Law & Blame

Catalog description

In this course, you'll explore how language is used to accuse, defend, and attribute responsibility in legal cases and how these rhetorical strategies intersect with larger societal issues of justice and injustice. The study of these questions is not only valuable for understanding the legal process, participating in it, or writing about it, but the practice of attributing responsibility is common in many social and institutional contexts beyond law, even in daily conversation. By examining a variety of legal trials—ranging from high-profile criminal cases to routine accidents—you'll learn about the linguistic as well as the social, cultural, and political dimensions of accountability discourse, including how systemic inequalities related to race, class, gender, sexuality, and other identities shape attributions of responsibility. In discussion-intensive sessions and through a series of writing assignments, you'll not only develop your own strategies for advocating for or against responsibility in particular cases but you'll cultivate the critical tools necessary to craft and evaluate rhetorical approaches to attributions of responsibility among professional peers, while reflecting on relevant conceptions of justice. Whether your interest is in law, politics, culture, or ethics, this course equips you with tools to analyze real-world legal cases, assess their broader impact on justice through the lens of inequity and conflict, and actively participate in debates about attributions of blame across legal, business, and everyday contexts.