Political societies must make all manner of judgments about what is just. We must distribute goods, determine crimes, give punishments, create legislative districts, all with an eye to some idea of justice. Is justice fairness? Proportional? Equitable? A number of political and legal theorists have approached these questions from different perspectives. Using both traditional political theory texts as well as contemporary legal theory, we will explore questions of justice and the law, and whether justice can be found within the law or is external to it.
Course readings may include:
Fuller and D'Amato, The
Case of the Speluncean Explorers
Plato, The Apology
and Crito
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Of
the Natural Law
Shakespeare, Measure
for Measure
Hobbes, Leviathan,
chapters 13 and 14
Locke, The Second
Treatise of Government
Melville, Billy
Budd
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
Mill, On Utilitarianism
Mill, On
Liberty
King, Letter
From Birmingham Jail
Rawls, A Theory of Justice, selections
Guinier, The Tyranny of the Majority
Davis, The
Case for United States Reparations to African Americans