POS 6933
Law, State, and Society
Spring 2005

Dr. Patricia J. Woods
210 Anderson
pjwoods@polisci.ufl.edu

The course analyzes the judiciary as a state institution in contexts around the globe.  It addresses the increasing participation of courts in decision making on critical political questions, a practice for which courts have been both lauded and vilified since they began to intervene in political questions around the world in great numbers after 1945.  Many of the types of political questions that courts have addressed have centered on rights issues or in other ways on questions of the appropriate relationship between state institutions and society/citizens/communities/individuals.  As such, in addition to studying judicial processes, we will analyze conflicts and tensions between the judiciary and other state institutions, as well as varying ways in which social and judicial actors interact.  The course is primarily a comparative course, but it includes the United States as a case, using American literature that has had a great influence on the way that both Americanists and comparativists study law and courts.

Readings

Most readings are available at Orange and Blue Textbooks, 309 NW 13th Street, 375-2707, including texts and reader.  *The Tate and Vallinder book is not available at Orange and Blue Textbooks. You will need to order it yourself. You can do that through a local book vender. It is also available through on-line vendors, such as: www.amazon.com, www.bn.com, and www.bookfinder.com (prices ranging from $18-$25, used and new, as of first day of class).

  1. Charles Epp. The Rights Revolution: Lawyers, Activists, and Courts in Comparative Perspective. University of Chicago, 1998.
  2. Michael W. McCann.  Rights at Work: Pay Equity and the Politics of Legal Mobilization. University of Chicago, 1994.
  3. Lee Epstein and Jack Knight. The Choices Justices Make. CQ Press 1998.
  4. Joel S. Migdal, State in Society: How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
  5. Russell and O'Brien, eds. Judicial Independence in the Age of Democracy. University of Virginia Press, 2001.
  6. Tate and Vallinder, The Global Expansion of Judicial Power. NYU Press, 1997.*
  7. Tim Koopmans, Courts and Political Institutions: A Comparative View. Cambridge 2003.
  8. Ran Hirschl, Towards Juristocracy : The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism. Harvard 2004
  9. Ginsburg, Judicial Review in New Democracies: Constitutional Courts in Asian Cases. Cambridge 2003
  10. Reader with readings from: Emile Durkheim, E.P. Thompson, Stuart Scheingold, Martin Shapiro, John Henry Merryman, and Gerald Rosenberg.

 

Grade Distribution

10% Participation

10% Presentations in class

30% Abstracts

50% Term paper (bibliographical essay or research paper)

5% First Draft of Term Paper (3 pages) and Presentation of Preliminary Research

10% Second Draft of Term Paper (5-10 pages)

5% Peer Reviews

30% Final Term Paper (20-25 pages)

Participation

As this is a seminar, it will require a high level of participation of all students. You will be expected to come to class having read the readings for the day, having prepared an abstract of the readings, and be ready to talk about the arguments and evidence being presented in the readings. You should come with a question or two about the readings as well. If that goes well, we will keep that as an informal requirement; if not, we will make it a formal requirement (to be turned in).

Presentations

You will be asked to present the readings for a day of class either once or twice. Presentations will be scheduled in the first two weeks of classes. In addition, you will present your research or bibliographical essay in the last two weeks of class.

Abstracts

For each class, you will write an abstract of the readings for that day. In some cases, that will mean one author, in other cases it will mean more than one. When addressing one author, the abstract should include one sentence stating the central argument of the article or book. It should be followed by several sentences in which you explain the argument through three major pieces of evidence presented in support of that argument. The abstract should be 5-7 sentences total (please pay attention to the size constraint!). When addressing two or more pieces, you will generally have one paragraph per piece, which should be woven into an integrated comparative abstract about the pieces together. We will talk more about how to do this in class. The key is that the abstract should be integrated, and each paragraph should be 5-7 sentences each.

Term Paper: Drafts and Peer Reviews

You may choose between a term paper that is a research paper or a bibliographical essay. A research paper should incorporate at least five works (including articles) from class. Indeed, the question driving the paper should come out of a debate that we have discussed or read about in class. Research papers should be 20-25 pages. A bibliographical essay should incorporate all of the readings from class, as well as 3-5 additional readings on a central theoretical issue raised by our readings. The bibliographical essay should be an integrated analysis of how all of these readings are grouped together in response to a central theoretical question in the literature.

You will submit three drafts of your term paper, and you will present it to the class. The first draft will be 3 pages (due 1/27), the second 5-10 pages, and the final 20-25 pages. On the second draft, you will distribute your paper to everyone in class, and each of you will write a review of your colleague's papers, which you will, in turn, submit to them and to me. We will discuss in class the format and content of the peer reviews. You will present your paper in the last two weeks of class.

Final papers are due April 27th at 4 p.m.

 
READING AND ASSIGNMENT SCHEDULE


Week I 1/6 Introductions

STUDYING STATE AND SOCIETY

Week II 1/13 Studying state and society, and sources of political authority

Durkheim (in reader); Migdal


STUDYING LAW AND SOCIETY

Week III 1/20 What are courts and law?

Shapiro (in reader); Merryman (in reader)

Week IV 1/27 Law as political

E. P. Thompson (in reader); Scheingold (in reader)

First draft of term paper due


JUDICIALIZATION OF POLITICS

Week V 2/3 (Meeting Firday 2/4?)

<>The judicialization of politics in the 20th century

Tate and Vallinder -- first half; Martin Shapiro and Alec Stone. "The New Constitutional Politics in Europe" in Comparative Political Studies, Special Issue: The New Constitutional Politics in Europe, 26:4 (January, 1994) 397-421.

Week VI 2/10 The judicialization of politics in the 20th century

<>Tate and Vallinder -- second half

Week VII 2/17 Law and politics in comparative perspective: Britain, France, Germany, and the United States

Koopmans

LAW AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Week VIII 2/24 Why do social movements use courts? How do courts make decisions?

McCann; Woods, selections from manuscript (available in electronic form to class)
Second draft of term paper due

SPRING BREAK WEEK OF MARCH 3RD

Week IX 3/10 Presentations of term papers in progress

Peer Reviews due to fellow students and to me

JUSTICE DECISION MAKING

<>Week X 3/17 How do courts and justices make decisions?
<>Epstein and Knight; Rosenber (in reader); Epp, chapters 1 and 2
<>
Week XI 3/24 The Extent and Limits of the Law
Epp, remainder; The McCann-Rosenberg debate (see article cites below)

<>JUDICIAL POWER
<>Week XII 3/31 Sources of Judicial Power: Judicial Independence and Judicial
<>ReviewRussell and O'Brien selections; Ginsburg
Week XIII 4/7 Sources of Judicial Power: Constitutionalization and "Juristocracy"
<>Hirschl
TERM PAPERS AND CONCLUSIONS
<>
Week XIV 4/14 Paper presentations and conclusions

<>Week XV 4/21  Paper presentations and conclusions

< style="font-weight: bold;">TERM PAPERS DUE 4/27 BY 4 P.M.

The McCann-Rosenberg Debate:

  1. Michael McCann. 1992. "Reform Litigation on Trial." Law and Social Inquiry 17:715-43.
  2. Rosenberg. 1992. "Hollow Hopes and Other Aspirations: A Reply to Feeley and McCann." Ibid.: 761-778.
  3. Rosenberg. 1996. "Positivism, Interpretivism, and the Study of Law." Law and Social Inquiry 21 (Spring):435-56.
  4. McCann. 1996. "Causal versus Constitutive Explanations (or, On the Difficulty of Being so Positive . . .)." Law and Social Inquiry 21 (Spring): 457-82.
  5. Michael Paris and Kevin McMahon. 1998. "The Politics of Rights Revisited: Rosenberg, McCann, and the New Institutionalism." In David A. Schultz, ed., Leveraging the Law: Using the Courts to Achieve Social Change (New York: Peter Lang, 1998):63-134.