PSU Extended Campus Programs
Welcome
| Soc. 410 Society and Law (Meet in classroom first week) |
(4 cr) |
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CRN: |
45053 |
Section: |
R1 |
| Instructor: |
Michael Dawson |
| Day: |
Wednesday |
| Time: |
5:30 - 9:00 p.m. |
| Room: |
Bldg. 2 Room 101 |
| Starts: |
Jan. 6 |
| Notes: |
Meet in class: Jan. 6, 20, Feb. 3, 17, March 3.
Law, as Stanford University Law Professor Lawrence M. Friedman says, is really the same thing as a legal system, a set of laws (statutes, regulations, and case laws) that is created, enforced, and experienced by governments, courts, police forces, jails, lawyers, and ordinary people. As Friedman says, every legal system is a human creation that is plugged into a wider society. That connection runs both ways: the wider society generally determines the structure and evolution of the legal system, but is also itself shaped – often deeply-- by its institutions of law. This is neither a law school course designed to give you arcane knowledge of specific laws nor a shallow survey of a hundred issues in legal sociology. Instead, we will spend 10 weeks struggling to gain improved understandings of what may prove to be the top two legal issues of our century: 1) the deep legal biases underlying American society, and 2) the prospects for the rule of law on a global level.
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Course taught partially online |
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