SOCIO-LEGAL STUDIES 6090.3- SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF LEGAL DISCOURSE
Richard Weisman- rweisman@yorku.ca
Fridays, 11:30- 2:30 in Ross Bldg., S125
Winter, 2014
Office- N701 Ross
Website- http://rweisman.apps01.yorku.ca/
This course looks at how social categories that arrange persons in moral hierarchies are constructed in the legal forum. We will draw upon trials, judgements, and other documents to show how law incorporates other discourses(popular, psychiatric, and medical) in deciding upon culpability, voluntariness, and character- concepts that are central to the forming of legal narratives. The focus of our inquiry is on how events from everyday life are translated into the legal forum and how the legal forum in turn privileges some social representations and marginalizes others.
Availability of readings- copies to be distributed or placed on reserve*
Online or on website**
January 10- Overview of course
January 17- Comparing discourses and truth claims-
Reading: Michel Foucault, Abnormal :Lectures at the College de France, 1974-1975, Picador, 2003, chapters 5 and 6, pp. Lecture- 1974- pp.109-166.*
Recommended: Michel Foucault, ed., I, Pierre Riviere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother… A Case of Parricide in the 19th Century, Pantheon Books, 1975.
January 24 – Narratives and the Translation Problem in Law- Thinking about Legal Discourse Sociologically-
Readings: Austin Sarat(1993)Speaking of Death: Narratives of Violence in Capital Trials,” 27 Law and Society Review, “ pp.19-58.**
Anne McGillivray(1998), “A moral vacuity in her which is difficult if not impossible to explain: law, psychiatry and the remaking of Karla Homolka,” International Journal of the Legal Profession, Vol. 5, Nos., 2/3, pp.255-288.**
Robert A. Ferguson(1996) “Untold Stories of the Law, “ in Peter Brooks and Paul Gewirtz, eds, Law’s Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law, Yale University, pp. 84-98.*
Constance Backhouse, “ ‘Sordid but ‘Understandable under the Circumstances- Kohnke, Croft, and Wilson, 1967” in Carnal Crimes– Sexual Asssault Law in Canada, 1900-1975, The Osgoode Society, 2008, pp. 193-226.*
Dragan Milovanovic, “Semiotic Perspectives in Law,” in A Primer in the Sociology of Law, 1988, pp. 125-140.*
January 31 – Representations of Crime and Gender in Law-
Readings: Ruth Harris, Murders and Madness: Medicine, Law, and Society in Fin de Siecle, Oxford University, 1989, pp. 208-242 and 285-320.*
Martha Merrill Umphrey(1999) “The Dialogics of Legal Meaning: Spectacular Trials , the Unwritten Law, and Narratives of Criminal Responsibility,” Law and Society Review ,Vol. 33, no.2., pp. 393-424.**
Kristin Bumiller(1990) “ ‘Fallen Angels: The Representation of Violence Against Women in Legal Culture, “ 18 International Journal of the Sociology of Law, pp.125-142.**
Elizabeth Lunbeck, “Narrating Nymphomania between Psychiatry and Law,” in Sarat, Douglas, and Umphrey, eds., Law’s Madness, 2003, pp.49-77.*
February 7 – Constructing Psychopathy-
Elise Chenier, “The criminal sexual psychopath in Canada: sex, psychiatry and the law at mid-century,” Canadian Bulletin of the History of Medicine 20(2003), pp.75-101.*
R.v.Kjeldsen v. The Queen(1981) 64 C.C.C.(2nd) S.C.C.**
J. Reid Meloy, “A Psychoanalytic View of the Psychopath,” paper presented at meeting of Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, March 31, 2007- Toronto- see website-**
Richard Weisman, “Remorse at the Penalty Phase of the Capital Trial: How Psychiatry’s View of ‘Moral Insanity’ Helps Build the Case for Death.” Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 42, 2007, pp.187-217.** See website
February 14- no class
February 28 – Law and the Moral Regulation of Emotions- The Case of Provocation
Allyson Lunny, “Provocation and ‘Homosexual’ Advance: Masculinized Subjects as Threat, Masculinized Subjects Under Threat,” Social and Legal Studies, 2003, Vol. 12(3), pp.311-333.**
Michael A. Smyth, “Queers and Provocateurs: Hegemony, Ideology, and the ‘Homosexual Advance’ Defence,” Law and Society Review, 2006, Vol. 40(no.3), pp. 903-930.
R .v. Tran, Alberta Court of Appeal(2008). **
Criminal Code-section on Provocation-s.232(1)**
Recommended: Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Commercialization of Intimate Life, Part II, pp. 75-137.
March 7- Law, Remorse, and Moral Regulation
R. Weisman , “Being and Doing: The Judicial Use of Remorse to Construct Character and Community,” Social and Legal Studies, 2009, 18, no. 1, pp.47-69.
Richard Weisman, Showing Remorse: Law and the Social Control of Emotion-
Draft of Chapter 1, Ashgate, 2014.
Joane Martel, “Remorse and the Production of Truth,” Punishment and Society, 2010, Vol 12(4), 414-437.**
Recommended: Susan A. Bandes, “Remorse and Demeanor in the Courtroom: Cognitive Science and the Evaluation of Contrition,” December 4, 2013- at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2363326
March 14- Trial as Social Form and Producer of Social Representation-
Readings: Robert Hariman, “Performing the Law: Popular Trials and Social Knowledge,” in Hariman, ed., Popular Trials*
Robert Ferguson-“ Story and Transcription in the Trial of John Brown, ” Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, Vol. 6, 1994, pp. 37- 73.**
Carolyn Strange and Tina Loo, “Spectacular Justice: The Circus on Trial, and the trial as Circus, Picton, 1903,” Vol. 77, #2, June, 1996, Canadian Historical Review, pp. 159-184.**
March 21- Recognizing State Violence- Trial as Medium
Lawrence Douglas, The Memory of Judgement: Making Law and the History of Trials of the Holocaust, Part 1, pp. 1-94, Yale University Press, 2001.*
March 28- Recognizing State Violence- Truth Commission as Medium
Deborah Posel, “History as Confession: The Case of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” Popular Culture, 20:1, 2008, pp.119-141.**
Michael Humphrey, “From Victim to Victimhood: Truth Commissions and Trials as Rituals of Political Transition and Individual Healing,” The Australian Journal of Anthropology,2003, 14:2, 171-187.**
Leigh Payne, Unsettling Accounts, Chapter 1-“Confessional Performance” and Chapter 2 “Remorse,” pp. 13- 74, Duke University Press, 2008.*
April 4 – Comparisons between trial form and truth commission form as producers of narratives and collective memory-
Requirements-
One major essay of approximately 25 pages that elaborates on one of the topics in the syllabus- to be chosen in consultation with instructor- Due on Friday, April 18 – 70%.
Preparation of two reaction papers on readings and questions to address to the class- 30%- to set up on January 10 or January 17, 2014. Each student will prepare questions for two of the seminar to be distributed in advance of the class to all other members of the seminar. Reaction paper is due on the date of the session.
Late assignments: There is a penalty of 2% per day for assignments handed in late, unless prior arrangements with the instructor have been made. With proper documentation, medical and compassionate grounds may waive the penalty.
