Canon of American Lgl Thought

What should every educated twentieth-first century lawyer read beyond certain well-known cases? What are the leading works (the ''greatest hits') of modern jurisprudence? The purpose of this course is to acquaint students with the fundamental works of United States jurisprudence from the past century. Since most current legal training focuses on the analysis of appellate case law, students are acquainted with canonical cases. However, a tradition of canonical legal treatises and essays largely has been lost. This class represents an effort to recover the sense of a legal canon and is intended to familiarize students with the broad array of approaches to legal materials from the past. Most of the course is organized around a newly published anthology, The Canon of American Legal Thought, edited by David Kennedy and William W. Fisher III (Princeton University Press, 2006), which begins with Oliver Wendell Holmes' Path of the Law (1897), and includes works by Robert Hale, Roscoe Pound, Karl Llewellyn, Herbert Wechsler, Marc Galanter, and many others. This twentieth-century collection of readings covers various jurisprudential movements such as legal realism, legal process, law and economics, law and society, critical legal studies, and contemporary issues of law and personal identity. The class will engage in a series of close readings of these canonical texts. Students will be required to write short response papers to the readings.

Course Schedule

  • Date: Monday 2:00-5:00PM
  • Location: KT 205

Course Information

  • Catalog number-Section number: 908-01
  • Course Type: Seminar
  • Prerequisites: None
  • Credits (min/max): 3/3
  • Subjects:

Enrollment

  • Enrollment status: Open
  • Current enrollment/capacity: 16/18
  • Reserve population/capacity: 0/0
  • Waitlist enrollment/capacity: 0/50

Grading

  • Grade basis: Graded
  • Satisifies Writing Requirement: No
  • Exam type: NO EXAM