JURISPRUDENCE*
Professor William R. Long; Fall 2005
Willamette University College of Law
[*Click here for the 2004 Syllabus]
The purpose of this class is to study various theories about the purpose and function of law in the Anglo-American legal tradition. After an introduction to the subject, we will commence with a famous legal hypothetical and a classical statement of the nature of law and justice from ancient Greece (Plato's Republic). Then we will study five major jurisprudential movements: natural law theory, positivism, formalism, legal realism and post-modernism. After the sixth week of the course, we will focus on themes in American jurisprudence. The final three classes will be devoted to student mini-presentations on selected topics in jurisprudence. Thus, while our interest will be in legal theory, the approach will be largely historical.
Instructor: William R. Long, Office 452. Phone is (503) 370-6411. Email is blong@willamette.edu. My web page, which you are on, will have several essays on topics covered in the class as the semester progresses.
Class Expectations: (1) Regular attendance and informed participation, (2) EITHER a twenty-minute presentation of one topic in-class which will turn into your final paper (around 15 pages) OR a written critique (3-5 pages) of another student's presentation and sustaining a 2-hour final written examination. Classroom participation/general alertness will count 15% toward the grade, oral presentation or critique 20% and final paper or exam will be 65%. If you do a paper, you have the following deadlines, all by the beginning of class. For paper topic, with preliminary (5 to 10 source) bibligraphy: September 13. For a thesis page, with points to be discussed, and one of the points researched and written: October 4. For 1/2-2/3 of the paper draft (minimum): November 1. Final copy due: November 22. For those writing a written critique and taking the final, the written critique will be due on the day of the final examination.
Class Meetings: Tuesday and Thursday, 3-4:30 p.m. in Law 216.
Readings/Books: The following titles have been ordered in the bookstore. Other readings will be assigned and either distributed in class, on reserve in the library or available on the Internet. I would like you to use the Grube/Reeve translation of the Republic.
1. Bix, Brian, Jurisprudence: Theory and Context (3d Ed.; Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2004).
2. Plato, The Republic (Trs. by G.M.A. Grube and Revised by C.D. C. Reeve; Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1992).
Course Schedule:
1. WEEK OF AUGUST 22. Introduction to the Course; Thinking about Jurisprudence.
READING: August 23--Dennis M. Patterson, "What is at Stake in Jurisprudence?" 28 Oklahoma City University LR 173 (2003). August 25. There will be no class (I will be out of town), but assignment is to read United States v. Holmes (1842--on Westlaw) and be familiar with the facts of Queen v. Dudley (1884--not on Westlaw, but well-characterized in the reading for August 30, (Part IV).
2. WEEK OF AUGUST 29. A Jurisprudential Legal Hypothetical: The Case of the Speluncean Explorers
READING: August 30--"The Case" on Professor Teuber's Brandeis University web site (Part I). September 1 --continue on the case by reading the internet article by Professor Anthony D'Amato, "The Speluncean Explorers--Further Proceedings," from 32 Stanford Law Review 467 (1980).
3. WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 5. Plato's Republic. Epistemology and introduction to theories of Justice, his place in Greek thought, background information.
READING: September 6 --Republic, Introduction and parts of Books VI and VII (on the Line and the Cave). Pages viii-xviii and 183-193 (Stephanus pages 509d-521c). September 8--Republic, Book I, pages 1-31 (Stephanus pages 327a-354c).
4. WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 12. Plato's Republic (concluded)
READING: September 13 --Republic, Book II, pages 32-59 (Stephanus pages 357a-383c). September 15-- Republic, parts of Book IV, pages 77-93 (Stephanus pages 400e-417b).
5. WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 19. The Natural Law Tradition: St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and William Blackstone (1723-1780).
READING: September 20 --Summa Theologica, First Part of the Second Part. Treatise on Law, Questions 90-97, in The Great Legal Philosophers, ed. by Clarence Morris (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press), 56-79 (on reserve). September 22 --William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Section the Second, (Facsimile of the First Edition, 1765-1769), 38-62 (on reserve).
6. WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 26. The Positivist Tradition and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832).
READING: For both days (September 27 and 29). Jeremy Bentham, A Fragment on Government (1776). The text is about 63 pages long, and can be found here. We will only read pages 1-27 and the notes (## 1-67) on pages 45-58.
7. WEEK OF OCTOBER 3. We only meet on October 4; October 6 is mid-semester break. We will spend one day on trying to understand some of the historical background of the 14th Amendment.
READING: October 4--Finkelman, Paul, "The Historical Context of the Fourteenth Amendment," 13 Temp Pol & Civ Rts. L Rev. 389 (2004), 1.
WEEK OF OCTOBER 10. Legal Formalism, the Concept of the Casebook, the Work of Christopher Columbus Langdell (1826-1906) and the Birth of Legal Realism in the work of Oliver Wendell Holmes.
READING: October 11--Bruce A. Kimball, "Warn Students That I Entertain Heretical Opinions, Which They Are Not To Take As Law: The Inception of Case Method Teaching in the Classrooms of the Early C.C. Langdell, 1870-1883," 17 Law and History Review 57-94, 108-131 (1999) (sections Intro-IV and VI). This article can be found on the Internet also. October 13--O.W. Holmes, "The Path of the Law" (on the Internet or at 10 Harvard Law Review 457 (1897) and on reserve)
9. WEEK OF OCTOBER 17. American Legal Realism (1890-1935).
READING: October 18--Feldman, Stephen, American Legal Thought, 105-115 (on reserve); R. Pound, "Mechanical Jurisprudence," 8 Columbia Law Review 605-623 (1908); October 20--Bix 177-187; Excerpt from Jerome Frank, Law and the Modern Mind (on reserve), and excerpt from the American Law Institute's web page on the early history of the Restatement Movement.
10. WEEK OF OCTOBER 24. Legal Process; the Administrative State; and the Expansive Jurisprudence of the Warren (and early Burger) Court.
READING: October 25--Feldman, 115-123. October 27--Feldman, 124-129, 137-149; familiarity with Brown v. Board of Education; Griswold v. Connecticut; Roe v. Wade.
11. WEEK OF OCTOBER 31. Twentieth Century Shapers of Jurisprudence.
READING: For entire week (November 1 and 3)--Bix, 33-117;
12. WEEK OF NOVEMBER 7. Post-modernism, including a brief consideration of the various "isms" of jurisprudential thought in the last 35 years: feminism, critical legal studies, "lat crit," and critical race theory.
READING: For the entire week (Novmeber 8 and 10)--Feldman, 162-187; Bix, 217-236.
13 and 14. WEEKS OF NOVEMBER 14 and NOVEMBER 21 (class only on November 22).
Student Presentations/Discussion. Each presenter will be required to distribute (or get to me for copying the week prior to the presentation) no more than 10 pages of text for the rest of the class to read in preparation for the presentation.
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Copyright © 2004-2007 William R. Long
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