Instructor(s) Strang, Dean
SELECTED PROBLEMS IN JURISPRUDENCE: LAW, SOCIAL SCIENCES & HUMANITIES. This course, taught in the style of a seminar, will introduce students to the application that a range of both social sciences and humanities studies have to the understanding of law and justice. Students will read some of the best modern writers at the intersection of law and disciplines such as political science, economics, behavioral psychology, moral and political philosophy, and literature. Throughout, we will examine how the methods of social science differ from those of the humanities. As applied to law, the social sciences tend to treat the human being as object, while the humanities tend to treat the human being as subject. Both objective and subjective approaches offer rich insights into the basic role of law in civil society. Students will leave the class with a deeper appreciation of the contributions that other disciplines make to law, and take with them a stronger, more structured intellectual framework and vocabulary with which to consider law’s most fundamental question, justice.