Law and Government Seminar: An Introduction to Scholarship
Spring term, Block D
Th 9:50 AM - 11:50 AM
Professor Anne L. Alstott
2 classroom credits LAW-96335A
This writing seminar for students interested in a career in legal academia will introduce issues and methods in scholarship in law and government. Each student will be expected to produce a substantial outline or preliminary draft that identifies a topic, metholodogy, and research plan for a publishable paper, i.e., a paper that makes an original contribution to scholarly knowledge. Each student will present his or her work in progress to the seminar. Readings and class discussions will introduce students to a range of scholarship and to the norms of the scholarly community, including the importance of reading broadly across legal fields and choosing topics that are both novel and manageable. Readings will be selected in part based on students' interests and in part to offer examples of different scholarly approaches.
Enrollment is limited to eight students. Professor Alstott will offer sustained, one-on-one engagement with each student's project. She is open to supervising papers on a range of topics in law and government and will assist students in consulting with other professors as students progress in defining specific topics. Substantive areas for student work might include (but are not limited to) social welfare, labor and employment, gender, families, education and child development, health care, administrative law, and the environment.
Admission by permission of the instructor. Students who wish to be considered for the seminar should submit to Professor Alstott via email a transcript and a two-page statement of interest by December 1. In your statement of interest, please discuss three possible paper topics related to law and government. Note that the paper topics need not be narrow or detailed at this early stage; the task of the seminar is to sharpen topics and ensure originality. Rather, the statement of interest is intended to elicit your intellectual interests: choose three intellectual problems in law that you find hard and interesting and explain why.