Rhetoric of Legal Philosophy

This course is an introduction to law and jurisprudence. A non-exhaustive list of the themes that it will address is: Law and Society, Freedom and Necessity, The Reach of the Law, The Legal and the Non-Legal, Law and Morality.
An assumption of this course is that jurisprudential issues arise in the context of concrete legal conflicts, and that the reading of actual cases often offers more interesting classroom discussion than reading theories about the principles that the cases are believed to illustrate. Accordingly, although the readings will include theoretical material, the course focus will on the reading and analysis of the jurisprudential issues revealed through a reading of caselaw. We may also consider questions of legal philosophy through the screening of several films.

Required Textbook(s):
Course Reader
Handouts available in class or on class website.

Requirements:

Reading: There is a substantial amount of reading in this course. Mastery of texts, the questions of legal philosophy they raise and their style of argument will require careful and thoughtful reading.
Writing: There will be midterm and final essays.
Class attendance: Because I consider it fundamental to the pedagogy of my classes, attendance is required.