Law, Culture and Society

This course provides a cross-cultural study of law and legal systems with a special focus on language and performance. We look beyond law as a formal code to examine the institutions (courts, village councils, law schools), social actors (lawyers, judges, claimants), performances (trials, testimony), practices (opinions, legal documents) and ideologies that together make up legal systems and through which people engage in dispute. The course also explores the power of language as it is used in courts, legal documents, and law school classrooms to resolve disputes and to construct culturally-specific notions of justice.