Education Code
PR-C
Studies the causes, consequences, and governmental response to urban poverty in the U.S. Topics include how public policy, the macroeconomy, race, gender, discrimination, marriage, fertility, child support, and crime affect and are affected by urban poverty. Emphasizes class discussion and research.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 128
The structure and conduct of American industry with strong emphasis on the role of government, regulation, anti-trust, etc. The evolution of present-day industrial structure. The problems of overall concentration of industry and of monopoly power of firms. Pricing, output decisions, profits, and waste. Approaches include case study, theory, and statistics.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 160A
A study of law and the legal process, emphasizing the nature and function of law within the U.S. federal system. Attention is given to the legal problems pertaining to contracts and related topics, business association, and the impact of law on business enterprise.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 162
The application of the theories and methods of neoclassical economics to the central institutions of the legal system, including the common law doctrines of negligence, contract, and property; bankruptcy and corporate law; and civil, criminal, and administrative procedure.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 169
Study of gender roles in economic life, past and present. Topics include occupational structure, human capital acquisition, income distribution, poverty, and wage differentials. The role of government in addressing economic gender differentials is examined.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 183
An overview of all major federal environmental policy domains. Analyzes political, social, economic, and other forces influencing federal (and some state) public policy responses to land use, natural resources, pollution, and conservation dilemmas.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 140E
Surveys a wide range of topics in environmental law, including state and federal jurisdiction, administrative law, separation of powers, state and local land use regulation, public land and resource management, pollution control, and private rights and remedies. Students read a large number of judicial cases and other legal documents.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 149
Introduction to California land use planning law and practice, and the theory, practice, and public policy aspects of environmental assessment, using the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) as a model. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and other environmental and planning legislation also considered. Covers elements of State law and regulations, environmental impact assessment requirements, and practical procedures for preparing and evaluating CEQA documents, with case studies that exemplify legal, regulatory and public policy and practice aspects of the assessment process.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 151A
A study of selected classical and contemporary writings dealing with topics such as the nature and legitimacy of the liberal state, the limits of political obligation, and theories of distributive justice and rights. (Formerly Social and Political Philosophy.)
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 144
Topics include conceptual-analytical and political-social issues. Selected topics may include: the ontology of race; race as real or constructed; scientific understandings of race; race and identity; and color-blind versus color-sensitive theories of justice and political policy.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 143
Explores tensions between reason and revelation, justice and democracy, and freedom and empire through close readings of ancient texts. Emphasis on Athens, with Hebrew, Roman, and Christian departures and interventions. Includes Sophocles, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, the Bible, and Augustine.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 105A
Instructor
Dean Mathiowetz
Studies republican and liberal traditions of political thought and politics. Authors studied include Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Examination of issues such as authorship, individuality, gender, state, and cultural difference.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 105B
Studies in 19th- and early 20th-century theory, centering on the themes of capitalism, labor, alienation, culture, freedom, and morality. Authors studied include J. S. Mill, Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, Hegel, Fanon, and Weber.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 105C
Examines the condition of modernity as it is understood, dwelled upon, and critiqued by political theorists since the second half of the 20th century. Explores how the modern condition was viewed by Euro-American thinkers, who saw themselves as its originators and heirs, as well as Chinese, Indian, Arab, and African thinkers for whom European modernity was an inescapable, if not an insurmountable, imposition to be engaged, transformed, and critiqued. (Formerly Late-20th Century Political Thought.)
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 105D
Instructor
Yasmeen Daifallah
Examines current problems in law as it intersects with politics and society. Readings are drawn from legal and political philosophy, social science, and judicial opinions.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 110
Study of political development, behavior, performance, and significance of central governmental institutions of the U.S. Emphasizes the historical development of each branch and their relationship to each other, including changes in relative power and constitutional responsibilities.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 120A
Examines the role of social forces in the development of the American democratic processes and in the changing relationship between citizen and state. Course materials address the ideas, the social tensions, and the economic pressures bearing on social movements, interest groups, and political parties.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 120B
Instructor
Melanie Springer
Examines the relationship between state and economy in the U.S. from the 1880s to the present, and provides a theoretical and historical introduction to the study of politics and markets. Focus is on moments of crisis and choice in U.S. political economy, with an emphasis on the rise of regulation, the development of the welfare state, and changes in employment policies.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 120C
Examines racism as a logic of governance in American politics and traces racial reasoning in transcendent notions of "justice" in the U.S. from the nation's founding into the 21st century. (Formerly offered as Race & Justice in America.)
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 121
General Education Code
ER
Explores the rich history and fundamental legal concepts surrounding water in California. Students identify, evaluate, and debate some critical water policy questions faced by Californians today and in the future.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 132
Instructor
Ruth Langridge
Origins and development of international law: international law is examined both as a reflection of the present world order and as a basis for transformation. Topics include state and non-state actors and sovereignty, treaties, the use of force, and human rights.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 160B
Addresses whether and how global organizations are changing the international system. Examines multilateral institutions, regional organizations, and nonstate actors. Overriding aim is to discern whether these global organizations are affecting the purported primacy of the state.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 166
Interdisciplinary investigation into functions of law across political, historical, and cultural contexts. Examines the international and comparative turn in public law scholarship and the role of law-based strategies in state building. Reviews literature in law, political science and legal anthropology.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 190R
Current and future relationships between law and psychology, paying special attention to gaps between legal fictions and psychological realities in the legal system. Topics include an introduction to social science and law, the nature of legal and criminal responsibility, the relationship between the social and legal concepts of discrimination, and the nature of legal punishment.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 147A
Continuing discussion of current and future relationships between law and psychology and to contrasting psychological realities with legal fictions. Special attention is given to the criminal justice system including crime causation, the psychology of policing and interrogation, plea bargaining, jury selection and decision making, eyewitness identification, and the psychology of imprisonment.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 147B
Explores the history of the use and abuse of consciousness-altering substances like alcohol and other drugs. Social-psychological theories of addiction are reviewed in tandem with political-economic analyses to identify the social conditions under which the cultural practices involved in drug use come to be defined as public problems. An introductory sociology course is recommended prior to taking this course.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 127
Introduction to contemporary analysis of Japan's race relations, ethnic conflicts, and a government's failure to restore remedial justice for war victims in Japan, Asia, and the U.S. Specific issues include comfort women, national or state narratives on Hiroshima, forced labor during World War II, and Haydon legislation that allows war victims to sue the Japanese government and corporations in California.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 126
Introduces survey research methods including problem formulation, research design, instrument construction, data collection, codification, data processing, computer analyses, and report writing. The greater emphasis is placed on statistical analyses and questionnaire constructions.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 128A
General Education Code
SR
Provided an overview of socio-political theories and thoughts from Athenian Direct Democracy in 500 BC, to Classical Liberalism, Social Contract, Libertarian Socialism, Anarcho-Syndicalism, Neo-Liberalism, Anarcho-Primitism, and lastly Indigenism in relation to the revival of indigenous knowledge, theMother Earth law, and the restoration of the nature's rights as espoused by many governments in the Third World today.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 128C
General Education Code
CC
An introduction to comparative and historical analyses of the relation between race and law in the U.S. Emphasis on examinations of continuous colonial policies and structural mechanisms that help maintain and perpetuate racial inequality in law, criminal justice, and jury trials. (Formerly Race and Justice)
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 128I
Instructor
Hiroshi Fukurai
General Education Code
ER
Adoption of the jury and its varied forms in different nations provides ideal opportunities to examine differences between systems of popular legal participation. Course considers reasons why the right to jury trial is currently established in Japan or Asian societies, but abandoned or severely curtailed in others. American jury contrasted with other forms of lay participation in the legal process.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 128J
Examines war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the evolution and role of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Examines the evolution of the concept of international law, the rationale for its birth and existence, roots of international conflicts and genocides, possible remedies available to victims, mechanisms for the creation and enforcement of international legal order, as well as the role of colonialism, migration, poverty, race/ethnic conflicts, gender, and international corporations in creating and maintaining conflicts and wars.
Cross Listed Courses
LGST 128M
Instructor
Hiroshi Fukurai