Law Schedule of Classes

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267.4 sec. 001 - Law & History Foundation Seminar (Fall 2021)

Instructor: Christopher Lawrence Tomlins  (view instructor's teaching evaluations - degree students only | profile)
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Units: 3
Grading Designation: Graded
Mode of Instruction: In-Person

Meeting:

M 2:10 PM - 5:00 PM
Location: 2240 Piedmont 102
From August 16, 2021
To November 22, 2021

Course Start: August 16, 2021
Course End: November 22, 2021
Class Number: 31918

Enrollment info:
Enrolled: 9
Waitlisted: 0
Enroll Limit: 16
As of: 01/25 05:06 PM


Law 267.4 is The Law & History Foundation Seminar for the Jurisprudence & Social Policy Graduate Program at Berkeley Law. It is a reading and discussion seminar open to all JSP graduate students, Berkeley Law JD, LLM, and JSD students, and graduate students from other campus programs and other Bay Area institutions. This is a shared course with History and Critical Theory and students from those departments should register in their department's course accordingly.
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As in previous years, Law 267.4 will explore the central themes of American legal development, while also investigating the way legal history has matured as a field of study or “discipline.” But we are living in interesting times, in which the varied exploitations of colonialism, racism, and capitalism have become the subject of intense public examination and argument. So this semester I want to give explicit attention to the question of how history - as theory, as philosophy, as method, or simply as narrative - can help us understand the role that law has played, and plays, in the construction of our times. The course will concentrate on the legal history of the United States, but it will begin and end with pointed glances at other Anglophone common law jurisdictions - England and Australia. And, to set our discussion of theory and method off with a bang, we will begin in week 1 with work by Louis Althusser, one of the most famous Marxist philosophers of the twentieth century, which poses the issue of how we should think about law as a phenomenon. In other words, what is “law”?
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Considered as a field of study, legal history is as much history as law, and history is primarily a discipline of the book. For this reason I have chosen to make Law 267.4 a course that focuses on books. We will read a wide selection of the field’s best work, ranging from classics that have structured the field, stirred controversy, and inspired generations of scholars (like James Willard Hurst’s *Law and the Conditions of Freedom* and Morton Horwitz’s *Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860*), to the best work of the current generation of field leaders (like Laura Edwards’ *The People and their Peace* and Kunal Parker’s *Legal Thought Before Modernism*), to notable recent work by rising scholars (like Karen Tani’s *States of Dependency* and Ken Mack’s *Representing the Race*). We will accumulate considerable knowledge of the substance of American legal history, but we will also give close critical attention to the very different ways in which scholars have chosen to write the history of American law, and the very different subjects about which they have considered it appropriate to write).
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In the American law school curriculum, a legal history course is usually considered an "enrichment” or “perspective” elective because it does not offer instruction in doctrine or skills directly oriented to law practice. One might consider the absence of a clear instrumental function liberating. Law school is likely to be the last extended period in a budding lawyer’s life when they can explore general ideas about law, probe theories, think about large issues of justice or policy, and develop skills in research and analysis. In a legal history course, student and teacher are freed to enjoy the intellectual experience of reading and discussing intelligently-written material unconstrained by the necessity that it be directly “relevant” to, say, bar admission.
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Still, lack of direct relevance may not seem very sensible to students with crowded schedules. Why read all this stuff if it has no direct instrumental take-away?
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This is a sensible question, to which there are two answers. The first is the enrichment/perspective answer: to study the history of law is to study the culture and practice of one’s chosen profession. Historical knowledge supplies both “deep background” on what one is doing in the present, and also a fund of examples and parallels that help one understand why one is doing it. The second answer is that how one studies in a course like this can be of real practical benefit. Lawyers (particularly young lawyers) are required to assimilate large amounts of information efficiently in a short period of time, grasp the essentials, and analyze them. This course requires that you develop an ability to assimilate and analyze large quantities of information.
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Our emphasis will be on weekly discussions of common readings. Concretely, each week we will all read a book, in whole or in part. We will all come to class prepared and willing to talk about what we have read. To prime discussion, each class participant will circulate (via bCourses) brief and informal impressions/questions about the week’s reading to every other participant and to the instructor.
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For more detailed information on readings and assessment, see the course syllabus (on bCourses or obtainable from the instructor). As the syllabus indicates, reading preparation for the first class meeting is required.
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Students enroll in this course for 3 units. JSP students are required to take an additional 1 unit in conjunction with this course through enrolling in Law 602. The additional unit of credit requires additional work within the course framework. To enroll in Law 602, JSP students must complete an Add Form by the add deadline and submit the completed form to the Registrar's Office.


Attendance at the first class is mandatory for all currently enrolled and waitlisted students; any currently enrolled or waitlisted students who are not present on the first day of class (without prior permission of the instructor) will be dropped. The instructor will continue to take attendance throughout the add/drop period and anyone who moves off the waitlist into the class must continue to attend or have prior permission of the instructor in order not to be dropped.


Requirements Satisfaction:

This class may fulfill Option 2 of the J.D. writing requirement with instructor approval. In order to qualify for Option 2, all students in the class must be writing a paper of 30 or more pages. Those students who wish to use this paper for the writing requirement must get instructor approval and submit their drafts for comment and revision.

Option 2 form needed:
https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Writing_Requirement_2017.pdf


Exam Notes: (P) Final paper  
Course Category: Jurisprudence and Social Policy (JSP)
This course is listed in the following sub-categories:
Social Justice and Public Interest

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