The Legal History Workshop is designed as a forum in which faculty and students from both the Law School and the History Department can discuss some of the best work now being done in the field of legal history. Every other week, an invited speaker presents his or her current research for discussion. Speakers are chosen not only for the quality of their work, but also with the aim of exposing students to a broad array of topics and methodologies within legal history. In the week prior to a given speaker's presentation, the class meets as a group to discuss secondary literature relevant to understanding and critiquing the speaker's research. Students then read the speaker's paper in advance of the following week's workshop presentation. Special Instructions: Law School students may take the course for either 2 or 3 semester credits. Those students taking the course for 2 semester credits are required to write a brief (4-5 pages) response to each speaker's paper. There will be a total of seven speakers, and thus seven papers. Guidance will be provided concerning how to frame these response papers, which will be due every two weeks—i.e., on the day before the speaker presents. Students taking the course for 2 semester credits will receive "W" writing credit.
Instead of writing response papers, Law School students taking the course for 3 semester credits are required to write a research paper (35 pages or more) on a legal history topic that they choose (in consultation with the professors). Students taking the course for 3 semester credits will receive "R" writing credit.
This course is open to first-year students.