Humanities and Social Science Program

Law and Justice Across Cultures

Faculty Advisor: Adjunct Professor, Anthropology, Georgetown University

Research Program Introduction

This program examines how societies across time and in different places have conceived of law and justice. Course readings will draw from a range of anthropological and ethnographic material informed by critical approaches to the study of both concepts. The goal of this program is for students to acquire a robust analytical toolkit for understanding how notions of law, legality, and justice emerge in distinct cultural settings and sociopolitical contexts. Achieving this goal will mean moving across various disciplinary subfields and issues explored by legal anthropologists such as colonialism, citizenship, social inequality, international law, and human rights.

The goal of this practicum is for students to learn the key concepts in legal anthropology, explore the way culture and law intersect in different social settings, and examine how law unfolds at different geographic and jurisdictional scales.

Program Deliverables

Students will complete a research paper that is roughly ten double-spaced pages.

Possible Topics for Final Project:

  • How do different countries with different social and cultural values deal with the same legal problem (such as divorce)?

  • How has a legal rule in a particular jurisdiction changed across time?

  • What non-legal institutions in a particular society shape how the law is understood and practiced?

  • Is there a right not included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that should be included?

  • How do non-governmental organizations participate in international law making with respect to X legal issue?

  • Or other topics in this subject area that you are interested in, and that your professor approves after discussing it with you.

Program Details

  • Cohort size: 3 to 6 students

  • Workload: Around 4 to 5 hours per week (including class and homework time)

  • Target students: 9 to 12th graders interested in Law, Debate, Politics, Policy, International Politics, Sociology, History, Cultural Studies, or other related areas.

  • Schedule: TBD. Meetings will take place for around one hour per week, with a weekly meeting day and time to be determined a few weeks before the start date.