November 3, 2011
Hamilton first started offering its students a pre-law education in the 1850s. Now, over a century since the law program was dissolved, the College is re-institutionalizing law courses with the creation of the Jurisprudence, Law and Justice Studies Minor.
Two summers ago, Maynard-Knox Professor of Government and Law Frank Anechiarico ’71 and Tyler Roberts ’12 began researching the history of law studies at Hamilton. With the support of an Emerson Grant, they were able to dedicate weeks to digging through the College Archives, where they discovered that Theodore Dwight, Class of 1840, had already laid the groundwork for a legal education at Hamilton. Dwight went on to help found Columbia Law School; perhaps ironically, the development of law schools resulted in many liberal arts schools dropping the curriculum, and so any traces of a formal legal education at Hamilton disappeared.
Anechiarico and Roberts took their findings to a consortium of undergraduate legal programs in Chicago, where they were encouraged to find that 50 such programs exist throughout the entire United States. Anechiarico and Roberts also learned that Legal Studies is Amherst’s most popular major. Convinced that a law-related minor would be popular among Hamilton students, Anechiarico and Roberts turned to the faculty for inspiration and support. The resulting Jurisprudence, Law and Justice Studies minor was approved last year and students will be able to begin declaring and pursuing the minor this spring. The “program evaluation” function on WebAdvisor is already set up to credit current or completed courses toward the minor, and a list of qualifying courses can be found in the course catalogue.
Just three courses that meet the minor requirements are being offered next year; the program committee is lobbying for more courses to be taught on a regular basis, as well as inviting faculty to consider what current or new courses could fit within the minor.
“If there’s a particular area that you’re interested in that has a more interdisciplinary approach, go ahead and talk to that professor,” said Roberts.
The minor is truly interdisciplinary, drawing on courses from the government, sociology, philosophy, history, communications, women’s studies, English and biology departments. The intent is for students to take two broad perspective courses, supplemented by courses that address a specific facet of the law. For example, students could satisfy the minor in Jurisprudence Studies by taking a course on prison writing with Professor of English and Creative Writing Doran Larson, director of the Jurisprudence, Law and Justice Studies program.
“Our goal is to bring to students the kind of perspectives on the law that you will not get in law school,” said Larson.
Indeed, the minor is not intended as a pre-law curriculum, though it certainly does not preclude students from choosing that path. While law school involves processing a large amount of technical information, the Jurisprudence Studies minor offers undergraduates a chance to explore the nuances of the legal system.
The committee responsible for creating the minor wanted students to consider their reasons for choosing a particular academic and career path. Its belief is that students should have a strong sense of what dimension of the law interests and inspires them.
“You need to be thinking not just ‘what can law do for me in the future?’ but ‘why do I care about it?’” said Larson. “This minor offers a really good way to develop skills that will be helpful in any field. You will need to read, write and give oral presentations,” said Roberts. “You can have the best idea in the world but if you can’t share it with people it’s not going to be useful. The abilities you’ll develop in these courses are going to be helpful in business, academia—really anything. Biologists may be dealing with the legal relationship between genetics in society. It’s just important to be aware of.”
Indeed, the broad implications of the law makes Jurisprudence Studies an ideal fit for a liberal arts curriculum.
“We’re reviving what I think is a very important part of the liberal arts college,” said Anechiarico. “The law is a great way of thinking about the rules of society; it fits so well with the traditional focus of the social sciences and the humanities.”
A major function of the new minor is to preserve this connection between Hamilton’s academic agenda and student interest in legal affairs. For example, if one of the professors on the program committee were to retire, the College would be compelled to hire a few faculty member with a similar area of expertise in law. This will ensure “staying power” for the program so that one day it could even become a major. The relationship between the humanities and law is increasingly popular; many law schools are beginning to offer degrees in law and society, which will be pertinent to the significant number of Hamilton graduates who go on to attend law school. The goal of the new minor is to reach out to students and faculty from various disciplines and show them what they can learn from—and contribute to—the field of law.
“The more people who are aware of the law and in on the conversation of what the law should be, the better laws we will have,” said Roberts.