A critical overview of the relation between law and politics that begins from the assumption that law is neither objective nor neutral in practice. Major themes include the origin and authority of law, the relation between law and violence, political uses of law, and the limits of law. We will examine these questions from diverse philosophical traditions, including the American legal tradition, critical legal studies, feminist legal theory, critical race theory, and postcolonial/third world approaches to international law.

Portuguese sociologist, Boaventura de Sousa Santos argues that human communities organize their lives around that which they consider “valuable.” Accordingly, one could hypothesize about what a community considers valuable by investigating their social practices. While there may be legitimate reasons against directing these questions toward other human communities, it seems both useful and appropriate to direct these questions toward ourselves: What do our social and cultural practices suggest about that which Americans do and do not consider valuable? Do our social and cultural practices suggest that the environment is among the things that Americans most value? And, if not, which social practices suggest that the environment is not a priority value for most Americans? In this course, we will investigate the following: First, the leading values around which our most ubiquitous social practices are organized. Second, why the environment is not a priority value for most Americans. Third, through dialogue with individuals and communities, both American and non-American, for whom the environment is a priority value, we will consider how it might be possible to inspire those who do not presently value the environment, to begin to value it, and to behave toward it in a manner that mitigates environmental impacts.