David Kennedy: Academic Courses
Courses (2006-2013)
Global Law & Expertise, STS (Spring 2013)
- How do more and less conscious components of expert knowledge function? Is there a “langue” and a “parole” to expert argument? What are the components of expert knowledge, how do they operate – linguistically, ideologically, practically? How significant are elements like “distinction,” “difference” or “decision?”
- How do expert analytics relate the looser patois of expert analysis, commentary, opinion? How much is prejudice, group-think – or useful rules of thumb and default judgment?
- How are expert and lay practices and knowledges intertwined? What can we say about the rise and fall of expert self-confidence or prestige as various “expertises” come in and out of fashion in different domains of life?
- How do new modes of expertise arise, assert themselves? What of the people whose projects are pursued through expertise – projects of affiliation and disaffiliation, wills to power and to submission?
Global Law and Governance (Fall 2012)
Law and Economic Development (Fall 2012)
Law and Economic Development (Spring 2012)
The Power and Mystery of Expertise (Spring 2012)
- How do more and less conscious components of expert knowledge function? Is there a “langue” and a “parole” to expert argument? What are the components of expert knowledge, how do they operate – linguistically, ideologically, practically? How significant are elements like “distinction,” “difference” or “decision?”
- How do expert analytics relate the looser patois of expert analysis, commentary, opinion? How much is prejudice, group-think – or useful rules of thumb and default judgment?
- How are expert and lay practices and knowledges intertwined? What can we say about the rise and fall of expert self-confidence or prestige as various “expertises” come in and out of fashion in different domains of life?
- How do new modes of expertise arise, assert themselves? What of the people whose projects are pursued through expertise – projects of affiliation and disaffiliation, wills to power and to submission?
Global Law and Governance (Fall 2011)
Law and Economic Development (Spring 2011)
Global Law and Governance (Fall 2010)
Law and Development (Fall 2010)
NOTE: You will need to be enrolled in this course with a valid icommons username and password to access the course website.
The significance of expertise for rulership today is easy to see – in the vernacular of national politics, the management of international economic life, the arrangement of family and gender relations, and more. But what is “expertise?” What part knowledge, what part common-sense --- what portion analytics, argument, lifestyle, character? Expertise is often associated with professional or disciplinary formations – how important are these institutional forms to the practice and reproduction of expert rulership? How does expertise write itself into power?
The aim of the seminar will be to develop components of a general model or theory of expertise. We encourage a wide range of interdisciplinary studies which might shed light on the following sorts of questions:
With luck, the seminar will bring together scholars approaching these issues from multiple fields of inquiry – historical studies of expert vernaculars and professional practices; cultural study of the languages of governance and the management of the subject; philosophers interested in the operations of language and rhetoric, science studies scholars who look at ways expert knowledge gives power to scientific claims; sociologists of the professions and of contemporary practices of power. We particularly encourage participation by scholars from professional fields inquiring into the modes of their own rulership.
Click HERE for the course syllabus.
NOTE: You will need to be enrolled in this course with a valid icommons username and password to access the course website.
This course explores a range of legal disciplines which purport to explain how we are governed globally and which propose projects for improving global governance through law. We will focus on the field of international law and organization, examining the history of ideas, legal doctrines, institutional and administrative structures developed over the last century to organize and legalize international economic and political life. The readings will focus on various ways to think about the legal organization of global order, and on the history of legal efforts to organize and institutionalize international affairs.
NOTE: You will need to be enrolled in this course with a valid icommons username and password to access the course website.
This course will deal with past and present debates over the role of the legal order in economic development. We will explore the relationships among economic ideas, legal ideas and the development policies pursued at the national and international level in successive historical periods. We will focus on the potential for an alliance of heterogenous traditions from economics, law and other disciplines to understand development.
NOTE: You will need to be enrolled in this course with a valid icommons username and password to access the course website.
This course will deal with past and present debates over the role of the legal order in economic development. We will explore the relationships among economic ideas, legal ideas and the development policies pursued at the national and international level in successive historical periods. We will focus on the potential for an alliance of heterogenous traditions from economics, law and other disciplines to understand development.
Click HERE for the course syllabus
NOTE: You will need to be enrolled in this course with a valid icommons username and password to access the course website.
The significance of expertise for rulership today is easy to see – in the vernacular of national politics, the management of international economic life, the arrangement of family and gender relations, and more. But what is “expertise?” What part knowledge, what part common-sense --- what portion analytics, argument, lifestyle, character? Expertise is often associated with professional or disciplinary formations – how important are these institutional forms to the practice and reproduction of expert rulership? How does expertise write itself into power?
The aim of the seminar will be to develop components of a general model or theory of expertise. We encourage a wide range of interdisciplinary studies which might shed light on the following sorts of questions:
With luck, the seminar will bring together scholars approaching these issues from multiple fields of inquiry – historical studies of expert vernaculars and professional practices; cultural study of the languages of governance and the management of the subject; philosophers interested in the operations of language and rhetoric, science studies scholars who look at ways expert knowledge gives power to scientific claims; sociologists of the professions and of contemporary practices of power. We particularly encourage participation by scholars from professional fields inquiring into the modes of their own rulership.
Click HERE for the course syllabus.
NOTE: You will need to be enrolled in this course with a valid icommons username and password to access the course website.
This course explores a range of legal disciplines which purport to explain how we are governed globally and which propose projects for improving global governance through law. We will focus on the field of international law and organization, examining the history of ideas, legal doctrines, institutional and administrative structures developed over the last century to organize and legalize international economic and political life. The readings will focus on various ways to think about the legal organization of global order, and on the history of legal efforts to organize and institutionalize international affairs.
NOTE: You will need to be enrolled in this course with a valid icommons username and password to access the course website.
This course will deal with past and present debates over the role of the legal order in economic development. We will explore the relationships among economic ideas, legal ideas and the development policies pursued at the national and international level in successive historical periods. We will focus on the potential for an alliance of heterogenous traditions from economics, law and other disciplines to understand development.
NOTE: You will need to be enrolled in this course with a valid icommons username and password to access the course website.
This course explores a range of legal disciplines which purport to explain how we are governed globally and which propose projects for improving global governance through law. We will focus on the field of international law and organization, examining the history of ideas, legal doctrines, institutional and administrative structures developed over the last century to organize and legalize international economic and political life. The readings will focus on various ways to think about the legal organization of global order, and on the history of legal efforts to organize and institutionalize international affairs.
The course takes the discipline of "public international law” as a starting point. Across the twentieth century, the discipline consolidated a community of lawyers and jurists with a common vocabulary, a shared sense of history and a shared range of professional activities. They continue to offer accounts of how the world is organized and projects for its reorganization. The casebook presents itself as a "classical" treatment, the distributed materials juxtapose various alternative historical, theoretical and avant-gardist points of views. The start of the twenty-first century has been characterized by a variety of challenges and proposals to rethink and reorient our modes of collective problem solving and policy making at the global level. As a result, we will spend some time thinking about history. What came before twentieth century international law? How was international legal modernism born and built in the first half of the last century? What happened in the half-century after 1945, after 1989, after 2001? What will happen next?
Click HERE for the course syllabus.
NOTE: You will need to be enrolled in this course with a valid icommons username and password to access the course website.
This course deals with past and present debates over the role of the legal order in economic development. It explores the relationships among economic ideas, legal ideas and the development policies pursued at the national and international level in successive historical periods. Particular focus is paid to the potential for an alliance of heterogenous traditions from economics, law and other disciplines to understand development.
Click HERE for the course syllabus.
The Power and Mystery of Expertise
(2010-11 Pembroke Center Postdoctoral Fellowship Seminar)- How do more and less conscious components of expert knowledge function? Is there a “langue” and a “parole” to expert argument? What are the components of expert knowledge, how do they operate – linguistically, ideologically, practically? How significant are elements like “distinction,” “difference” or “decision?”
- How do expert analytics relate the looser patois of expert analysis, commentary, opinion? How much is prejudice, group-think – or useful rules of thumb and default judgment?
- How are expert and lay practices and knowledges intertwined? What can we say about the rise and fall of expert self-confidence or prestige as various “expertises” come in and out of fashion in different domains of life?
- How do new modes of expertise arise, assert themselves? What of the people whose projects are pursued through expertise – projects of affiliation and disaffiliation, wills to power and to submission?
The significance of expertise for rulership today is easy to see – in the vernacular of national politics, the management of international economic life, the arrangement of family and gender relations, and more. But what is “expertise?” What part knowledge, what part common-sense --- what portion analytics, argument, lifestyle, character? Expertise is often associated with professional or disciplinary formations – how important are these institutional forms to the practice and reproduction of expert rulership? How does expertise write itself into power?
The aim of the seminar will be to develop components of a general model or theory of expertise. We encourage a wide range of interdisciplinary studies which might shed light on the following sorts of questions:
With luck, the seminar will bring together scholars approaching these issues from multiple fields of inquiry – historical studies of expert vernaculars and professional practices; cultural study of the languages of governance and the management of the subject; philosophers interested in the operations of language and rhetoric, science studies scholars who look at ways expert knowledge gives power to scientific claims; sociologists of the professions and of contemporary practices of power. We particularly encourage participation by scholars from professional fields inquiring into the modes of their own rulership.
Click HERE for the course syllabus.
International Law and Global Governance - (Winter 2010 at The School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London)
This course explores a range of legal disciplines, which purport to explain how we are governed globally. We will focus on the field of international law and organization, examining the history of ideas, legal doctrines, institutional and administrative structures developed over the last century to organize and legalize international economic and political life. We will situate the United Nations system in relationship to the broader institutional structures of public international law and regulation, private ordering and multinational enterprise, non-governmental organization and transnational judicial cooperation. The course will combine intellectual and institutional history with an examination of various constitutional and institutional arrangements. We will examine the functioning of these various international organizational mechanisms in a series of different substantive areas, paying particular attention to human rights, economic law and regulation, development, and the use of force. The assigned readings will focus on various ways to think about the legal organization of global order, and on the history of legal efforts to organize and institutionalize international affairs.
Click HERE for the course syllabus.
Law and Development (Fall 2009)
NOTE: You will need to be enrolled in this course with a valid icommons username and password to access the course website.
This course will deal with past and present debates over the role of the legal order in economic development. We will explore the relationships among economic ideas, legal ideas and the development policies pursued at the national and international level in successive historical periods. We will focus on the potential for an alliance of heterogenous traditions from economics, law and other disciplines to understand development. Limited enrollment. J.D. students may enroll only with the instructor's permission - those wishing to enroll should email a brief statement of their background and intellectual interest in the course to the instructor.
Click HERE for the course syllabus.
Global Governance Today Reading Group (Fall 2009)
NOTE: You will need to be enrolled in this course with a valid icommons username and password to access the course website.
This reading group will explore a variety of recent legal literature which purports to explain how we are governed globally. It is surprising now mysterious global governance remains -- and how quickly confidence in both the sociological descriptions of global legal life and projects for renewal offered by the traditional disciplines of public international law, international economic law, international organizations have broken down. What else is on offer? That will guide our exploration of new literatures in fields touching on global regulation, international legal history, global administrative law, new thinking about comparative legal study, global constitutionalism, human rights, or economic law and development. The readings will exemplify various ways to think about the legal organization of global order, and on the history of legal efforts to organize and institutionalize international affairs.
Click HERE for the course syllabus.
International Law and Global Governance (Winter 2009 at The School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London)
This course explores a range of legal disciplines, which purport to explain how we are governed globally. We will focus on the field of international law and organization, examining the history of ideas, legal doctrines, institutional and administrative structures developed over the last century to organize and legalize international economic and political life. We will situate the United Nations system in relationship to the broader institutional structures of public international law and regulation, private ordering and multinational enterprise, non-governmental organization and transnational judicial cooperation. The course will combine intellectual and institutional history with an examination of various constitutional and institutional arrangements. We will examine the functioning of these various international organizational mechanisms in a series of different substantive areas, paying particular attention to human rights, economic law and regulation, development, and the use of force. The assigned readings will focus on various ways to think about the legal organization of global order, and on the history of legal efforts to organize and institutionalize international affairs.
Click HERE for the course syllabus.
Law and Development (Fall 2008)
NOTE: You will need to be enrolled in this course with a valid icommons username and password to access the course website.
This course will deal with past and present debates over the role of the legal order in economic development. After preliminary discussions of economists' theories of growth and legal theorists' views of law in society, we will focus on such issues as Third World nationalist regimes' attempts at regulation and planning, the role of the international trade regime, and the legal structures put in place during current transitions to a market economy through privatization. Limited enrollment. J.D. students may enroll only with the instructor's permission - those wishing to enroll should email a brief statement of their background and intellectual interest in the course to the instructor.
Click HERE for the course syllabus.
International Law and Global Orders (Winter 2008 at The School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London)
This course explores a range of legal disciplines, which purport to explain how we are governed globally. We will focus on the field of international law and organization, examining the history of ideas, legal doctrines, institutional and administrative structures developed over the last century to organize and legalize international economic and political life. We will situate United Nations system in relationship to the broader institutional structures of public international law and regulation, private ordering and multinational enterprise, non-governmental organization and transnational judicial cooperation. The course will combine intellectual and institutional history with an examination of various constitutional and institutional arrangements. We will examine the functioning of these various international organizational mechanisms in a series of different substantive areas, paying particular attention to human rights, economic law and regulation, development, and the use of force. The assigned readings will focus on various ways to think about the legal organization of global order, and on the history of legal efforts to organize and institutionalize international affairs.
Click HERE for the course syllabus.
International Law (Fall 2007)
NOTE: You will need to be enrolled in this course with a valid icommons username and password to access the course website.
This course concerns the theoretical and doctrinal arguments which have structured thinking about international legal issues. It considers basic doctrines of public international law about the sources of law and the international legal process. We consider the use made of these materials in addressing such issues as human rights, environmental policy, terrorism, and war. The course compares the public international legal tradition with the neighboring fields of international institutions, international economic law and comparative law. We will examine both the history of international legal argument and contemporary scholarship, which is innovative and theoretical. We will focus on the various ways of thinking and talking about institution building and international dispute resolution and about the projects, personal and professional, visible in the discipline's basic doctrinal materials.
There is no prerequisite. In the past only about half of the students in the course, including many graduate students, have had some previous exposure to international law.
Materials: Damrosch, Henkin, Pugh, Schachter and Smit, International Law Cases and Materials (West 4th ed. 2001) and supplemental materials.
Click HERE for the course syllabus.
American Legal Thought (Fall 2006)
NOTE: You will need to be enrolled in this course with a valid icommons username and password to access the course website.
This short course will review a canonical set of materials from the American tradition of legal scholarship from Oliver Wendell Holmes to the present. We will try to see what, if anything, makes the North American way of thinking about law distinctive. Pragmatism? Policy science? Interdisciplinary work? We will look at the foundational texts for the major "schools" of American legal scholarship, including legal realism, legal process, law and economics, law and society, critical legal studies, and feminism. We will explore how the American tradition looks and how it has been received outside the United States, as well as the relations between this peculiar way of thinking about law and the American style of legal practice.
This course is designed for students interested in understanding how American jurists think. It has been designed to be particularly helpful for LL.M. students. Rather than an exam, the course will conclude with a very short (five-page maximum) reaction paper to one of the articles we have considered.
Materials: "The Canon of American Legal Thought," David Kennedy and William Fisher, Princeton University Press (2006)
Law and Development (Fall 2006)
NOTE: You will need to be enrolled in this course with a valid icommons username and password to access the course website.
This course will deal with past and present debates over the role of the legal order in economic development. After preliminary discussions of economists' theories of growth and legal theorists' views of law in society, we will focus on such issues as Third World nationalist regimes' attempts at regulation and planning, the role of the international trade regime, and the legal structures put in place during current transitions to a market economy through privatization. Limited enrollment. J.D. students may enroll only with the instructor's permission - those wishing to enroll should email a brief statement of their background and intellectual interest in the course to the instructor.
Materials: "The Process of Economic Development", 2nd Edition, James Cypher and James Dietz, eds. (Routledge, 2004) and supplemental materials.
International Law and Organization (Fall 2006 at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy)
This course provides an introduction to the field of international law and organization, examining the history of ideas, legal doctrines, institutional and administrative structures developed over the last century to organize and legalize international economic and political life. We will examine the United Nations system, situating it in relationship to the broader institutional structures of public international law and regulation, private ordering and multinational enterprise, non-governmental organization and transnational judicial cooperation. The course will combine intellectual and institutional history with an examination of various constitutional and institutional arrangements. We will examine the functioning of these various international organizational mechanisms in a series of different substantive areas, paying particular attention to human rights, economic law and regulation, development, and the use of force. We will approach the organization and institutionalization of global society from the viewpoint of law, rather than political science. The assigned readings will focus on various ways to think about the legal organization of global order, and on the history of legal efforts to organize and institutionalize international affairs.
Click HERE for the course syllabus.
European Union Law (Winter 2006)
This course is based on simulation exercises in which students analyze and develop practice skills appropriate for international legal work. Students will play roles in a range of exercises based on real-life practice problems, involving legal work as judges, advocates, lobbyists, bureaucrats and private practitioners. We will examine the work done by attorneys in complex international negotiations and multi-jurisdictional practice. We will build skills for factual development, drafting, oral argument, negotiation, persuasion and on-the-spot analytic thinking in cross-cultural practice settings. Substantively, we will focus on the law of the European Union, and on the relationship between EU rule-making, the US trade negotiation machinery and the WTO framework. Individual simulations raise issues of environmental law, antitrust regulation, company law, intellectual property and other areas of regulation and policy in which the European Union has been active. The course will meet, often in small group preparatory and negotiation settings, for 4 hours each day -- from 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM.
This course will be co-taught by Dr. Jean-Francois Verstrynge, an honorary Director General with the Commission of the European Communities in Brussels.
Click HERE for the course syllabus.