Jinee Lokaneeta is an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Drew University and a CULJP board member.

In this blog post, I want to share the introduction of a new minor in Law, Justice, and Society and the discussions and processes that led to the successful passage of the minor at Drew University, a liberal arts college in Madison, NJ. Similar to many other institutions, there was a long history of many law courses being primarily offered in the political science department such as Civil Liberties, Constitutional Law and Civil Rights, International Law and there was a list of recommended courses mostly for pre-law students that also included a few courses from other departments – on ethics, logic and criminology for example. The major criteria for such a list was to cater to students who were interested in getting into law school. Even though we made it clear that there is no recommended major for law school, political science continued/continues to be one of the popular majors that are considered by students interested in law school though it has also changed over time. In such a context, how does one introduce a minor that explicitly asks students to take courses across different disciplines and think of law not just as being for students interested in law school but that linked integrally to questions of justice. As the description of our minor states “Law emerges out of struggles over social, political and cultural values; law affects different communities differently; and law shapes society and is shaped by it.” Further, how does one explain that a more interdisciplinary perspective on law is beneficial for those interested in a legal career as well? 

We had some really wonderful conversations across faculty from different disciplines about the need for such a minor. One major impetus for initiating the conversation on the minor for our college was a chance to hear about the Consortium for Undergraduate Law and Justice Programs and have a chance to present an early version of the proposal at a Consortium meeting a few years ago. The possibility of joining a number of universities that were offering a variety of programs – some majors and others minors and concentrations – allowed one to imagine a space where such an initiative at Drew could be a way to become a part of a shared community. 

Building the Minor  
Over time, a menu of courses that approach law from different perspectives and a more conducive institutional milieu paved the way for the minor. The minor was finally passed in 2016 and currently has courses from 7 different departments in the college of liberal arts and one from the theological school, making it a really exciting initiative. While the majority of the courses still continue to be from the Department of Political Science and International Relations, it also reflected some of the unique features of the department’s offerings – for instance our United Nations semester where students study the UN in close proximity of the space in New York city and also attend some of the events associated with the UN. In addition, courses on International Human Rights; Torture; Gender and Human Rights; on Policing, State and Security also add to the richness of the discussions on law and political science. Occasional courses on Cultural Diversity and the Law also bring together different challenges posed by culture to legal cultures and institutions. But the success of the minor really depends on courses that are emerging from other disciplines and in recent years colleagues have introduced courses on U.S. Legal History; Laws and Trials in Ancient Society; Human Rights in Literature and Film; Law and Literature; Mass Incarceration and Economic Justice; and Censorship and Russian Literature. Currently we just have one course that puts it all together to help students make sense of the minor – Law, Justice and Society – that introduces students to a field of interdisciplinary legal studies. In my next post(s), I want to discuss the structure of the core course, the Minor, and more broadly the vision of interdisciplinary legal studies and the challenges therein. For now, I am just excited that the minor has finally passed. 

Renee Cramer is associate professor and chair of Law, Politics, and Society at Drake University; she is also President of the Consortium for Undergraduate Law and Justice Programs.

What is Law, Politics, and Society?

My department at Drake University: Law, Politics, and Society, is an interdisciplinary undergraduate legal studies program.

That’s a mouthful.

I find, as chair and professor, that much of my work with prospective students, current students, and … yes … our graduating students is to help them understand what our major is – and how to translate that major, and the knowledge and skills they develop within it, to their parents, to potential employers, and to graduate programs.

When our faculty revised our curriculum a few years ago, we did so with a large amount of willed ignorance about the name of the major – and a considerable amount of attention to the learning objectives we have for our students.  We used to try to be sure students took a specific number of courses that were “political,” a certain number that were focused on “society,” and a certain set of courses that were “legal.”  When we revised the curriculum, we realized that our faculty didn’t see those divisions starkly, and that we didn’t want to encourage our students in that mindset, either.  Rather, we focused on what we hoped that students should be prepared to do, by the time they left our major. 

Our goals for student learning include graduating students who can:

• participate actively as citizens in civil society;
• read and understand legal texts, court decisions, and theoretical writing, and use those texts effectively to convey complex ideas and arguments in writing;
• know and articulate the difference between law as a professional practice and law as a topic of interdisciplinary, undergraduate liberal arts inquiry;
• demonstrate awareness of how issues of justice, morality, authority, order, legitimacy, individualism, and community create tensions within ordered social life;
• explain how historical development and different cultural practices, social organizations, and political systems affect law and justice around the world;
• assess critically how people interpret, respond to, and experience law and the legal system based on factors such as race/ethnicity, class, gender, and religion;
• deploy contemporary legal, critical, and/or interpretive theories in their own analysis of political, social, or legal events or situations.

And, we agreed that the best ways to help students accomplish this learning included encouraging all classes to include interdisciplinary readings, discussion-based classrooms, and writing-focused assignments. 

In other words: we agreed with Austin Sarat and others, that a strong liberal arts foundation was the best way to achieve our goals, and to prepare students for life after college – whether or not they enrolled in law school.

What sets our major apart from other reading- and writing- intensive majors is simply our focus on issues of power as constructed through law.  What sets it apart from public law within political science, or other more traditional understands of law, is our insistence that law is located in both the formal and informal realms, and our desire – rooted in a law and society tradition – to decenter courts from the study of law, to recognize legal pluralism, and to investigate the contingent and constitutive relationships between law, politics, and society.

Most prospective students simply want to know: is this a pre-law major?  With the decline in law school enrollments, I do get this question less frequently – but it still comes up at every admitted student day.  Because any major could be a good pre-law major, the answer is both yes, and no.  It’s also a pre-teaching certificate major, a pre-Masters of Social Work major, a pre-political campaign job major, etc.   Our students go on to a range of careers – it is our hope that they go into them understanding the value of interdisciplinary perspectives on law, and prepared to think in complex ways about the complex relationships they will encounter between the component parts of the major: law, politics, and society.

I’m curious:

• What do your majors and programs focus on?  
• How do you achieve your goals for student learning? 
• To what extent do liberal arts traditions inform what you do? 
• Where is the role of the humanities in your students’ education?  

​Let’s chat – in comments!