Jurisprudence

Summer 2009

JURI 324

Monday/Wednesday 1:00-4:10 PM

UN 3046

Professor: Jack Baldwin LeClair M.A., Ed.S., J.D.
Office Hours: DI314: by appointment and posted on office door.
Office Phone: 973.655.7953
Email: leclairj@chss.montclair.edu
Text: W= Wacks, Raymond. Understanding Jurisprudence: An Introduction to Legal Theory, (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2005)
Supplemental Required = D = Dyson, Freeman. The Sun, The Genome, and the Internet: Tools of Scientific Revolution, (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2000)
Other Assignments - to be assigned on http://blackboard.montclair.edu

Requirements:

All reading and written assignments must be completed prior to the class in which they are due.
Attendance is mandatory. Students are responsible for keeping current with the assignments. The professor is not responsible for keeping students current.
Class participation is encouraged and will be rewarded academically.
All assignments must be each student's workproduct.
Readings will be from the text, cyberspace, or handouts.
Graduate students will have more rigorous assignments and grading.

Midterm Examination	40%
Final Examination	40%
Classroom Participation	10%
Assignments	10%

DATE	ASSIGNMENT	YOUR TASK	NOTES
6.29.09	Legal Padawan- Introduction to Jurisprudence: concepts, history, and development.	Think about whether it is ever defensible to eat a human being.	Login to Blackboard .
7.01.09	The nature of law, the meaning of law, the meaning of words: "...came whiffling through the tulgey wood and burbled as it came...",	Think about "How words define our world and especially the law".	W: Ch1
7.06.09	You make me feel like a natural philsopher; Lifeboat ethics from the natural point of view, and why jurisprudence.	Think about whether there are universal truths.	W: Ch2
7.06.09	Natural Law: Not easy, not always politically correct and not always efficient	How do you know right from wrong? Is legal always moral?	W: Ch3
7.08.09	Doing it the old fashioned way: Legal Postivism The Morality of Law: Relativism vs. absolutism. "The law is what the judges say it is".	Are laws always right?	W: Ch4
7.08.09	Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Finnis	Do we have the right to disobey bad laws?	W: Ch 5
7.15.09	MIDTERM - No class	Is law merely regulation of human behavior in a society to maintain order.	List of Key Terms for Midterm
7.20.09	Modern legal positivism: "But officer, the bartender told me it was non-alcoholic beer".	How does Bentham compare with Austin?	Graduate Student paper assigned
7.20.09			W: Ch 6
7.20.09	Bentham and Austin; "The Law said the judge as he looked down his nose...".
7.20.09	The modern approach to legal positivism	Was Bentham high?	Dyson All
7.22.09	Bentham and Austin; "The Law said the judge as he looked down his nose...".	Legal Realism in its original form.	W: Ch 7;
7.22.09	The modern approach to legal positivism		W: Ch 8
7.27.09	Hart, Kelsen, and Raz	Compare the three philosophers of law.	W: Ch 9
7.27.09	Law as interpretation: Assault on the bastion of positivism		W: Ch 10
7.29.09	Morality and myth and hard reality and Rawls.		W: Ch 11
7.29.09	Theories of economic positivism, the postivists, etc.
8.03.09	Critical Legal Theory, feminism and post modernmism		W: Ch 12
8.05.09	FINAL EXAM -		List of Terms and Concepts for the Final Exam