Abstract
A common learning goal of law-related courses taught in sociology classrooms is for students to gain an understanding of the sociological approach to law. This approach emphasizes viewing law as a social process and studying law by analyzing both legal and nonlegal phenomena. A challenge to students’ achievement of this learning goal is their preconceived notions of law as an inherently impartial and closed system. This note details a series of writing assignments that guide students to analyze law from varying perspectives and to reflect on how differing perspectives impact differing approaches to sociolegal problems. A review of assessment data and student feedback suggests that these assignments increase students’ understanding of the sociological approach to law, strengthen their ability to critically evaluate analytical approaches, and solidify their ability to bridge connections between law and other sociological concepts and theories.
The desire to understand the social and political upheaval of the 1960s fueled a surge of interest in law and legal reform among students in American sociology classrooms (Berger 1989). The current sociopolitical climate is similarly tense and perhaps characterized by situations that demand attention to the functions, and dysfunctions, of law in society—for example, the unlawful killing of George Floyd (and a multitude of others) by police; the use of stay-at-home orders, curfews, and mask mandates to combat COVID-19 and promote public health; the suspension of evictions, immigration, and other legal processes in response to the pandemic; the safeguarding or denial of voting rights; the detention of migrants and separation of families on America’s southern border; the Trump Administration’s deployment of federal agents to squash protests in American cities—and the list could continue at some length. Just as their predecessors flocked into sociology classrooms in an endeavor to understand sociopolitical events of earlier generations, we should expect a deepened and renewed interest in law and legal reform among our contemporary sociology students, who are trying to make sense of the world around them. The sociological study of law is well suited to answer their call, as it offers an analytical framework for “the understanding of society, its subsystems, social action, culture, formal organizations, social structure and conflict, and social change” (Savelsberg n.d.).
The study of law has long been within the purview of sociologists, with its intellectual origins lying in the work of DEmile urkheim ([1893] 1997) and Max Weber ([1921] 1978). The American Sociological Association (ASA) formally recognized the Sociology of Law as a section in 1992 (Savelsberg n.d.), and by 2019, the section had 431 registered members (ASA 2019). According to the section’s bylaws, “[t]he purpose of the section of Sociology of Law is to encourage and enhance research, teaching and other professional concerns in the study of law and society” (ASA 2016). The study of law and society refers to “the scholarly enterprise that explains or describes legal phenomena in social terms” (Friedman 1986:763). Law and society scholars conceptualize the law as socially relative, study it as a lived experience, examine the relationship between legal and nonlegal factors, investigate sociolegal processes, and interrogate how social and cultural forces operate within the legal system (Calavita 2016; Friedman 1986; Savelsberg and Cleveland 2013). 1
Sociology departments across the United States include classes on law in their undergraduate curriculum under a variety of course titles, including but not limited to Sociology of Law, Law and Society, Sociolegal Studies, and Legal Studies. 2 There is a small body of literature focused on teaching sociology of law, law and society, and the social sciences more broadly in law schools (see, e.g., Easteal 2008; Monahan and Walker 1985; Travers 1993; Trubek and Plager 1985), but there is very little published scholarship on the pedagogy of teaching law in the undergraduate sociology classroom. For example, a search of the term “law” in the Teaching Sociology database returned only one recent article that specifically details a legal assignment for use in sociology classrooms (for an excellent undergraduate court ethnography assignment, see Callaghan 2005). 3 Another relevant paper was published in Teaching Sociology in 1989; however, this article focused on reviewing content and organization of sociology-of-law courses rather than pedagogy (Berger 1989). The question of how best to teach law in sociology classrooms represents a major gap in the literature on sociological pedagogy. The need to fill this gap is especially pressing given the current social context.
Sociolegal studies courses may be structured in a variety of different ways; however, a fairly consistent course learning outcome is that students will learn the sociological or sociolegal approach to law (Berger 1989; Calavita 2016). The main challenge to students’ ability to achieve this learning outcome is the difficulty of overcoming their preconceived notions about law. Students often view the law with attitudes that are derived from the predominant “black-letter” jurisprudential approach (Calavita 2016), which is “usually associated with jurists and often taught in law school” (Calavita 2016:4) and has percolated out of legal institutions and into society more broadly. Jurisprudential scholars conceptualize law as a self-contained, logical, syllogistic system, and their analysis centers on applying abstract principles and legal precedents to concrete facts to deduce logical conclusions (Calavita 2016; Lippman 2021). Traditional academic approaches to the study of law focus solely on legal elements, such as judicial decisions, statutes, and legal commentaries, and do not consider the role of nonlegal influences, such as economics, politics, history, culture, or other sociological factors (Lippman 2021). Many laypeople, including undergraduate students, unquestioningly accept the jurisprudential conceptualization of law as the approach to law, rather than as a possible approach, and they fail to think critically about the benefits and drawbacks of the viewpoint. The sociological approach offers an alternative framework for analyzing law as socially relative and dependent upon variations in social context (Baumgartner 2001). As Calavita (2016:4) writes, “[J]urisprudence is mostly devoted to examining what takes place inside the box of legal logic. Law and society takes exactly the opposite approach—it examines the influence on law of forces outside the box.” In this teaching note, I describe a series of three writing assignments designed to challenge students to first apply the jurisprudential approach and then, as Calavita (2016:4) stated, examine the “forces outside the box” of law using the sociolegal approach. I draw on the pedagogical framework of the sociological imagination to stimulate students’ sociolegal imaginations through a series of three writing assignments designed to facilitate their critical thinking and analysis of law as a social product.
Developing the Sociolegal Imagination
While sociology courses take many forms, perhaps the thread that best weaves together the teaching across our discipline is the goal of developing the sociological imagination (Garoutte 2018; Ghidina 2019; Scanlan and Grauerholz 2009). C. Wright Mills (1959) conceptualized the sociological imagination as a cognitive tool for understanding connections between individual biographies and broader social patterns. Uninitiated students of sociology tend to explain social phenomena through individualistic explanations that are disconnected from social forces (Ghidina 2019). These same tendencies hold true for students new to the sociological study of law, who often think of law as neutral, value free, impartial, and consequently unaffected by, and unconnected to, nonlegal societal factors. The sociological imagination guides students to understand the influence of social forces and structural causes in shaping individuals and their places in society and vice versa (Ghidina 2019). Similarly, developing a sociolegal imagination can help students to see how laws both shape, and are shaped by, society.
Developing students’ sociological imaginations is perhaps the greatest “promise” of sociological pedagogy (Mills 1959) as well as its greatest challenge (Dandaneau 2009; Garoutte 2018; Kebede 2009). There is a robust body of pedagogical literature on teaching the sociological imagination through a variety of methods, including, but not limited to, literature (Castellano, DeAngelis, and Clark-Ibáñez 2008; Hendershott and Wright 1993), videos (Hoffmann 2006), games (Coghlan and Huggins 2004; Fisher 2008; Jessup 2001), simulations (Dundes and Harlow 2005; Norris 2013; Simpson and Elias 2011), group discussions and classroom activities (Ghidina 2019; Noy 2014), community-based learning (Garoutte 2018; Hollis 2002), and writing (Kebede 2009; Massengill 2011). Writing is a well-established tool for cultivating higher-level thinking skills and can be particularly useful for exercising the sociological imagination, although it is integral that writing assignments are purposeful with clear connections to course learning outcomes (Grauerholz 1999; Massengill 2011). In this teaching note, I extend the literature on teaching the sociological imagination through writing, by providing details on a series of writing assignments designed to engage the sociolegal imagination. The writing assignments in this note serve to stimulate higher-level thinking through guiding students’ use of multiple perspectives, critique of those perspectives, and reflection on their learning process (Massengill 2011). Kebede (2009:354) suggests that to encourage the adoption of the sociological perspective, “the instructor should pave the way for embracing sociological disposition alongside with other forms of sensibility. In this sense, sociological imagination involves the ability to move between sociological consciousness and other forms of cultural and social viewpoints.” In line with this suggestion, I assign a series of writing assignments that meet law-related course learning outcomes focused on teaching the sociolegal perspective and how it is distinct from the jurisprudential perspective. Additionally, the assignments address sociological course learning outcomes related to critical examinations of law as a social process and product, and relationships between law and other sociological forces, such as, but not limited to, race, ethnicity, class, gender, and social inequalities. I outline the details of these assignments next.
Background: Teaching about Law in the Sociology Classroom
I teach Law and Society as an upper-level undergraduate elective in sociology at a private midwestern university. There are no prerequisites to this course at my institution, so while students are usually sophomores, juniors, and seniors, there have occasionally been first-year students in this course, as well. Students come from a variety of academic backgrounds and majors. Typically, at the start of the semester, about half of the students are considering applying to law school. While many students have some level of interest in topics related to law, most have no prior education in the law.
To date, I have used this set of assignments in three semesters: fall 2018 (23 students), spring 2019 (31 students), and spring 2020 (32 students). The final six weeks of the spring 2020 semester were taught online, and the second and third parts of this assignment series were conducted during the online portion of the class, with substantially similar outcomes to the other semesters. While I have yet to use this assignment series in a full, 16-week online semester, the outcomes from the second half of the spring 2020 semester suggest that this assignment series should be usable in online or hybrid formats with few, if any, changes necessary.
I draw on my training in law and sociology to teach this course from predominantly a sociological perspective, although I direct students’ attentions to the influence of other disciplinary perspectives when possible. The main focus of my course is introducing students to the sociolegal imagination and the sociological approach to law, how it differs from the jurisprudential approach, and what we can learn from applying sociolegal analysis to law. I use Kitty Calavita’s (2016) Invitation to Law and Society: An Introduction to the Study of Real Law as my main text for this class. Calavita’s book is excellent, with a focus on translating the main tenets of the law-and-society perspective in an accessible and interesting manner. While I use Calavita’s text, it is by no means necessary for this series of assignments. In my first semester of using these assignments, I taught the class with an entirely different structure and text, and there were no discernible differences in the assessment or feedback on these assignments.
I normally begin the course by introducing various theoretical approaches to law, with an emphasis on the distinctions between the traditional jurisprudential approach and the sociolegal approach. During this part of the course, we discuss historical foundations of American law, the functions of law, and the structure of the legal system and legal profession in the United States. Next, we move on to read and study scholarship by a variety of law-and-society scholars. We end the semester by contemplating whether (or not) law can operate as a facilitator of social justice. The three writing assignments are spaced throughout the course of the semester, but the first assignment (the case brief) is usually due after we have covered the foundational perspectives and the structure of the legal system and legal profession. The series of writing assignments that I will detail are designed to serve the goal of teaching students first to apply the jurisprudential and sociolegal perspectives and then to identify the similarities and differences and what they have learned about law and society after employing each analytical lens. Below, I briefly overview my methods for the analysis of assessment data and student feedback. Then I discuss each assignment in turn—specifically, how I prepare students and formats for each assignment—then I summarize learning outcomes and assessment and provide a review of feedback from students who took my course in fall 2018, spring 2019, and spring 2020. 4
Methods
Assessment of Student Learning
I designed rubrics to assess students’ achievement of the relevant course learning outcomes for each assignment. Student writing was evaluated across assignment-specific criteria. Criteria for the case brief were identification and comprehension of facts, issue, rule of law, legal rationale, and case holding. Students were also evaluated on their overall understanding of the case and proper formatting and writing mechanics. Criteria for the sociolegal analysis essay were detailed discussion of the social context of the case, sociolegal analysis of the judicial decision, and examination of the societal impact of the case. Clarity and organization of ideas and format and writing mechanics were also evaluated. Finally, the criteria for the critical reflection essay were detailed reflection on learning and comparing frameworks, connecting course concepts and themes, clarity and organization, format, and writing mechanics. I evaluated students using the following scale: absent (little to no evidence meeting criterion, missing work), insufficient (does not meet expectations, performance is substandard), developing (working toward meeting expectations, performance needs improvement), proficient (meets expectations, performance is satisfactory), or exemplary (exceeds expectations, performance is outstanding). Each category was given a point value (1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, respectively), and scores for each criterion were totaled and given to students as a percentage score with qualitative comments as feedback. Specific learning outcomes and evidence of learning for each assignment are discussed in detail later.
Review of Student Feedback
As part of the third assignment, the critical reflection essay, students were asked to reflect on what they learned while completing this assignment series. Specifically, students were asked, “What did you learn from writing the case brief? What did you learn from writing the sociolegal analysis? How were these two processes similar and/or different? What do you learn from comparing the two approaches to analyzing the same case? How do these lessons relate to overall themes from the course?” In addition to evaluating responses for assessment purposes (as described earlier), I also conducted a thematic analysis of 61 critical reflection essays to identify patterns in students’ self-reported learning. Results from this analysis are discussed in more detail under each assignment.
Assignment 1: Case Brief
Assignment 1 is a legal case brief. Students are asked to write a one- to one-and-a-half-page report analyzing the legal elements of a Supreme Court judicial opinion. Case briefing is widely used in law schools but is an unfamiliar practice for most undergraduate students, so this assignment requires a fair amount of practice and preparation. Briefing provides students with an opportunity to use critical thinking and writing skills and assesses their understanding of the jurisprudential approach to law.
Preparing Students for Case Briefing: The Jurisprudential Approach
About two weeks prior to the due date for the first assignment, I give a lesson on case briefing. 5 First, I define case briefing for students as the practice of writing focused, concise summaries on legal opinions that include “an analysis of facts, the formulation of issues, a study of relevant law, and an analysis of the court’s reasoning, which supports its decision” (Asfour 2009:95). I explain that writing a successful brief requires the ability to distill the legal rules from lengthy opinions and write those rules in a concise manner. Students in law-related courses are not necessarily all interested in attending law school, so to avoid alienating these students, it is helpful to remind them “that critical thinking skills, such as the ability to clarify issues, engage in deductive reasoning, and support conclusions, are not unique to lawyers” (Asfour 2009:96). Many jobs require technical writing or frequent writing of reports and summaries, so practicing these skills will be a beneficial exercise for most writers.
There is some variation in the format of case briefs, which the instructor may modify to personal preference. Students are likely to do their own internet research looking for examples of briefs, so the instructor should let students know that format variation exists and be clear about what format this assignment requires. I use the format recommended in Asfour (2009): facts, issue, rule of law, rationale/reasoning, and holding. I take students through each section of the brief and explain the purpose and content of each section. When students have established some level of confidence that they understand this, I hand out printed excerpts of a legal opinion—usually from a case that we have read about already. Then I give them a set amount of time to “margin brief,” where they highlight pieces of the text and annotate in the margin with what section of the brief that information would fit. I then have them check their work with a partner, giving them an opportunity to discuss their annotations together. Afterward, we come together as a class and go section by section and discuss what details they should have highlighted for each piece of the brief.
I then provide the students with tips for writing their own brief. I encourage students to read actively by highlighting, annotating, and asking and answering questions while they read. I emphasize that students should expect to read the opinion several times. I then encourage students to write purposefully in a way that makes sense—which may not be from the first section to the last. That is, I encourage students to begin with the issue and rule of law before moving on to the facts and the rationale sections. Doing so will provide a firm foundation for the brief and will help them sift efficiently through which facts and legal elements are relevant and which do not need to be included in the brief (Asfour 2009).
Case Brief: Assignment Details
I provide students with a document that details the assignment requirements (format, page guidelines, due date, etc.), a rubric that I will use for grading, and a sample opinion and case brief that I have written. For my sample, I use Loving v. Virginia (388 U.S. 1 [1967]) because the opinion length is relatively short, the decision was monumental, and the case is interesting to students. I also give students the Asfour (2009) article and strongly recommend that they read it.
I provide the students with options for which opinions they can brief. This allows me to select cases that I think contain manageable legal issues for novice case briefers, ensures that I have a strong understanding of each case myself, and enables more efficient grading as it limits the variety of content I receive and facilitates consistent outcomes and predictable mistakes. In a smaller class, you might consider allowing students to choose their own cases, but this would take considerable effort on the part of the instructor to guide students in finding appropriate cases and to read the multiple cases that students choose. When detailing the assignment for students, it is helpful to let them know that they will use the same case for the second writing assignment, as well, and that their work on this assignment will be foundational for completing the second assignment.
Last, it is important to acknowledge that case briefs are easily searchable online and dissuade students from consulting examples that specifically address their chosen cases, because the learning comes in the actual practice of active reading and case briefing. You might additionally warn them against plagiarizing from case briefs that they find online or elsewhere. It is impossible to prevent all the students from consulting other briefs before attempting their own, but alerting students to your awareness of this is at least somewhat helpful in encouraging them to work independently. Because many students are interested in law school, they recognize the value of the early practice of a skill that may be beneficial to them later, and most seem to make a diligent effort to write case briefs without relying on other sources.
Case Brief: Learning Outcomes and Assessment
The case brief assignment assesses the students’ ability to use the jurisprudential view of law to read and analyze a judicial opinion, identify pertinent legal principles, and summarize those principles in the prescribed format of a brief. I evaluated briefs looking for the correct identification of relevant facts, legal question or issue, rule of law, legal analysis, and case holding. Additionally, I evaluated each student’s demonstration of an overall understanding of the case, clarity and organization of writing, and proper formatting. The majority of students (75 out of 86) demonstrated proficiency (mostly accurate identification of facts, issue, rule of law, legal rationale, and holding—may include minor errors) or mastery (clear and succinct identification of accurate facts, issue, rule of law, legal rationale, and holding) of the aforementioned skills. Common issues among the work of students who demonstrated developing or insufficient skills were verbatim copying of text from the opinion without synthesis that indicated understanding, disorganized writing, and/or confusion about the legal principles and outcomes of the case.
Case Brief: Student Feedback
Many (but not all) students will find case briefing difficult, especially if it is their first time ever reading a legal opinion—which will likely be the case for many students. I emphasize to students that it is completely okay if this is difficult, that “legalese” is a learned language, and that briefing is a purposeful form of writing that may not feel natural everyone. I have found that being very straightforward about the challenges of the assignment and reassuring students that they are not expected to be experts in briefing is very helpful in bolstering confidence.
Students reflected on their learning during this assignment in their critical reflection essays. Common themes raised in students’ reflection were that case briefing increased their understanding of the specific case and its legal context, was beneficial as an exercise in writing concisely, and required the use of active reading and critical thinking skills. While not as ubiquitous as the aforementioned themes, several students also believed that learning how to case brief would be beneficial to them in the future. For example, two students wrote, respectively, the following: Creating a case brief teaches one to be concise in their work. This is an important skill that can translate to the real world, as it is often important to be able to display one’s knowledge both correctly and concisely. It was extremely helpful for me to gain the skills to be able to find the important information from the case. For example, my case was about 60 pages in full length; however, my case brief was barely over a page long. This case brief really helped me gain skills that I know will be helpful in my future. . . . I really enjoyed this assignment and it made me more excited for the potential of going to law school.
Based on assessment data and student feedback, it is evident that this assignment is a successful vehicle for teaching the jurisprudential view of law and for assessing students’ ability to use critical thinking, deductive reasoning, active reading, and clear writing to demonstrate understanding of legal opinions.
Assignment 2: Sociolegal Analysis
Assignment 2 is a sociolegal analysis essay. Students are asked to think sociolegally and analyze the law that they read and wrote about for Assignment 1. I help students to understand what a sociolegal analysis is by providing them with the following quote from Schiff (1976:287): “According to a socio-legal approach, analysis of law is directly linked to the analysis of the social situation to which the law applies, and should be put into the perspective of that situation by seeing the part the law plays in the creation, maintenance, and/or change of the situation.” This analysis requires that students think critically about social factors contributing to the relevant legal issue, the societal impact of the judicial decision and changes in law, and the ways that societal norms and values influence law. The essay serves as an opportunity to assess students’ ability to use their sociolegal imagination and apply the sociolegal perspective.
Preparing Students for the Sociolegal Analysis: The Sociolegal Imagination
In the weeks leading up to the due date for the assignment, we practice using the sociolegal perspective by reading the work of law and society scholars, identifying how those scholars interrogate social situations and structures, and talking about how this approach differs from the traditional, jurisprudential approach. There is a wide variety of excellent empirical and theoretical work you can assign to practice these skills, and students often very much enjoy this portion of the class. Students also practice using their sociolegal imaginations through responding to prompts that I provide that guide their sociolegal analysis of readings, videos, and lectures. I usually use class discussion, in-class low-stakes writing assignments, and weekly response essays to assess their progress in employing the sociolegal perspective. Other forms of assessment, such as quizzes or exams, could also be used.
Sociolegal Analysis: Assignment Details
After students have had multiple opportunities to practice using the sociolegal perspective, they should begin working on the sociolegal analysis paper. I assign students to write a three- to four-page paper addressing the background and social context of the situation leading up to the case, an analysis of the ways that judges discussed societal norms and values in the legal opinion, and a discussion of the impact the decision has had on societal conditions. I provide students with a grading rubric that details how they will be scored on these elements. I usually require only that students use Google searches and other limited internet research to write this assignment, although this assignment could very well be expanded into a lengthier research paper if you preferred. Students should be instructed on, or reminded of, proper citation and reference formats. You should recommend that as students work on this assignment, they begin to think about how this is similar or different from the analysis they did while case briefing and suggest that they jot down notes for themselves, which will be useful for Assignment 3.
Sociolegal Analysis: Learning Outcomes and Assessment
The sociolegal analysis essays assess students’ ability to apply the sociolegal perspective to demonstrate an understanding of the development of the legal issue out of its social context, identify the ways that legal opinions do (or do not) engage with societal norms and values, and detail the impact of the law on societal conditions and social change. I evaluated the sociolegal essays looking for in-depth analyses of social context, norms and values in legal arguments, and impact as well as for clarity and organization of writing and proper format. The majority of students (76 out of 83) demonstrated proficiency (relevant and appropriate discussion of social context, legal arguments founded on norms and values, and societal impact) or mastery (detailed, in-depth, integrated discussion of social context, legal arguments founded on norms and values, and societal impact) of these skills. Common shortcomings of the work done by the remaining students included overly general or cursory discussion of context, norms and values, and impact; misunderstanding of the case law and its impact; and disorganized writing or unclear expression of ideas.
Sociolegal Analysis: Student Feedback
Students reflected on their learning during this assignment in their critical reflection essays, and common themes they raised were the role of social norms, values, and societal interests in influencing judicial opinions and laws and learning about law through analyzing the social, cultural, historical, and political context both before and after the case. For example, students wrote, respectively, the following: I learned a lot by researching the impact that this case had on society afterwards. Obviously I thought about [the legal issue], but past that I didn’t think about the statistics and long-lasting effects of this court case. Because of this, I have now begun to think more critically about the long-lasting effects of court cases beyond just the surface level. By doing the socio-legal analysis, I learned that there are so many social factors that can influence justices’ decisions. Supreme Court decisions are an excellent example of how law and society are intertwined, and you virtually cannot have one without the other. The justices did not solely rely on legal fact, they were influenced by extralegal factors, such as other nations’ policies and the evolving standards of decency in society.
Assessment outcomes and review of student feedback on this assignment indicate that the sociolegal analysis essay is a highly effective demonstration of students’ ability to use the sociolegal perspective to identify the reciprocal relationship between legal and nonlegal factors in society and their ability to think critically and write clearly about law as a social phenomenon.
Assignment 3: Critical Reflection Essay
Assignment 3 is a critical reflection essay that assesses students’ understandings of both the jurisprudential and sociolegal perspectives and points of distinction between the two. Students are also asked to reflect on what they learned about law from applying multiple perspectives and to connect those lessons to other sociological concepts and course themes.
Preparing for the Critical Reflection Essay
I begin previewing this assignment at the beginning of the semester and remind students throughout their work on the prior two assignments that they should think critically and reflectively about the perspectives and what they are learning. I encourage students to keep notes for themselves as they work on the previous assignments, which, if done diligently, will be very helpful for completing the third assignment. Additionally, providing constructive feedback on students’ work on the earlier assignments and assisting students who struggled in any way with the prior work are very helpful preparation for the critical reflection essay.
Critical Reflection Essay: Assignment Details
I provide students with the following prompts: Review your case briefs and your sociolegal essays and answer the following questions in essay form: What is the jurisprudential approach? What did you learn from writing the case brief? What is the sociolegal approach? What did you learn from writing your sociolegal analysis? How were these two processes similar and/or different? What do you learn from comparing the two approaches to analyzing the same case? How do these lessons relate to overall themes from the course?
I generally require these essays to be two to four pages in length, and I provide students with a rubric in advance of their writing. I also encourage students to use the first person while writing their critical reflections.
Critical Reflection Essay: Learning Outcomes and Assessment
The critical reflection essays assess students’ recognition of the jurisprudential perspective and the sociolegal perspective as distinct approaches to studying law. Additionally, these papers assess students’ ability to draw connections between those perspectives and overall themes of the course. I evaluated reflection essays looking for accurate definitions of the perspectives, integrated and detailed discussions of the distinctions and/or overlap between the perspectives, the identification of connections to other important course themes, and detailed and insightful reflections on course learning. The majority of students (76 out of 82) demonstrated proficiency (accurate definitions of perspectives, relevant and appropriate analysis of similarities and differences between approaches, connections to course concepts, and reflection on learning) or mastery (accurate definitions of perspectives; detailed, integrated, and in-depth analysis of similarities and differences between approaches; connections to course concepts; and reflection on learning) of these requirements. Common shortcomings among the other work were cursory or inaccurate discussions of the perspectives, little to no reflection on learning, and weak or absent connections to other course themes.
Critical Reflection Essay: Student Feedback
In addition to the instructor’s evaluation of written work for the case brief and sociolegal analysis assignments, the critical reflection essays also provide additional evidence of student learning. Common themes raised in student reflections were knowledge of the sociolegal perspective and why it is important, gaining deeper understanding of law through the use of multiple analytical perspectives, conceptualizing law as a social phenomenon, and recognizing a relationship between law and social inequalities. Some examples of students’ discussion of these themes is seen in the following excerpts: From comparing the two approaches to analyzing the same case, I’ve learned the law is not as simple and as black and white as it may seem. I think there are different ways to view the law and this class in general has opened my eyes to the fact. I also think we do not realize how essential the law is to shape our everyday lives. It made me realize how important looking at social structures and facts are to fully understanding a court case. Many times in law classes or other criminal justice classes, we do not fully get the full picture of the case with the socio-legal aspects included. By doing these two assignments, I learned how interesting, as well as educational putting the two factors together are. This is especially true when attempting to get the most information from a case. By comparing the two approaches to the same case, I got a full view of the case and its decision, and I now recommend the socio-legal perspective of a case always be evaluated. I believe that these assignments relate to our overall theme of Law and Society by proving the importance of looking as society’s influence on court cases and the influence of court cases on society. . . . Similarly, looking at this course in a sociological lens, I was able to better understand the reason why this case was so significant that it made it to the Supreme court.
The review of assessment data and evidence from students’ qualitative comments indicates that this assignment series as a whole is an effective tool for teaching students the difference between the jurisprudential and sociolegal perspectives. Importantly, the assignments move beyond requiring that students merely know the difference between the two perspectives; they also require that they think critically about the strengths and drawbacks of each perspective, connect the writing practices to course concepts and theories, and learn to write in different styles and for different purposes.
Discussion and Conclusion
This series of assignments helps sociology students learn to identify the major differences between the jurisprudential view of law and the sociolegal perspective by giving students opportunities to utilize the analytical lens of each to critically examine case law. These exercises are valuable because students learn to evaluate hegemonic notions about law while demonstrating the utility of alternative viewpoints, for example, sociological approaches. Students learn the critical inquiry of sociolegal approaches but also strengthen their knowledge of other sociological theories and concepts that instructors may choose to incorporate into the curriculum. This might include further analysis of the relationship between law and, for example, other institutions, social identities, deviance, socialization, or the amelioration and/or proliferation of social inequalities. In addition to addressing the substantive content of law and sociology, this assignment series also serves broader academic ends, such as exercising logical reasoning and critical thinking abilities, strengthening an array of writing skills, and promoting metalearning, which encourages students to bridge disciplinary gaps and draw connections between diverse sources of knowledge.
Our discipline’s mission of imparting the sociological imagination remains important and perhaps is more pressing than ever in the Sociology of Law classroom. Following the killing of George Floyd by police officers, two of whom had studied sociology as undergraduates, sociologists have been called to review curricula in law, crime, and deviance and to commit to dismantling systems of oppression that may be present in what, and how, we teach and research (see Hamilton 2020). The sociological perspective on law can provide students with the tools to think critically about systems of injustice by interrogating whom law serves, whether law is used to oppress or to dismantle oppression, and whether or how law might more effectively safeguard rights, promote social justice, and facilitate the creation of a better society. If history holds true, students will continue to come to us to ask these important questions about law. The “promise” of sociology is that, at the very least, we can teach our students how to find answers to questions about social problems. And perhaps, at our very best, we might instill them with the imagination to one day create elegant and just solutions.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the Law and Society students at the University of Dayton. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2019 North Central Sociological Association Conference, and I appreciate the feedback of those in attendance. Thank you also to the reviewers and editor of Teaching Sociology for your insightful and constructive feedback.
Editor’s Note
Reviewers for this manuscript were, in alphabetical order, Stephanie Bennett, Mellisa Holtzman, and Shiri Noy.
