Critical Theory in Legal Scholarship: Seminar
Spring term, Block H
M 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Professor Janet Halley
2 classroom credits LAW-92465A
The goal of this seminar will be to help students imagine writing projects of their own which put critical theory from the humanities and from legal studies "to work" in understanding some concrete dimension of the law. Readings will be a selected range of "classics" in literary, social and legal theory, paired with remarkable examples of legal-academic writing strongly engaged with them. Our discussions will aim for mastery of the former and a nuanced understanding of the interventions and methods exemplified by the latter. The target audience of this Seminar is students with ambitions to write legal scholarship -- whether 1L's at the very beginning of their thinking in this direction, or LLM's writing scholarly papers, or 2L's and 3L's in the early, middle or late stages of framing an academic project. SJD's are welcome to audit. Students may write 6 short response papers or submit substantial writing within their own scholarly endeavors.