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Teaching Law & Society Through a Transnational Lens

In her recent book, Law and Societies in Global Contexts, Eve Darian-Smith (2013) argues that mainstream law and society instruction has too often limited the scope of “society” to that within the domestic nation-state. This has not been because of narrow foresight, however.  Rather, it was because the field of socio-legal studies was largely shaped by a set of political horizons within which the nation-state predominated as the central scale of social justice claims. Socio-legal scholars have therefore often taught their students about the heroic struggles for rights and equality by labor activists, women, people of color, and queers in seeking recognition or redistribution from the nation state. Yet in the face of an administration that has both amassed its power by rebuking these victories and also seems to foreclose future possibilities of protection, how might we use this as an opportunity to reconsider how we teach about law and society?

Teaching Law & Society in a transnational perspective means situating American law within a history of settler colonialism, a legacy that has persisted most visibly in the recent struggle at Standing Rock. Scholars of settler colonialism have revealed the enduring material logics of sovereignty and offer powerful critiques of the symbolic legitimacy of law. The historical continuity of this analytical perspective offers a frame through which to understand the shifting articulations of law, race, control over territory and resources, and larger transnational struggles for political-economic power. 

A transnational perspective also offers our students a new political horizon from which to understand twenty first century challenges of climate change, refugee migration, and global economic inequality. These issues are the result of shifting geographies of power and new technologies of global governance that are not limited to formal legality. Indicators, standards and other forms of “soft law” have all become important sites of contestation.  Hence, a transnational perspective means teaching students about the wide-ranging forms of legality that now exert control.

As we approach the Age of Trump, socio-legal studies is not only poised to help our students better understand the cotemporary political moment, but also equip them for what will surely be a difficult period for people of color, women, queer, and working class people who have long struggled for basic rights and to improve their working conditions. Understanding these struggles through a transnational context will not only reveal the underlying architectures of power through which domination is exercised, but also enlist new allies that will be important in the struggles to come. 

Matthew Canfield is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at New York University, writing his dissertation on food sovereignty and global governance.

If mainstream pundits and scholars weren’t already frightened of Donald Trump, that surely changed during the second presidential debate when he threatened to jail Hillary Clinton. Trump’s off-hand threat to Clinton—“because you’d be in jail”—drew criticism from commentators and scholars across the political spectrum for his clear disregard for the principles of rule of law.  
 
Of course, this was neither the first, nor the only time that he revealed his attitude towards legal principles and conventions. From his unconstitutional calls to round up and deport millions of Muslims, to his rejection of the exoneration of the Central Park 5, to his refusal to abide by the rulings of the National Labor Relations Board, Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he holds the same instrumental view of law that he holds for basic facts.
 
Trump’s legal ideology reflects a worldview that reduces everything down to deal-making. Indeed, with over 3,500 legal actions, Trump is America’s most litigious president. Like a socio-legal scholar, Trump understands that law is an arena where “the haves come out ahead,” using lawsuits to bully his critics and workers. His crude legal ideology could easily be described by the Soviet legal theorist Evgeny Pashukanis’ critique that the Western “concept of justice is drawn from the exchange relationship, and expresses nothing outside of it.”
 
Yet Trump not only exploits law for his own gain, he has also claimed to speak on behalf of it. In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Trump howled “I am the law and order candidate!” against a brooding dark backdrop festooned with American flags. By painting an apocalyptic portrait in which, “The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life,” he drew on the specter of violence and racial anxiety to claim his own authority.
 
Trump’s mimicry of Nixon’s law-and-order rhetoric along with his less-than-subtle racism reflects a world in which some populations—people of color, women, and queers—are more subject to punitive legal measures than others.
 
As we confront the looming horizon of his presidency, how must we address this contradiction? What does this election teach us about law? And, how can we prepare ourselves and our students for the Age of Trump?
 
These questions have been at the top of my mind as I have reflected on the way I teach my undergraduate “Law & Society” course. Trump’s victory came amid a module on law and social change, in which we were examining what historian Carol Anderson has recently termed “White Rage” in response to the Brown decision. While this election appeared to be an echo of the past—a re-entrenchment of white heteropatriarchy in the face of popular uprisings by people of color and legal victories by the LGBT movement—the reduction of this counter-mobilization to racial or sexual antipathy fails to account for the larger political shifts that we are not only seeing domestically, but also globally. 

Anxieties of Power and Racial Populism
 
Seen from a global perspective, Donald Trump’s election, like the Brexit referendum, reflects a rising tide of right-wing political movements that are exploiting popular concerns over declining economic power and long-standing racial anxiety to launch their parties to power. The similarities and shared symbols between these two major votes is instructive.
 
In Britain, Nigel Farage, the former head of the UK Independence Party, stoked the fears of distressed working class Brits about immigrants that, he claimed, were taking over their jobs. Like Trump’s election, the Brexit vote was won by a coalition of white working class voters. Moreover, like Trump’s mantra to “Make America Great Again,” Farage called on Brits make Brexit their “Independence Day” and “take back control.” A giddy photo of Farage and Trump set amidst the gleaming gilded elevator of Trump Tower days after the US election, confirmed Trump’s hope that the US election would be “Brexit times 10.”
 
Both Brexit and Trump—as well as the growing political strength of right-wing nationalist parties in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Brazil—serve as a reminder of the enduring ties between race, national sovereignty, and economic power. Indeed, as post-colonial scholars have demonstrated, sovereignty is often articulated within a grammar of racial difference that serves to secure access to economic resources. In settler colonial states, such as the United States, continued articulations of racial difference are asserted within a global political economic context of declining economic strength.
 
Today, as the economic center of global capitalism pivots away from its former transatlantic axis and domestic economic inequality grows, those workers who once embraced a more egalitarian redistributive economic vision during times of prosperity are now left clinging to the symbolic wages that W.E.B. DuBois referred to as the “psychological wage of whiteness.” (It is no wonder that White Nationalists are now enjoying mainstream popular attention as they celebrate the rise of Trump.) For as economic inequality widens, Trump offered a voice for his white working class supporters’ affective and symbolic sentiments of superiority.
 
As socio-legal scholars, we know that these forms of power—racial, economic, and political—are facilitated by law. Indeed, as critical race theorists such as Ian Lopez have demonstrated, race is a socio-legal construction that has been constituted physically, symbolically, and materially through the violence of law.  Global trade agreements, campaign finance laws, voter suppression, and mass incarceration are critical sites of law that were crucial in constructing neoliberalism. In an Age of Trump, Brexit, and other movements of right-wing populism, these sites will remain essential in constructing new racialized regimes of power.
 
In short, Trump’s election reminds us that we cannot teach Law & Society solely within a domestic context. To do so reproduces a narrative of American exceptionalism that conceals the relationship between race, power, and global political-economic formations. Perhaps more importantly, however, it prevents our students from understanding the global coalitions of solidarity that are increasingly important within a context of global interdependence and governance.

In New Orleans last June, as part of the Law and Society Association's annual meeting, the Consortium sponsored three professional development panels meant to serve people at teaching-centered institutions, within undergraduate studies programs everywhere, and who are graduate students and faculty interested in pedagogy and student research.   As part of the program, we sponsored a Teaching Café, featuring ideas from faculty at a range of institutions who use moot courts, mock trials, legislative lobbying, citizen-police training, and so much more to engage students in an immersive undergraduate legal studies education.
 
A second panel focused on the relationship between legal studies and the law school environment, from the perspective of undergraduate faculty.  In conversation with audience members, the panelists noted the diversity of student expectations for undergraduate legal studies: many want to go to law school, some into the field of criminal justice, and some go directly into the workforce.  Still others hope to pursue doctoral education in a field related to “law and society.”  Given this varied set of expectations from our undergraduates, as well as our institutional relationships (to law schools and offices of admissions, for example), and our own intellectual commitments, how can we best serve our students in learning about the connections between law, society, and culture?
 
CULJP also sponsored a panel on landing a law and society job at a teaching-centered institution.  This panel was exceptionally well-attended, with nearly fifty attendees interested in thinking about the job search process.  Our panelists, from both teaching-centered and research-oriented institutions, represented a range of professional identities – from newly hired faculty to department chairs and deans. Those who attended the panel asked a variety of questions that ranged from how to prepare a teaching statement for a job in an interdisciplinary department, to how to present oneself in a cover letter, to the benefits and drawbacks of applying for jobs not specifically listed as law and society but that have the potential to allow scholars to continue to do law and society work within specific disciplines.
 
Were you an attendee or panelist at one of these professional development events at Law and Society 2016?  If so, what did you find most useful?  What did you learn?  Answer in comments to keep the dialogue alive – and look for more opportunities like this to connect, in Mexico City 2017!

​The Consortium of Undergraduate Law and Justice Programs is very pleased to announce the inaugural winners of the Teaching Innovation Award, Shannon Portillo (University of Kansas) and Danielle Rudes (George Mason University). This award recognizes Professors Portillo and Rudes for their excellence and innovation in interdisciplinary legal studies teaching.
 
The Awards Committee was particularly impressed by their development of the BURST model (Building Undergraduate Research Skills and Techniques), which provides students with the opportunity to consume and produce legal studies scholarship in a capstone course setting. In this model, students conduct original research, with paper writing occurring in an iterative process in which students gather feedback from faculty and peers throughout the semester. This has been an incredible success, as it has increased student learning and resulted in numerous conference paper presentations and publications. Moreover, Professors Portillo and Rudes have been exceptionally generous with regard to sharing their research kit with other legal studies faculty, a model of collegiality to be emulated.

Joanna Grisinger is an Associate Professor of Instruction at the Center for Legal Studies at Northwestern University and a CULJP board member.

I know I’m not the only one thinking about how to use (the now-Tony-award-winning) “Hamilton” in my classroom next year, so I wanted to share some resources I’ve been gathering about the musical. 

First, how to listen? The show is sung-through, so the cast album allows one to listen to (if not see) the complete show. The cast album is streaming on Spotify and Amazon Prime, and is available for purchase on iTunes and Amazon. The 2016 book Hamilton: The Revolution (the “Hamiltome”) contains lyrics and essays about the development of the musical; Lin-Manuel Miranda has provided additional lyrical annotations at genius.com. A lengthy 2015 New Yorker profile of Miranda  provides some background about the creation of the musical, and Miranda’s 2009 performance of the first song at the White House offers a hint of the success to come.  

Source materials for the musical include Joanne Freeman's Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (Yale University Press, 2002), Joanne Freeman, ed., Alexander Hamilton: Writings (Library of America, 2001), and Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton (Penguin, 2004).

The Gilder Lehrman Institute has put together a wealth of essays, primary sources, and teaching materials on Alexander Hamilton. In addition, a huge number of primary sources on the American Revolution and the Constitution are available through Yale's Project Avalon, including the full text of the Federalist Papers. Another great source is the Founders' Constitution ("the Oxford English Dictionary of American constitutional history"), which is fully available online.

Historian Lyra D. Monteiro (Rutgers-Newark) has a critical essay for The Public Historian on “Race-Conscious Casting and the Erasure of the Black Past in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton" (Feb. 2016). Prof. Monteiro's essay elicited thoughtful responses from Jason Allen (New Jersey Council for the Humanities), David Dean (Carleton University), Ellen Noonan (American Social History Project, CUNY), and 
Annette Gordon-Reed (Harvard Law School). Monteiro's own response is here.

Discussion of the politics and historical accuracy can also be found in the Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History, the New York Times and Slate, while an article in Vox argues that “Hamilton is fanfic, and its historical critics are totally missing the point.”

For coverage in podcast form: Backstory with the American History Guys has posted a podcast entitled "Hamilton: A History." The National Constitution Center has posted a podcast entitled "Hamilton, the Man and the Musical," with guests Annette Gordon-Reed (Harvard Law School) and Michael Klarman (Harvard Law School).  

Finally, Richard Primus (University of Michigan Law School) asks, “Will Lin-Manuel Miranda Transform the Supreme Court?” As he suggests, “Within the foreseeable future, a jurisprudence of original meanings may fuel the most progressive constitutional decision making since the days of Chief Justice Earl Warren. Just you wait.”

Updated: 

• R.E. Fulton at Nursing Clio has written on "Hamilton as a Model for Women’s History."
• The New York Times on "The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton" at institutions across New York City; the article contains lots of useful links. 

amThe Consortium is hosting three Professional Development Panels, a CULJP Board meeting, and a coffee (half) hour.  Board members who attend will also be happy to meet with individuals representing member programs, or those who want more information about what we are up to, and how you can be involved.

Thursday, June 2nd, 8:15 – 10:00 am “The Relationship Between Undergraduate Legal Studies and Law School Education, a Perspective from Undergrad Professors” --  NOLA Marriott  Salon D (3rd floor) 

• Chair: Renee Cramer, Drake University   
• Participants: 
• Daniel LaChance, Emory University   
• Jinee Lokaneeta, Drew University   
• Aaron Lorenz, Ramapo College   
• Jamie Rowen, University of Massachusetts, Amherst   

Friday, June 3rd, 2:45 – 4:30pm “Landing a Law and Society Job at a Teaching Institution”
NOLA Marriott Salon D (3rd floor) 
The academic job market is a difficult place to be - and candidates need to think through how to present themselves for a wide array of positions. Interdisciplinary legal studies education is a unique and vibrant field - and applying for jobs within it is different than applying for positions within more standard disciplinary homes at research-focused institutions. This roundtable includes faculty from several undergraduate teaching-centered institutions, who hire often in the fields related to law and society. It also includes faculty who mentor graduate students towards these positions. The roundtable will offer our collective reflections on, and advice for, the job market for these types of positions. We will discuss cover letters, teaching portfolios, the 'job talk' and teaching demonstration, and the intangible things we look for, when evaluating candidates to become our colleagues.

• Chair: Renee Cramer, Drake University   
• Participants: 
• Paul Collins, University of Massachusetts, Amherst   
• Renee Cramer, Drake University  
• Sarah Hampson, University of Washington Tacoma   
• Aaron Lorenz, Ramapo College  
• Anna-Maria Marshall, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign   
• Shannon Portillo, University of Kansas   
• Mary Nell Trautner, University at Buffalo, SUNY   
• Monica Williams, Weber State University   

Saturday, June 4th, 8:30 – 9:30 am  CULJP Board Meeting [Location TBA – check onsite message board]

Saturday, June 4th, 9:30 – 10:00 am CULJP Coffee Hour [Location TBA – check onsite message board] 

Saturday, June 4th, 4:45 – 6:30 pm “Teaching Café” -- NOLA Marriott Bissonet (3rd floor) 
At this "cafe" style panel, you can move from table to table, talking about the different approaches to undergraduate teaching brought by each of the several participants. From lobbying state legislators, to ride alongs with city police, faculty in this cafe engage students in a wide range of experiential learning. They use moot courts, mock trials, and a research lab to immerse their students in undergraduate legal education.

• Chair: Renee Cramer, Drake University   
• Participants:
• Jean Carmalt, John Jay College of Criminal Justice   
• William Garriott, Drake University   
• Lauren McCarthy, University of Massachusetts Amherst   
• Danielle Rudes, George Mason University   
• Mihaela Serban, Ramapo College of New Jersey  
• Lori Sexton, University of Missouri, Kansas City  
• Michael Yarbrough, John Jay College (CUNY)   

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. 

Marah Schlingensiepen is a senior in the University of Kansas School of Public Affairs & Administration as well as an Undergraduate Research Assistant on the Sociolegal Justice Project.
 
As we enter into the latter portion of our undergraduate careers, we start to ponder the things that have deeply interested us thus far while simultaneously being encouraged from many different people to start giving thought to what's next. And the thought is exciting. It was thrilling to think about my endless options. Did I want to take time off? Was I prepared and excited to enter the workforce? Or was I interested in pursuing a graduate degree? My plan was to apply to graduate schools. 

After acknowledging that research was the highlight of my undergraduate years, and many conversations with great mentors, I decided to apply for doctoral programs. As I entered the application phase, the excitement wore off just a little bit because it is draining. How am I supposed to adequately present myself to this institution? There is no doubt about it; the application phase is a difficult several months. Between taking the GRE, writing personal statements, continually editing my writing sample, meeting with professors for frequent advice, gathering letters of recommendations and still being enrolled in 19 credit hours and working part-time, my excitement wore off a little bit. But once those applications were all submitted, I felt intense relief and total excitement. I had applied, and I was officially a part of the waiting game. It was a time during which I could simply imagine myself attending these various doctoral programs, and it felt wonderful.
 
For students who are part of the application phase, or who may soon be a part of that phase, ask a lot of questions. Ask your peers who may have just gone through it, and ask your professors. Because, as I was continually reminded, questions are totally normal. I had hundreds of them, and that is okay. Furthermore, make sure you are managing your time well. It is helpful to set time aside each week, dedicated purely to application materials, so that by the time the deadlines are approaching, you are way ahead of the game. And finally, remember that this is only a part of the process. 

And here I am, rejected from two of those programs, accepted by four, and still waiting on two. I am incredibly excited, yet also thoroughly terrified. Where will I be living in a few short months? How do I know whether I am making the right decision? As everyone offers completely different advice, I find it tough to digest it all. And I think that this is probably normal, too. But through this phase, with which I am not yet done, I have learned the importance of talking it through with those who have just been through it. It's tough. What do I decide? There is a lot at stake, and this is a huge decision; it will definitely have an impact on the rest of my life. So I am still learning to continue to ask questions, but it is harder to take in the answers. This is partially due to the wide range of emotions that comes with this time period, but it is also due to the fact that everyone has had different goals for themselves, different experiences, and different outcomes, and I don't know where I quite fit in or with whom I align most. So it is critical to remember that this is my decision, and that my experience is unique. I look forward to the recruitment weekends for each of the programs to which I have been accepted thus far, and I have a huge decision to make in the very near future.

This phase is exhilarating, terrifying, joyous, anxiety-ridden, and still a part of the great unknown. I wish the best of luck to all others who may find themselves in this wonderful situation, and I am so grateful to my exceptional mentors, my incredibly supportive and reliable research colleagues that became close friends, and all of my loved ones who have been intimately involved, by default, in this long process.

Nicole Humphrey is a senior in the School of Public Affairs & Administration at the University of Kansas, McNair Scholar, and Undergraduate Research Assistant on the Sociolegal Justice Project.
 
Mentorship is an essential component when developing scholars, but much of the scholarship on mentorship provides mentors with broad directions about how to successfully execute mentoring relationships. Kram (1988) proposes that mentorship falls within two main channels: career functions and psychological functions.[1] Although this information is helpful in providing mentors with general guidance about what their roles need to encompass, it does not provide specific insights on how they can create and maintain productive and beneficial relationships with their students. I’m currently working on a long-term project exploring best practices in mentoring by gathering data from mentors and mentees, but here I draw on my own experiences to provide some quick pointers on practices my mentor uses that I find helpful.

1. Connect your students with other students.
 
My mentor uses a nested mentoring model. If you’re interested in reading more about the model see: http://www.culjp.com/blog/portillo-nested-mentoring.
Here, I’ll provide a quick summary about why I think it works. When I joined my mentor’s research team, I joined at the same time as another student, Phyllis*. Having Phyllis made the initial process of starting research much easier. Along with having Phyllis, there were two students who had been working on the project for the past year, Angela and Meredith. The senior research assistants had more experience than Phyllis and I, but they were in our same position not long ago, so they were able to provide a lot of insight on the process and answer questions that we didn’t want to bother our professor with. This structure provided me with support and accountability – two essential components to completing any research project.  

2. Tell your students what you actually do at work.
 
When I started college, I didn’t know that professors had obligations outside of teaching. I eventually learned that professors conduct research, but I still had no idea what the process actually entailed. After joining my mentor’s research team, I quickly figured out that research is a process… a really long process. You have to understand current and past literature, gather data, determine the findings of your data, triple check to make sure your findings are correct, write so many drafts of a paper that you lose track of which draft you just finished writing, and then present your work. And this is just what I’ve gathered about the research process so far. I assume there will be more to learn in the future.  
 
When mentoring students pursuing research careers, tell them what you do every day. Tell them about difficult situations you’ve faced while teaching, how you stay motivated carrying-out a long research project, and cultural norms within your field that they will one day be expected to follow.

3. Show that you had to develop your research skills.
 
A few weeks ago, I was reading The Administrative State by Dwight Waldo. The complexity of the book was starting to frustrate me to the point that I had few intentions of finishing it. To help me understand the main concepts, my mentor sent me a paper she wrote her first-year of graduate school that covered the book’s major themes. Before I could open the document, she was sure to tell me not to send it to anyone because it wasn’t very good. She was right... it wasn’t very good. The writing in that paper looked nothing like the writing I’ve seen in her published articles. This sounds irrational, but I assumed that my mentor showed up to her first-day of grad school able to write published articles. I was wrong, and I’m really happy I was wrong. Seeing that it took time for her to improve her writing skills gives me a lot of hope for my own abilities.

 
[1] Kram, K.E. (1988). Mentoring at Work. New York: University Press of America.
 
*I’ve used pseudonyms throughout to protect the privacy of other students on the team.

We are pleased to announce that nominations are now open for two awards sponsored by the CULJP.

• The 2016 Best Undergraduate Student Paper Award in Interdisciplinary Legal Studies, which recognizes the research and writing accomplishments of undergraduate students. 
• The 2016 Teaching Innovation Award recognizes excellence and innovation in interdisciplinary legal studies teaching. 

Information on both can be found here - the deadline for nominations for this year's awards is March 28, 2016. Please spread the word!