Where to find the readings:
= E-reserves;
= Blackboard course materials;
= World Wide Web (hyperlink from syllabus);
= Stokes Library 3 hour reserve; also available for purchase at Labyrinth.
Week One. February 4 and 6. Introduction: the variety of institutions .
The first week of the course will lay out three cases designed to illustrate the range of institutions the course will consider: (1) publicly ordered institutions (citizenship), (2) private ordering within a legal framework (contract), and (3) institutions whose rules and practices are not generally established through law, though they may have the state's patronage or acceptance (science).
Citizenship:
Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 21-34 (Ch. 1 "Citizenship as Social Closure").
Contract:
Margaret Jane Radin, Boilerplate: The Fine Print, Vanishing Rights, and the Rule of Law (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), xiii-xvii (Prologue) and 1-18 (Ch. 1).
Science:
Robert Merton, The Sociology of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 267-278 ("The Normative Structure of Science").
Week Two.February 11 and 13: What are institutions, and why do they matter? Contrasting disciplinary perspectives.
This week examines different approaches to institutional analysis and institutional change. The public-private distinction serves as a case study.
February 11: Contrasting disciplinary perspectives
Douglass North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), Chs. 1, 9.
Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter Powell, "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields." American Sociological Review 48 (1983), 147-160.
Additional background (not required): H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law, 3d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), esp. Chs. 5-6.
February 13: Principles (values) and rules: the case of the public/private boundary
James Whitman, "The Two Western Cultures of Privacy: Dignity Versus Liberty," Yale Law Journal 113 (2004), 1151-1221.
Week Three. February 18 and 20. Political institutions: state-building, the nation-state, and constitutionalism.
In this week, we will examine the rise and consolidation of the modern nation-state as both a social and a legal project.
Charles Tilly, "Conditions Favoring the National State," pp. 25-31 in "Introduction" to Tilly, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975).
Andreas Wimmer and Yuval Feinstein, "The Rise of the Nation-State across the World, 1816 to 2001," American Sociological Review 75 (2010), 764-790.
Douglass C. North and Barry R. Weingast, "Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutional Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth- Century England," Journal of Economic History 49 (Dec. 1989), 803-832.
John Henry Merryman and Rogelio Perez-Perdomo, The Civil Law Tradition: An Introduction to the Legal Systems of Europe and Latin America, 3rd ed. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 1-5, 20-33.
Week Four. February 25 and 27. Democracy and law
We now take up questions about the institutional framework of democracy: What are the consequences of different institutional designs? What role does law play in regulating democracy? And can constitutions and courts prevent democracies from being undone democratically?
February 25: The design of democracy
Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela S. Karlan, and Richard H. Pildes, The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process, 4th ed. (New York: Foundation Press, 2012), 1-13 ("An Introduction to the Design of Democratic Institutions").
Brian Galligan, "Comparative Federalism," in Sarah A. Binder, R. A. W. Rhodes, and Bert A. Rockman, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 261-280.
February 27: Constitutional democracy against itself? (Kim Lane Scheppele)
Kim Lane Scheppele, "Constitutional Coups and Judicial Review: How Transnational Institutions Can Strengthen Peak Courts at Times of Crisis," Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems (forthcoming Spring 2014).
Weeks Five and Six. Legal institutions
We turn to the institutions that shape the legal process, focusing on courts, judges, and judicial review.
March 4. Courts, lawyers, and juries (Paul Frymer)
Marc Galanter, "Why the Haves Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change" Law and Society Review 9 (1974), 95-160.
Abram Chayes, "The Role of the Judge in Public Law Litigation," Harvard Law Review 89 (1976), 1281-1316.
Jeffrey Abramson, We, the Jury: The Jury System and the Ideal of Democracy
(New York: Basic Books, 1994), Ch. 1.
March 6: Judicial review
Christopher L. Eisgruber, Constitutional Self-Government (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 10-45 (Ch.1).
Martin Shapiro, "The Success of Judicial Review and Democracy," in Shapiro and Alec Stone Sweet, On Law, Politics, and Judicialization (New York : Oxford University Press, 2002).
Cass Sunstein, "Law and Administration after Chevron," Columbia Law Review 90 (December 1990), 2071-2120.
March 11: The Expansion of Rights (Paul Frymer)
Ronald Dworkin, "Taking Rights Seriously," in Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (1977), 184-205.
Robert Cover, "The Origins of Judicial Activism in the Protection of Minorities." Yale Law Journal 91 (1982), 1287-1316.
Paul Frymer, Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), Chs. 2-3.
March 13. Midterm exam.
Week Seven.March 25 and 27: The institutions of capitalism and sources of economic growth
This week, drawing on comparative and historical evidence, we consider how institutions created through politics and law may affect economic growth, and how economic growth may affect institutions.
Max Weber, General Economic History (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1950), 275-278 ("The Meaning and Presuppositions of Modern Capitalism").
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: the Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (New York: Crown Business, 2012), Chs. 2-4, 7-10, 14-15.
Naomi R. Lamoreaux, "Did Insecure Property Rights Slow Economic Development? Some Lessons from Economic History," Journal of Policy History 18 (2006): 146-64.
Week Eight April 1 and 3. Politics, technology, and constitutive choices: the case of communications.
Changes in politics and technology often upset old institutional frameworks and lead to new choices in institutional design. The history of communications, from the post office to broadcasting and the Internet, illustrates the pattern.
Paul Starr, The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications (New York: Basic Books, 2004), Introduction, Chs. 1-3, 10.
Lawrence Lessig, Code, Version 2.0 (New York: Basic Books, 2006), Chs. 1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 12.
Week Nine. April 8 and 10. Civil society
This week we consider how institutional change has affected political advocacy and philanthropy.
April 8. Changing structures of civic engagement
Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), Chs. 1, 2, and 4.
Week Ten.April 15 and 17. Law and marriage (lectures: Hendrik Hartog, Stephen Macedo)
The rise of same-sex marriage has put the law's role in defining and regulating marriage at the center of public attention. This week's lectures and readings provide a historical and contemporary perspective on a changing institution.
Hendrik Hartog,"What Gay Marriage Teaches Us about the History of Marriage," History News Network.
Stephen Macedo, The Future of Marriage (forthcoming), Chapter 4.
Week Eleven. April 22 and 24. Institutional formation and restructuring: the case of health care
We explore the sources of institutional change through an exploration of two phases in the transformation of health care: the rise of the medical profession and related changes in health-care organization in late 19th and 20th centuries, and the contemporary institutional restructing of health insurance.
"Precis of Paul Starr's The Social Transformation of American Medicine," Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 29 (2004), 575-620.
Stefan Gress, Stefan Gildemeister, and Jurgen Wasem, "The Social Transformation of American Medicine: A Comparative View from Germany," Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 29 (2004), 679-699.
Paul Starr, Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform, revised ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), Introduction, Chs. 6, 8-9.
Week Twelve. Contemporary institutional change in a global context
Changes in institutions in one country do not take place in isolation from others. This is expecially true today as new institutional models and policy paradigms have diffused throughout the world. What's the relationship of American institutions to these new patterns?
April 29. Global changes in the structure of government
Alasdair Roberts, The Logic of Discipline: Global Capitalism and the Architecture of Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), Chs. 1-2.
Frank Dobbin, Beth Simmons and Geoffrey Garrett, "The Global Diffusion of Public Policies: Social Construction, Coercion, Competition, or Learning?" Annual Review of Sociology 33 (2007), 449-472.
May 1. The virtues and limits of American institutional exceptionalism (final lecture)
Last modified: April 12, 2014.