(Analytic Seminar)

(RESEARCH SEMINAR)  Few twentieth-century intellectuals are as controversial and as influential as the German jurist Carl Schmitt (1888-1985). A prominent critic of liberal democracy during the Weimar Republic (1918-1933), Schmitt generated novel theories of dictatorship, political theology, sovereignty, constitutional law, and emergency powers that were studied closely by all sides of the Weimar political spectrum.

This course proceeds from the premise that both law and cultural production—literature, film, poetry, etc.—condition how we understand, develop, and interact with artificial intelligence (AI). While the term “AI” only emerged in the United States in the 1950s, human fascination with artificially intelligent entities has surfaced in literature since Homer’s epics and continues to animate contemporary cultural production as AI itself advances at a rapid pace.

LJST 278 and HIST 288

LJST 263 and HIST 243

LJST 260 and SWAGS 262

Although, as W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in 1903, the problem of the twentieth century was “the problem of the color-line,” racial segregation remains an intractable feature of American life today. This course will begin with the formal dismantling of racial segregation in the mid-twentieth century. Why, despite the historic convergence of grassroots activism, public opinion, and Supreme Court decision making during the civil rights era, does race- and class-based segregation continue to shape American schools, neighborhoods, and parks?

Fearlessly independent, tenaciously unclassifiable, frequently controversial, and always thought-provoking, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) is without question one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century. Setting aside the conventional interpretation of Arendt as a political theorist, this course will focus on Arendt’s contributions to the study of law, with special attention to Arendt’s unusual inquiries into human rights, international criminal law, constitutional law, and civil disobedience.

The French philosopher Michel Foucault has famously argued that mental illness is a juridical question of the first order, not only because the “mad” are on the receiving end of abuses of power, but also because madness constantly makes claims back to law, throwing into question its most basic precepts.  This course will take up this claim in relation to the making of the legal subject, the formation of legal institutions, and the work of social transformation.  We will also consider how taking pathology seriously as a critical form, drawing on feminist and disability studies, mig

This course will examine the relationship between legal institutions and democratic practice. How do judicial decisions balance the preferences of the majority and the rights of minorities? Is it possible to reconcile the role that partisan dialogue and commitment play in a democracy with an interest in the neutral administration of law? How does the provisional nature of legislative choice square with the finality of judicial mandate?