Law & Anthropology

LAW

795

Law & Anthropology

At law school, we learn that law comes from courts and legislatures, and is applied and enforced by courts, police, prisons. But, in real life, if by law we mean a body of rules that a group of people generally agree on and that most of the people in the group obey most of the time - or if by law we mean a process of settling disputes and maintaining social order - then law occurs in many settings. There is a law of the classroom: some of it is written (the syllabus is a set of rules - of laws for the class); some of it is oral ("will the student at the end of the back row please answer the next question"); some of it is not even spoken (think about how students settle into the same seat in the classroom for every class; the seats are not officially assigned, no one says anything about it; but but we all know not to sit in someone else's seat). Law & Anthropology is an exploration of the law in different settings - in labor unions, church groups and other organizations; among the Amish and other sub-societies, separate and yet a part of the larger, dominant American society; and, most importantly, within the traditional cultures of Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, Africans and other peoples who have managed for centuries, without a governing structure that includes separate law-making, law-applying and law-enforcing institutions (like legislatures, courts and police) to govern themselves, to keep people working and living peacefully (for the most part) together; to resolve arguments and to punish members of the society who break the rules or injure others. There is much to be learned from this exploration that is useful to us as lawyers and law students - because the same social processes that go into law-making and law-enforcing in those seemingly non-law societies actually exist within our own legal system, and we will, of course, analyze that. The course will be run as a seminar. You will each be responsible, either alone or in a group of your own choosing, to lead one of the class sessions. You will get a lot of assistance from me in planning for and carrying out that session. You will be graded on that presentation but mostly on the paper you will write for the course.

Fall, Spring

Law

No