Minor in Legal Studies

The study of law investigates the descriptive rules governing different substantive areas. But, more profoundly, it is also a critical inquiry into the normative values and power relations that animate these rules and their interpretations. Legal Studies pursues an understanding of both the technical tools of legal reasoning, as well as the different values – such as social justice, public order, property, individual freedom, equality, human dignity – that they further.

Beyond its potential vocational value, legal studies engages critical issues in both the humanities and social sciences, and is thus a fundamental area of liberal arts inquiry. Moreover, an awareness of how law works, and how it doesn’t, is of course valuable for any citizen, in any walk of life.

The Minor in Legal Studies would provide students with a broad overview of the vast field of law, while encouraging deep and specialized investigation of selected areas within it. It encourages cross-disciplinary investigation into the legal dimensions of such topics as business, politics, economics, psychology, communications, art, literature, philosophy, history (and, conversely, into the commercial, economic, psychological, rhetorical, artistic, narrative, philosophical, historical dimensions of the law). Legal Studies also develops the specific and highly transferable skills of legal research, reasoning, argumentation and written and oral advocacy.