KDEC 6005 - Legal and Social Thought

This course offers an introduction to sociological, anthropological and social-theoretical reflections on the agency of law in society. The question of law and society, or law in society, is distinct from the question of legal interpretation or the validity of law (which is the province of jurisprudence in the sense of Kelsen, Hart, Dworkin and perhaps Habermas) or questions of justice or justification. This course develops a reflection on how law works in society, the forms that it produces (notably persons), and its interrelation to other social discourses or systems. Some of the leading themes in the course are law and power, law, race and colonialism, law and gender, and law and media, and we develop these themes by way of a reading of some relatively contemporary texts. Throughout, we problematize both the question of what we mean by society and the question of what we mean by law.

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One final paper (80%) and a grade for participation 20%