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Law and Justice: An Introduction to Social Theory

Law and Justice: An Introduction to Social Theory. LSJ/SIS 362 Prof. Angelina Snodgrass Godoy Autumn 2007. What is law?. a set of rules/norms/standards a moral arbiter a way to solve problems a way to govern society in orderly fashion. What is the connection between law and justice?.

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Law and Justice: An Introduction to Social Theory

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  1. Law and Justice:An Introduction to Social Theory LSJ/SIS 362 Prof. Angelina Snodgrass Godoy Autumn 2007

  2. What is law? • a set of rules/norms/standards • a moral arbiter • a way to solve problems • a way to govern society in orderly fashion

  3. What is the connection between law and justice?

  4. Source: Racial Disparities in Federal Death Penalty Prosecutions 1988-1994Staff Report by the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional RightsCommittee on the JudiciaryOne Hundred Third Congress, Second Session

  5. Economic justice? Ratio of average worker pay to average CEO pay Source: Business Week

  6. Law and Justice • If justice is blind (equal to all), how do we make sense of the injustices around us? Do we need more law? Better law? • Much of the practice of law is based on the presumption that law = justice • The field of law and society studies examines the interaction between the law and social institutions

  7. “Law and Society” studies • To understand the law, need sometimes to look outside the law • Empirical studies • Theoretical studies • In this class, we will read every thinker to examine one question: what is the relationship between law and justice?

  8. Where we’re headed: course overview • Liberalism (Locke, J.S. Mill): • Ideally, law protects individual freedoms • law is justice • law should not go beyond its limited role of protecting individual freedoms to reorder society toward some imagined idea of “the good”

  9. Where we’re headed: course overview • Marxism (Marx, Engels, Gramsci): • Law is an instrument of class domination • Law (in a capitalist society) is injustice

  10. Where we’re headed: course overview • Critical race theory/critical feminist theory: • Not only class domination, but also racial and gender domination, are perpetuated through laws • Liberal law is “gendered”, is “raced” • At the same time, laws can be written in such a way as to actively remedy the injustices by addressing structures of inequality in society

  11. Where we’re headed: course overview • Poststructuralist theory (Foucault): • Law is neither justice nor injustice, but another reflection of the connections between power and knowledge that constrain us, that shape who we are • There is no escape from the house of power, no liberal self “outside” the law: we are defined, produced by the norms that govern us

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