Undergraduate Courses

Legal Studies Course Schedules

WINTER 2026


Legal Studies Courses

course

description

LAW 101

Intro to US Law: Surveys United States legal system: presents structure and methods of the legal system and fundamentals of several substantive areas of law.

LAW 102

Intro to Criminal Law: Explores criminal law and statutes using primary and secondary sources.

LAW 103

Intro to Criminal Investigation: Examines the constitutional limitations on police officers’ authority to detain suspects, search them and their property, and interrogate them.

LAW 104

Intro to Business Law: Examines the context of everyday commerce, shaped by contract, tort, business entity, and securities law, to uncover how the law both affects and is affected by business.

LAW 201

Intro to Environmental Law and Policy: An introduction to environmental policy and law, with an overview of major themes and the regulatory framework. Focuses on community resilience.

LAW 202

Intro to Public International Law: An introduction to the origins, application, and main actors in international law, international institutions, and international legal processes.

LAW 203

Controversies in Constitutional Law: In-depth examination of five to seven landmark Supreme Court cases over the course of the term, spending three to four class sessions on each case.

LAW 204

Immigration and Citizenship: Interdisciplinary study of the way in which the American legal order has constituted citizenship.

LAW 301

Youth and Social Change: Explore how adults act on youth through law, mass media, policy, and social science, while investigating youth as agents of change, acting on their own perspective of law and justice.

LAW 304

American Law and Families: Examines the family through a legal lens: the rules that affect legal relationships among family members and laws related to family property.

LAW 410

Lawyers and the Legal Profession: This course introduces students to the roles of lawyers and legal professionals within the legal system. Students will learn about a variety of types of legal practice, workplace cultures, and professional norms.

LAW 410

Hard Cases [Topics]: This course closely analyzes a landmark Supreme Court case (or group of interrelated cases), situating the case and its legal arguments within a broader legal, political and historical context. 

LAW 410

Media Representation of Law, Justice, and the Legal Profession [Topics]: This course delves into the diverse depictions of law in popular culture (within one selected genre of media), offering students the opportunity to critically evaluate what these portrayals reveal about the legal system and society's expectations of justice. 

LAW 416

Law, Justice and Accountability After Conflict: Historical and theoretical overview of the conflicts and international mechanisms, with a focus on cultural, historical, and legal forces that shape post-conflict peace-building efforts.

LAW 417

The Death Penalty: Explores the use of capital punishment in the United States, focusing on the law governing the death penalty, in the context of the criminal justice system, social science and policy.

LAW 418

Race and the Courts: This course explores the issue of race within American law and jurisprudence through historical and contemporary contexts. Students will gain an understanding of how claims about responsibility, community, rationality, equality, justice, and democracy have been used to justify or resist racial segregation, integration, access, and expulsion. 

LAW 419

Legal Secrets: Examines the different types of information that the law designates as “secret”. 

CRES 101

Intro to Conflict Resolution: Explores up-to-date conflict management theories and practical steps to communicate effectively in sensitive situations.

CRES 415

Conflict and Gender: Focuses on the multiple relationships among conflict, violence, and gender in situations of warfare, militarization, and peacemaking.

CRES 420

Restorative Justice: Provides a critical introduction to the principles and practices of restorative justice.

CRES 435

Israel and Palestine: Examination of the Palestinian and Israeli conflict. Evolution of the political struggle with a broad look at the human side of conflict, and examination of critical negotiation issues.

CRES 445

Conflicts of Incarceration: Issues of crime, incarceration, and justice within the Western context.