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SELECTED TOPICS IN SOCIAL AND MORAL REGULATION
Richard Weisman Fall- 2010 Thursday, 2:30- 5:30, BC 228 Office- S720 Website- http://www.arts.yorku.ca/sosc/rweisman/
This course looks at how social categories that arrange persons in moral hierarchies are constructed in the legal forum. We will draw upon trials, judgements, and other documents to show how law incorporates other discourses(popular, psychiatric, and medical) in deciding upon culpability, voluntariness, and character- concepts that are central to the forming of legal narratives. The focus of our inquiry is on how events from everyday life are translated into the legal forum and how the legal forum in turn privileges some social representations and marginalizes others.
Availability of readings- copies to be distributed or placed on reserve* Online or on website**
September 16- Overview of course
September 23- Comparing discourses and truth claims-
Reading: Michel Foucault, Abnormal :Lectures at the College de France, 1974-1975, Picador, 2003, chapters 5 and 6, pp. Lecture- 1974- Chapters 4 and 5, pp.109-166.* Recommended: Michel Foucault, ed., I, Pierre Riviere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother... A Case of Parricide in the 19th Century, Pantheon Books, 1975.
September 30 - Narratives and the Translation Problem in Law- Thinking about Legal Discourse Sociologically-
Readings: Austin Sarat(1993)Speaking of Death: Narratives of Violence in Capital Trials,” 27 Law and Society Review, “ pp.19-58.** Anne McGillivray(1998), “A moral vacuity in her which is difficult if not impossible to explain: law, psychiatry and the remaking of Karla Homolka,” International Journal of the Legal Profession, Vol. 5, Nos., 2/3, pp.255-288.** Robert A. Ferguson(1996) “Untold Stories of the Law, “ in Peter Brooks and Paul Gewirtz, eds, Law’s Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law, Yale University, pp. 84-98.* Constance Backhouse, “Don’t You Bully Me... Justice I Want if There is Justice to be Had.....” in Carnal Crimes- Sexual Asssault Law in Canada, 1900-1975, The Osgoode Society, 2008, pp.15-49.* Dragan Milovanovic, “Semiotic Perspectives in Law,” in A Primer in the Sociology of Law, 1988, pp. 125-140.*
October 7 - Representations of Crime and Gender in Law-
Readings: Ruth Harris, Murders and Madness: Medicine, Law, and Society in Fin de Siecle, Oxford University, 1989, pp. 208-242 and 285-320.* Martha Merrill Umphrey(1999) “The Dialogics of Legal Meaning: Spectacular Trials , the Unwritten Law, and Narratives of Criminal Responsibility,” Law and Society Review ,Vol. 33, no.2., pp. 393-424.** Kristin Bumiller(1990) “ ‘Fallen Angels: The Representation of Violence Against Women in Legal Culture, “ 18 International Journal of the Sociology of Law, pp.125-142.** Elizabeth Lunbeck, “Narrating Nymphomania between Psychiatry and Law,” in Sarat, Douglas, and Umphrey, eds., Law’s Madness, 2003, pp.49-77.*
October 21- Constructing Psychopathy- Elise Chenier, “The criminal sexual psychopath in Canada: sex, psychiatry and the law at mid-century,” Canadian Bulletin of the History of Medicine 20(2003), pp.75-101.* R.v.Kjeldsen v. The Queen(1981) 64 C.C.C.(2nd) S.C.C.** J. Reid Meloy, “A Psychoanalytic View of the Psychopath,” paper presented at meeting of Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, March 31, 2007- Toronto- see website-** Richard Weisman, “Remorse at the Penalty Phase of the Capital Trial: How Psychiatry’s View of ‘Moral Insanity’ Helps Build the Case for Death.” Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 42, 2007, pp.187-217.** See website
October 28 - Law and the Moral Regulation of Emotions- The Case of Provocation
Allyson Lunny, “Provocation and ‘Homosexual’ Advance: Masculinized Subjects as Threat, Masculinized Subjects Under Threat,” Social and Legal Studies, 2003, Vol. 12(3), pp.311-333.** Michael A. Smyth, “Queers and Provocateurs: Hegemony, Ideology, and the ‘Homosexual Advance’ Defence,” Law and Society Review, 2006, Vol. 40(no.3), pp. 903-930. R .v. Tran, Alberta Court of Appeal(2008). ** Thibert v. the Queen, SCC(1996).** Criminal Code-section on Provocation-s.232(1)** Recommended: Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Commercialization of Intimate Life, Part II, pp. 75-137.
November 4- Law, Remorse, and Moral Regulation
R. Weisman, “Being and Doing: The Judicial Use of Remorse to Construct Character and Community,” Social and Legal Studies, Vol. 18, no.1, March, 2009, pp.47-69.** R. Weisman , “Coupling and Decoupling Remorse and Forgiveness in Legal Discourse,” paper presented at Conference on Forgiveness, March 16, 2009,
Jennifer Kilty, “Gendering violence, remorse and the role of restorative justice: deconstructing public perceptions of Kelly Ellard and Warren Glotawski, Contemporary Justice Review, Vol. 13, Issue 2, June, 2010, pp.155-172.
November 11- Trial as Social Form and Producer of Social Representation- Readings: Robert Hariman, “Performing the Law: Popular Trials and Social Knowledge,” in Hariman, ed., Popular Trials* Robert Ferguson- Story and Transcription in the Trial of John Brown- Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, 1994 Carolyn Strange and Tina Loo, “Spectacular Justice: The Circus on Trial, and the trial as Circus, Picton, 1903,” Vol. 77, #2, June, 1996, Canadian Historical Review, pp. 159-184,
November 18- Recognizing State Violence- Trial as Medium
Lawrence Douglas, The Memory of Judgement: Making Law and the History of Trials of the Holocaust, Part 1, pp. 1-94, Yale University Press, 2001.*
November 25- Recognizing State Violence- Truth Commission as Medium
Deborah Posel, “History as Confession: The Case of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” Popular Culture, 20:1, 2008, pp.119-141.** Michael Humphrey, “From Victim to Victimhood: Truth Commissions and Trials as Rituals of Political Transition and Individual Healing,” The Australian Journal of Anthropology,2003, 14:2, 171-187.** Leigh Payne, Unsettling Accounts, Chapter 1-“Confessional Performance” and Chapter 2 “Remorse,” pp. 13- 74, Duke University Press, 2008.*
December 2- Comparisons between trial form and truth commission form as producers of narratives and collective memory-
December 9- Final meeting- brief discussion of papers and works in progress-
Requirements-
One major essay of approximately 25 pages that elaborates on one of the topics in the syllabus- to be chosen in consultation with instructor- Due on Thursday, December 16- 70%. Preparation of two reaction papers on readings and questions to address to the class- 30%- to set up on September 16.
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