Courses

Core Courses

LPS 001: INTRO LAW, POLITICS, AND SOCIETY, 3 credit hrs.
Introduction to the systems, practices, and intersections of law, politics, and society, as well as the various scholarly approaches to the study of those systems, practices, and interactions.

LPS 002: CRITICAL CONCEPTS IN LPS, 3 credit hrs.
In this course, students will be introduced to the critical concepts underpinning the study of Law, Politics, and Society. Students will engage in learning about concepts such as ideology, justice and injustice, jurisprudence, globalization, inequality and equality, community, authority, legitimacy, and individualism. Students will also engage in the study of concepts key to understanding the workings of the major; they will learn about intentional interdisciplinarity, critical analysis, the perceived "law/politics divide," comparative and historical research, and the idea of paradigmatic transition.

LPS 100: LPS PERSPECTIVES IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, 3 credit hrs.
This course uses case law as a jumping off point for the application of interdisciplinary knowledge. In it, students examine particular strands of United States constitutional law, using historical, journalistic, political science, sociological, and other disciplinary modes to understand the development of doctrine over time, and the impact of law on public life. Required for majors.

To see what topics have been taught in previous semesters, or to see what topics are being taught in the current semester, go to Drake's Course Catalog, and select "Continue to Schedule of Classes." You can then enter a semester term from the drop down box, and enter "LPS" in the subject criteria and click "search."

LPS 190: SENIOR SEMINAR, 3 credit hrs.
The senior seminar in Law, Politics, and Society is the required capstone course for those graduated with the major. Restricted to seniors and majors.

Electives

LPS 031: LAW & THE BORDERS OF BELONGING, 3 credit hrs.
Who is fully American? What happens to people who are not fully American? Often, law has provided the vocabulary for asking these questions, and defined the consequences for the answers. This course focuses on times and places when law has sometimes been a force for injustice in American history. We will pay particular attention to discrimination against people due to their gender, disability status, sexuality, and race. We will also discuss the ways law is both informed by and helps create social identities within American culture more broadly.

LPS 035: SPECIAL TOPICS IN LPS (Lower Division), 3 credit hrs.
Units of study focusing on introduction to special topics, debates, and issues within the field of Law, Politics, and Society.

LPS 038: LAW AND ORDER, 3 credit hrs.
The production of order is one of the primary functions attributed to law. Today, criminal law and the institutions of criminal justice are accorded a privileged place in the performance of law's ordering function. This course provides an introduction to the contexts in which crime, criminal law, and criminal justice operate. The focus will be on the United States, but attention will likewise be given to contemporary efforts to extend the criminal justice paradigm into the international context. Proceeding in this way, this course will examine the strengths and limitations of the conventional criminal justice paradigm and develop a broader appreciation of the role played by crime and criminal justice in law's performance of its ordering function.

LPS 040: PUBLIC TRIALS, 3 credit hrs.
This introductory course examines widely reported and sensational trials as public performances of law. The course considers such trials as a significant form of public discourse by studying controversies surrounding the reporting and representation of trials, issues that arise in and through popular trials, as well as the dynamics of the trials themselves. In a broad sense, the course is about the meanings of law in American society and about the definitions of American society revealed in legal disputes.

LPS 111: CRIME & FILM, 3 credit hrs.
Why do people commit crime? This is one of the most fundamental questions facing any society and its justice system. In this course we use film to survey the various explanations of crime put forward by scholars. At the same time, we will examine how film provides its own explanations of crime, shaping public attitudes in the process. This dual focus will also allow us to think reflexively about how our consumption of media shapes our thinking about crime and, in turn, our thoughts on law, justice and related matters.

LPS 113: LAW AND SOCIAL CHANGE, 3 credit hrs.
This course examines the role of law in helping to create (or block) social change, the use of legal mobilization by social movement activists, and the profession of "cause lawyering." Our focus will be on the development of legal mobilization efforts in the United States, with the potential for a comparative examination of cause lawyering and legal mobilization across the globe.

LPS 120: MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION, 3 credit hrs.
The movement to legalize marijuana continues to expand. What was once a fringe political issue is now the subject of serious mainstream debate. Proponents frame legalization as both a justice issue and an economic opportunity. Opponents express concern about increased use of a substance that has been illegal for so long. In this course we will explore the current debate over legalization. We will examine the history of laws governing the cannabis plant; survey various approaches to legalization, including medical, adult use, and decriminalization; and identify the values informing different perspectives. We will conclude by using what we have learned to write our own policy proposals.

LPS 131: WHO BOSSES WHOM AND HOW?, 3 credit hrs.
Employers and the need for employment are significant factors that shape the lives of a great many people. This power in people's lives is in many respects private, rather than public. This class will investigate the role of law in regulating and maintaining the authority of employers and the need for employment. More broadly, we will treat the focus on employment as a case study through which to address larger questions about the relationship between law, social class, and private centers of authority.

LPS 133: DRUGS, LAW, AND SOCIETY, 3 credit hrs.
This course examines the social, legal, and political dimensions of drugs, drug use, and drug regulation, focusing on the United States in a global and comparative perspective. A full range of drugs, both legal and illegal, will be discussed. Topics include: the historical development of drug policy in the United States, including the War on Drugs; the production, distribution, and consumption of different types of drugs; drug addiction; therapeutics and recovery; the cultural construction of drugs and drug user identities; attempts to regulate drugs and drug users and their place in the context of state-making; the impact of drug regulations on the legal system, particularly criminal justice; and alternatives to contemporary drug policy and politics.

LPS 135: SPECIAL TOPICS IN LPS, 3 credit hrs.
Units of study focusing on special topics, debates, and issues within the field of Law, Politics, and Society. Prereq.: LPS 001 or permission of instructor.

LPS 136: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, 3 credit hrs.
The legal systems that govern the use of intangibles or non-physical forms of property, known as intellectual property (IP) laws, structure and regulate the way we entertain ourselves, obtain our news, choose our fashion, and get access to education, food, medicine, and art. Intangibles properties, thus, manifest as cultural and material forms permeating our everyday lives. Such legal protections turn musical compositions, artistic expressions, software, films, logos, compositions of matter, chemical fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, medical treatments, computer chips, celebrity images, food names, and even seeds into commodities with market value. But where does the information that goes into such creative work come from and how do we gain access to it? And who benefits from it? How would anything new and creative come into being unless there were cultural resources available for us to transform? This course explores these questions through their historical and contemporary socio-legal examples, emphasizing concepts such as the 'commons', 'information capitalism', and 'commodification'.

LPS 137: AMERICAN INDIAN LAW & POLITICS, 3 credit hrs.
This course examines contemporary issues in American Indian law and politics, among them: casino ownership, environmental stewardship, electoral politics, cultural protection and revitalization, tribal courts, and territorial sovereignty. in all of these cases, there are debates about the proper role for tribal people, tribal governments, federal and state entities, and the non-Indian public. In this course, we will focus on several arenas: tribal cultural spaces, tribal public representations, courtrooms and Congress, academia, and the media. We will attempt to understand the competing worldviews of those engaged in these dialogues about tribal sovereignty and survival, and the very real economic and political interests at stake in these debates. In some of these cases, the debate hasn't moved forward, and the issues lack acceptable resolution; in other cases, productive dialogue has created truly innovative solutions to seemingly intractable problems of poverty, powerlessness, and racism.

LPS 138: REPRODUCTIVE LAW AND POLITICS IN U.S., 3 credit hrs.
This course will introduce students to the case law, national politics, and grassroots movements surrounding a number of issues within "reproductive politics" in the United States. It focuses on the nature of the debate, and asks if there are issues around which people may find agreement, particular voices that have not been heard, and policies that have not been explored.

LPS 142: LAW AND SOCIETY IN CHANGING CLIMATE, 3 credit hrs.
This course will address the overlap between law, society and climate change with a specific focus on how and to what extend law can or could respond to ""ruptures"" of this magnitude. Broadly the course is structured around the way we use law to make cultural meaning, to structure access to resources and to allocate or resist power. Topics to be addressed in-depth include physical displacement of humans and other animals and the legal and social responses to those movements; the idea of displacement of responsibility and the deferring of crisis management from older to younger generations, and from wealthier, more powerful states to those with less; and the role of law and hope.

LPS 147: UNCOMFORTABLE TRANSACTIONS, 3 credit hrs.
People often buy and sell body parts, bodily fluids, corpses and other people. Sometimes these transactions are legal and sometimes they are illegal. Either way, these economic exchanges often make us uneasy because of our beliefs about what is and is not appropriate to buy and sell. In this class we will examine activities like the slave trade, prostitution, the organ trade, commercial surrogacy, and the sale of plasma, semen, and human eggs. Through historical, contemporary, and theoretical work, we will investigate these transactions and ask what they can tell us about the relationships between law, markets, and culture.

LPS 155: CLASS, RACE, GENDER AND LAW, 3 credit hrs.
Critical, Critical Race, and Feminist Legal Theories represent new (from the 1970s until the contemporary period) ways of thinking about and understanding the role of law in our lives. This course will introduce students to the foundational work in these realms as well as newer extensions of the theory via critical disability, queer, and intersectional analyses.

LPS 199: DIRECTED RESEARCH AND READING IN LPS, 3 credit hrs.
This course enables students to engage in directed reading and research in the field of Law, Politics, and Society. Supervised by faculty in the major.

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