Interdisciplinary
Law and Society Highlights
The relationship between society and law is a complex and intriguing one, so it’s not surprising that at NYU Law, it is viewed through the lenses of multiple disciplines—sociology, criminology, anthropology and psychology, to name a few.
The Law School has several leading sociologists on faculty: Professors David Garland, James Jacobs and Jerome Skolnick. Garland, Arthur T. Vanderbilt Professor of Law and a professor of Sociology at NYU, is widely considered to be one of the world’s foremost sociologists focusing on crime and punishment. A recent Guggenheim Fellow, he is the founding editor of the interdisciplinary scholarly journal Punishment & Society, as well as the author of the hugely influential book The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Garland teaches Law and Modern Society as well as Death Penalty: Social and Historical Perspectives.
Jacobs is Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Professor of Constitutional Law and the Courts and also director of the Center for Research in Crime and Justice. He has written 14 books, most recently Mobsters, Unions and Feds: The Mafia and the American Labor Movement. Jacobs is an enthusiastic teacher whose courses have included Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Federal Criminal Law and Juvenile Justice. Skolnick, the codirector of the Center for Research in Crime and Justice, is also the Claire Clements Dean’s Chair Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. He has been honored for his scholarship by virtually every major criminal law and justice organization for his distinctive sociological work on crime and criminal justice administration. His seminar on the regulation of vice probes the history, sociology and politics that underlie the law; another, on policing, explores key dilemmas in police administration. This year, he is teaching Police, Law and Society: Issues in Democratic Policing.
Professor Frank Upham’s law and society scholarship has focused on Japan, and his book Law and Social Change in Postwar Japan is generally viewed as the standard reference for discussions of Japanese law and its social and political role in contemporary Japan. Upham teaches Law and Development and a variety of courses and seminars on comparative law and society, with an emphasis on East Asia and the developing world.
Professor Sally Merry teaches the Anthropology of Human Rights, which studies the origins of human rights thinking in Europe and the United States and its contemporary elaboration and dissemination in the post-World War II period. She also leads the Sociolegal Seminar, using sociolegal theory and method as a way of understanding the law. Topics include courts and disputing, crime and justice, the legal profession, legal culture and legal consciousness, race/class/gender dimensions of law, law and colonialism, legal pluralism, and human rights and transnational law.
University Professors Jerome Bruner and Tom Tyler bring psychology into the mix, teaching courses such as Psychology and the Design of Legal Institutions, which covers eyewitnesses, lie detection, jury decision making, the nature of excuses and dispute resolution procedures. Bruner and Professor Oscar Chase also lead the Colloquium on Culture and the Law (on hiatus this year), which examines how legal systems both reflect the cultures in which they operate and change them. In 2009, Bruner will lead the Lawyering Theory Colloquium: Crime and Punishment with Professor Anthony Amsterdam, exploring what it means to have the punishment truly fit the crime. Also in 2009, Professor Oren Bar-Gill will introduce a new course, Law, Economics & Psychology, about the impact of mass psychology on the marketplace.
For those interested in the interdisciplinary study of Law and Society as its own discipline, there is the Law & Society program, which offers three degrees: a Ph.D., a J.D./Ph.D. dual degree and a J.D./M.A. dual degree in Law & Society. As an interschool program, supported by New York University's School of Law and the Faculty of Arts and Science, the Law & Society program serves as an intellectual center for faculty, graduate students and law students interested in studying law and legal institutions from an interdisciplinary social science perspective. Law & Society encourages a wide range of social science perspectives, theoretical frameworks and empirical methods. In addition to formal course work, the program convenes the NYU Law & Society Colloquium and the Law & Society Workshop, sponsors sociolegal conferences and hosts visiting scholars.