Sociology of Law (SOC378)

Spring 2021: This term, the course will be completely online and mostly asynchronous. We will have a weekly synchronous class session (using Zoom) on Tuesdays from 2:00-3:20pm, but most of the work in this course will involve asynchronous online activities using Moodle (for quizzes, wiki work, &tc.) and Packback (for discussions).

The required texts (articles, book chapters, videos, &tc.) for this class will be available online through Moodle and the library, but each student will also participate in a small group that reads a book together and crafts a video presentation (and some quiz questions) for the rest of the class. The following texts are recommended for this purpose:

• Alexander, Michelle. 2020 [2010]. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York, NY: The New Press. ISBN 9781620971932. (Available at the Illini Union Bookstore, as well as other online outlets. See https://newjimcrow.com/ for further information.)
• Carmon, Irin, and Shana Knizhnik. 2015. Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 9780062415837. (Available at the Illini Union Bookstore, as well as other online outlets.)
• Harr, Jonathan. 1995. A Civil Action. New York, NY: Penguin Books. ISBN 9780679772675. (Available at the Illini Union Bookstore, as well as other online outlets.)
• Lessig, Lawrence. 2008. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781408113936. (Freely available online at https://www.scribd.com/doc/47089238/Remix under a Creative Commons license. See https://remix.lessig.org/ for further information.)
• Patterson, James T. 2001. Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780195127164. (Available at the Illini Union Bookstore, as well as other online outlets.)
• Rothstein, Richard. 2017. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York, NY: Liveright Publishing Corporation. ISBN 9781631494536. (Available at the Illini Union Bookstore, as well as other online outlets.)
• Stevenson, Bryan. 2014. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. New York, NY: One World. ISBN 9780812984965. (Available at the Illini Union Bookstore, as well as other online outlets.)

Each student is required to buy or borrow a copy of one of the above books, or another book if the professor gives permission. (If a group of at least three students organizes itself and makes a persuasive proposal to the professor, other books may be acceptable. We will discuss this further at the start of term.)

The Syllabus will be made available at the beginning of the term. Stay tuned...

Revised: 2020.11.30