An examination of the guiding principles of criminal law and procedures. The politics of judicial selection and judicial decision making, ethnic relations that affect the law. Extensive consideration of past and current constitutional issues through review of relevant U.S. Supreme Court decisions. This course provides a cause and effect understanding of domestic violence upon the family as a system and explores the psychological dynamics of both victim and perpetrator. The attitudes of the legal and justice systems are studied.
Prevention is emphasized.
This course examines social scientific understanding of how law is structured, how law functions as a social institution, and how legal institutions interact with other institutions such as the economy, family, and criminal justice system as well as with issues of race, class, and gender. The course also explores how legal institutions use social scientific knowledge. Additionally, attention is aimed at fostering an appreciation of how legal institutions and their functions vary historically and cross-culturally. This course is a critical study of the qualitative and quantitative methods and the classical and contemporary theories used to research and explain crime as a social phenomenon. The course also explores ways that our knowledge about crime can guide social policy.