Anthropology, Law, and Human Rights

Catalog description

This course is an introduction to legal anthropology, and law and society studies. We will examine major themes and trends in legal anthropology, with a particular focus on the anthropology of human rights. The course has four main sections. First, we begin with the ethnographic study of non-Western legal and law-like systems. Second, we shift to study our own (Western) legal institutions (e.g. ethnographies of US courtrooms, Guantanamo Bay litigation). Third, we cover topics such as human rights, legal consciousness, and the relationship between law and language (sociolinguistics). Fourth, we end with how anthropology interfaces with law, especially with the rise of anthropologist-attorneys.