SOCIOL 4509:
Sociology of Law

August 23/25

Introduction

• Milovanovic, Introduction
• Trubeck, Mark, “Complexity and Contradiction in the Legal Order: Balbus and the Challenge of Critical Social Thought about Law.” Law and Society Review 11:529 (1976) (OPTIONAL – If you choose to read it, pages 545-555 are the important ones, III – “Critical Social Thought About Law”)
• Matthews, Daniel. (2021). "Law in the Anthropocene." The Critical Legal Studies Pocketbook. Counterpress, Oxford. 62-69.

Aug 30/Sept 1

Durkheim - Introduction

• Milovanovic, Chapter 1

September 6

Durkheim on Contracts and Property

• Sunshine, J., & Tyler, T. (2003). Moral solidarity, identification with the community, and the importance of procedural justice: The police as prototypical representatives of a group's moral values. Social Psychology Quarterly, 66(2), 153.
• Homework 1 - Durkheim

September 8

Introduction to Weber

• Milovanovic, Chapter 2
• Trubek, David M. (1972) "Max Weber on Law and the Rise of Capitalism." Faculty Scholarship Series. 4001. OPTIONAL

Sept 13/15

The Rationality and the Reasonable Man

• Gardner, John. (2015) “The Many Faces of the Reasonable Person.” Law Quarterly Review. 131:563. (This is a long reading, plan for time)
• Homework 2 - Max Weber

September 22/27

Intro to Marx and the Law

• Milovanovic, Chapter 3
• Carvalho, Henrique. (2021). "Concept: Hegemony." The Critical Legal Studies Pocketbook. Counterpress, Oxford. 72-73.
• Balbus, Isaac D. (1977) “Commodity Form and Legal Form: An Essay on 'Relative Autonomy' of the Law” Law and Society Review. 11(3)571-588 (OPTIONAL)

September 29/October 4/6

Cooling the Mark

• Spitzer, Mark. (1974) “Towards a Marxian Theory of Deviance.” Social Problems. 22:638. OPTIONAL
• Goffman, Erving. (1952) “On Cooling the Mark Out.” Psychiatry. 15(4):451
• Blumberg, Abraham (1966) “The Practice of Law as a Confidence Game.” Law and Society Review. 1:15
• Homework 3 - Marx
  • Chambliss, William J. (1964) “A Sociological Analysis of the Law of Vagrancy.” Social Problems. 12(1):67.

October 11/18

Legal Realism and CLS

• Milovanovic, Chapter 4

October 20/25

CRT and Feminist Jurisprudence

• Kelman, Mark. (1981) “Interpretive Construction in the Substantive Criminal Law” Stanford Law Review. 33(4):591-600 only.
• Best, R. K., Edelman, L. B., Krieger, L. H., & Eliason, S. R. (2011). Multiple disadvantages: An empirical test of intersectionality theory in EEO litigation. Law & Society Review, 45(4), 991–1025.
• Butler, Paul. (2014). “Stop and Frisk and Torture – Lite: Police Terror of Minority Communities." Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law. 12:57.

• Homework 4 - Sociological Jurisprudence
  Choose one (1) of the following 4 articles to read:
  • Delgado, Richard. (1982). "Words that Wound: A Tort Action for Racial Insults, Epithets, and Name-Calling." Harvard Civil Rights - Civil Liberties Law Review. 17:133:89.
  • Matsuda, Mari J. (2000). "On Causation." Columbia Law Review. 100: 2195-2220.
  • West, R., Bowman, C. G., & Keren, H. (2019). "Feminism and Contract Law." In Research Handbook on Feminist jurisprudence. (pp. 406–425). essay, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.
  • Rimalt, Noya. (2019). "Against Roe exceptionalism: degendering abortion. In Research Handbook on Feminist jurisprudence. (pp. 264-282). essay, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.

October 27

Introduction to Functionalist Perspectives

• Milovanovic, Chapter 5

November 1/3

Black's Theory of Law & Bridging the Gap between Sociology of Law and Jurisprudence: Natural Law/Positive Law/Morality and Law

• Black, Donald. (1983) “Crime as Social Control” American Sociological Review. 48(1):34.
• Lukina, Anna. (2022) "Making Sense of Evil Law"
• Homework 5 - Black's Theory in Popular Culture

November 15

Introduction to Legal Semiotics

• Milovanovic, Chapter 6

November 17/29

Legal Semiotic Analysis

• Jackson, Bernard. (1998) “Truth or Proof: The Criminal Verdict.” International Journal for the Semiotics of Law. 33(11):227.
• Bilotta, Isabel, et al. (2019) “How Subtle Bias Infects the Law.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science. 15:6.1.
• Backer, Larry. (2015). “A view on A. J. Greimas’s Essay, ‘The Semiotic Analysis of Legal Discourse: Commercial Laws That Govern Companies and Groups of Companies” Excerpt: The Semiotics of the Hobby Lobby Decision. In Signs in Law – A Source Book. Springer. Background on the case
• Homework 6 - Semiotics and The Code of the Street
  • Anderson, Elijah. "The Code of the Streets." The Atlantic. May 1994.

November 29/December 1

Discourse Analysis

• Milovanovic, Chapter 7
• Neill, Calum. (2013) “An Introduction to Lacanian Discourse Analysis” Theory and Psychology. 23(3):334 (OPTIONAL, but helpful)

December 6

Quantum Legal Theory

• Schroeder, Jeanne L. (2000) “The Four Discourses of Law: A Lacanian Analysis of Legal Practice and Scholarship” Texas Law Review. 79:15 (OPTIONAL - good example of using Lacanian Discourse Analysis)
• Shon, Phillip Chon Ho. (2000) “Hey You C’me Here!”: Subjectivization, Resistance, and the Interpellative Violence of Self-Generated Police-Citizen Encounters.” International Journal of Semiotics of Law. 13:159 (OPTIONAL - good example of using Lacanian Discourse Analysis)
• Mannhein, Karl. (draft paper) "Quantum Constitutionalism" (Youtube link)
• Homework 7 - Postmodernism
• Course Reflection