Course Outline**

Section II: Race and Restitution Section III: The Gendered Body Section IV: War Crimes & Political Trials Section V: Corporations and Culture on Trial

 

I.  INTRODUCTION:

The U.S. Justice System

 

Week 1: August 24-August 26

Introduction to the course and each other

Talking about race, class and gender, part 1: O.J. Simpson (1994)

Reading for discussion 8/26: No Equal Justice (Introduction); U.S. Constitution (text with annotations available at www.findlaw.com/casecode/constitution)

 

Week 2: September 2-4

Talking about race, class and gender, part 2: legal definitions of race/miscegenation cases

Reading for discussion 9/2: Peggy Pascoe, “Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideolgies of ‘Race’ in Twentieth-Century America;" Earl Lewis and Heidi Ardizzone, “A Modern Cinderella: Race, Sexuality and Social Class in the Rhinelander Case” (course reader)

Reading for discussion 9/4: Law in America: A Brief History (chapters 1-4)

 

Week 3: September 7-9

Reading for discussion 9/7: Law in America: A Brief History (chapters 5-7)

 

II.  RACE AND RESTITUTION

Historical and Legal Precedents

Plessy v. Ferguson: Legalizing Segregation

Reading for discussion 9/9: Malik Simba, “Gong Lum v. Rice: The Convergence of Law, Race and Ethnicity” (course reader)

 

Week 4: September 14-16

            Library Research Workshop 9/14 -- Meet in Library Electronic Classroom #2204

            Legal Research

 

Week 5: September 21-23

Depression Era Trials

Scottsboro Boys

Documentary: Scottsboro: An American Tragedy (90 min)

 

Week 6: September 28-30

Brown v. Board of Education: Legal Challenges to Jim Crow

After Brown: Enforcing the Decision

 

Week 7: October 5-7

The administration of justice

Reading for discussion 10/5: No Equal Justice (Chapters 1-3)

Critical Legal Theory: Race and Class

Reading for discussion 10/7: No Equal Justice (Chapters 4-7)                                                                        Back to Top

 

III.  THE GENDERED BODY

Week 8: October 12-14

Privacy, sexuality and the law

Documentary excerpt: Bill Moyer’s Constitution

Gender difference and the law: gender, citizenship and work

 

Week 9: October 19-21

Sexual harassment: The Thomas-Hill hearings

Sex crimes trials

Reading: Benedict, Virgin or Vamp

 

 

IV.  WAR CRIMES & POLITICAL TRIALS

Week 10: October 26-28

War Crimes Trials: Nuremberg

Documentary Excerpt: Nuremberg Trials

My Lai in context: the war in Vietnam

 

Week 11: November 2-4

Discussion: All’s fair?--Conventions of war, brutality and justice

Reading for discussion 11/2: My Lai: A Brief History with Documents

Political trials: 1950s

McCarthyism trials: Hollywood Ten, Alger Hiss, Rosenbergs                                                              Back to Top

Documentary excerpt: Hollywood on Trial

 

*Research Prospectus Due November 9*

 

Week 12: November 9-11

Political trials: 1960s-1990s