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Famous American Trials (221-0-1)

Instructors

Joanna Grisinger
847 491 3987
620 Lincoln St #201
I am an American legal historian who works on the modern administrative state. At Northwestern, I teach courses on law and society, U.S. legal history, gender and the law, and constitutional law. My first book, The Unwieldy American State: Administrative Politics since the New Deal (Cambridge, 2012), examines the politics of administrative law reform; I am currently working on a project about the relationship between administrative agencies and social movements.

Meeting Info

Harris Hall 107: Tues, Thurs 12:30PM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

The American courtroom has provided a venue through which Americans have grappled with moral panics, political tensions, celebrity scandal, and mass violence. The high-profile prosecutions of people ranging from Lizzie Borden to OJ Simpson had a powerful hold on American culture at the time. And although these trials rarely had a significant effect on the law, they remain potent cultural touchstones, their stories told and retold through movies, television shows, podcasts, songs, and souvenirs. This course examines several famous American trials—famous both in their time and today—to understand and examine key themes in American political, legal, social, economic, and cultural history. We will focus largely on the twentieth century—a period of multiple "Trials of the Century" —to see how each trial crystallized broader political and social tensions over ethnicity, gender, race, religion, politics, sexuality, and social status. Each trial combined elements of both formal law and public theater; through these trials, we'll examine the relationship between legal reasoning and storytelling. We will also examine how and why we return to such stories; how do they endure in historical memory, and what tensions do they help us think about today?

Learning Objectives

After completing this course, students will:
o Understand the historical phenomena and changes over time discussed in the context of famous American trials and be able to reflect on the impact and role of these developments in the present day.
o Examine how Americans have interpreted and reinterpreted these trials over time, and understand what these narratives tell us about the context in which they are made.
o Understand the subjectivity of legal authorities and the agency of legal subjects in historical context, and explore the social, political, environmental, and cultural bases of historical actors' relationships, structures, processes, and practices.
o Assess, analyze, and interpret primary sources (such as legal documents and newspaper articles) and historical scholarship (academic journal articles and book chapters) that engage with law's role in constructing and reflecting the historical and contemporary structures, processes, and practices that shape racism and anti-racism; power and resistance; justice and injustice; equality and inequality; agency and subjection; and belonging and subjection—in ways that shape both institutional decisionmaking and broader political and social understandings of these concepts.
o Through reading such sources, understand how historians debate questions and make arguments grounded in primary sources. Make cogent, evidence-based oral and written arguments about interpretive questions and core themes in legal history that engage with the arguments of historical actors and historians.
o Understand criminal trials as operating as both legal processes and as public theater, in ways that make clear the interconnected relationships in the U.S. legal system among individual identity; societal, cultural, political, and economic forces; and legal rules, practices, and outcomes.
o Assess, analyze, and interpret primary sources (such as legal documents and newspaper articles) and historical scholarship (academic journal articles and book chapters) that engage with law's role in constructing and reflecting the historical and contemporary structures, processes, and practices that shape racism and anti-racism; power and resistance; justice and injustice; equality and inequality; agency and subjection; and belonging and subjection—in ways that shape both institutional decisionmaking and broader political and social understandings of these concepts.
o Understand and be able to work with key analytical concepts that often define individuals and groups, including ethnicity, gender, race, religion, politics, sexuality, and social status; analyze how these relationships and categories intersect and overlap as they burst into public consciousness through criminal trials.

Evaluation Method

paper, midterm and final exam, class participation

Class Materials (Required)

course materials will be posted to Canvas at no charge

Class Attributes

Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Historical Studies Distro Area
U.S. Perspectives on Power, Justice, and Equity

Associated Classes

DIS - Locy Hall 110: Fri 11:00AM - 11:50AM

DIS - Locy Hall 305: Fri 1:00PM - 1:50PM

DIS - Locy Hall 110: Fri 2:00PM - 2:50PM

DIS - Harris Hall L28: Fri 11:00AM - 11:50AM

DIS - Kresge Centennial Hall 2-425: Fri 1:00PM - 1:50PM

DIS - Kresge Centennial Hall 2-343: Fri 2:00PM - 2:50PM

DIS - Annenberg Hall G30: Fri 11:00AM - 11:50AM

DIS - Harris Hall L28: Fri 1:00PM - 1:50PM

DIS - Harris Hall L28: Fri 2:00PM - 2:50PM