Law and Society Minor

The Political Science department offers a law and Society minor which can be taken alongside any major at LVC. The minor is an interdisciplinary program that introduces students to the American legal system through a study of the United States Constitution and its normative and political context. The program is expected to be of particular use to those students who intend to apply to law school. An internship and a capstone seminar in legal foundations are required for this minor.

Required courses:
An introduction to the rules of clear and effective thinking. Attention is given to the logic of meaning, the logic of valid inference and the logic of factual inquiry. Main emphasis is upon deductive logic. Students are introduced to the elements of symbolic logic as well as to traditional modes of analysis.
This course uses key cases to study important doctrines established by the Supreme Court with respect to the structure and functions of the constitutional system (judicial, legislative and executive power and federalism). There is a particular emphasis on various forms of textual interpretation used by individual justices to apply the Constitution in deciding cases and writing opinions.
This course uses key cases to study important doctrines established by the Supreme Court with regard to civil rights and civil liberties. Students will examine the Court's rulings concerning the establishment and free exercise of religion, protection of freedom of speech and of the press, privacy rights (abortion and sexual freedom), the rights of the accused in the criminal justice system, and the law governing racial or sexual discrimination. The course places particular emphasis on various forms of textual interpretation used by individual justices to apply the Constitution in deciding cases and writing opinions.
Field experience in a political science environment.
This capstone seminar examines the historical and philosophical development of constitutional law in the United States; the seminar emphasizes the dynamic relationship between the law and moral and political philosophy.
† indicates a required course

One of

An examination of some of the important philosophical issues, including the ethical and valuational, to be found in the social institutions of politics, law, government and religion.
Students in this course study the development of Western political thought from Classical Greece to modern times, examining the conceptual evolution of citizenship, civic obligation, and the nature of justics and exploring the connection between moral and positive law in the western tradition.