Civil liberties are one of the casualties of war. This course will begin by looking at the loss of civil liberties during World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War. With the benefit of hindsight, we will analyze the current conditions including USA Patriot Act, military commissions, and secret deportation hearings. Satisfies the Integrative Experience requirement for BA-Legal majors.

This practicum course is a collaboration between the University of Massachusetts Police Department's Citizen's Police Academy and the Legal Studies program. The Citizen's Police Academy is a combination of in-class lectures and hands-on experiences through which students learn how police officers are trained and how they do their jobs. Among other things, students will learn about the constitutional limits on police power, how crime scenes are processed and how police deal with active threat situations.

Law assumes facts, creates entities, and conceals aspects of its operation in order to extend or limit the power of courts in deciding cases. Law creates and deploys fictions (e.g. corporate persons, reasonable persons, equal protection, compelling interests) in that endeavor. This social construction of law and legal phenomena may be construed as proper or improper depending upon the power of competing stories and story tellers, as well as how we the audience receives and give life to them.

From academic research on the impact of landmark court cases to the judge reading a brief loaded with social policy arguments, the study of law frequently involves empirical data. In this course, students will both learn how to digest empirical legal research and be equipped with the skills to conduct their own empirical research.

This course examines the role that law and courts have played in shaping, defining, and constructing the concepts of race and American citizenship over time. We will explore topics such as the legal definition of whiteness, racial restrictions in immigration and citizenship law, the 14th Amendment's expansion of citizenship to include former slaves, the legal rights of non-citizens, the ambiguous racial and citizenship status of Native Americans, and the significance of the enduring belief in a colorblind Constitution.

Not available at this time.

Interdisciplinary exploration of basic issues of law's relationship to contemporary society, in which law affects almost all human activity. Topics include the nature as well as historical and social functions of law; the culture and role of major actors in the legal system (lawyers, judges, juries, police, technology); tension between ideals and realities in law; role of law in addressing contemporary social problems.

Interdisciplinary exploration of basic issues of law's relationship to contemporary society, in which law affects almost all human activity. Topics include the nature as well as historical and social functions of law; the culture and role of major actors in the legal system (lawyers, judges, juries, police, technology); tension between ideals and realities in law; role of law in addressing contemporary social problems.

Interdisciplinary exploration of basic issues of law's relationship to contemporary society, in which law affects almost all human activity. Topics include the nature as well as historical and social functions of law; the culture and role of major actors in the legal system (lawyers, judges, juries, police, technology); tension between ideals and realities in law; role of law in addressing contemporary social problems.