Section 1:
Define any four of the following Concepts and explain in a paragraph the significance of each concept as it
applies to the sociology of law and issues discussed in class, readings and group presentation. 5marks each (20
marks)
Commodity theory of law, trial by ordeal, legal positivism, restitutive law, law as relatively autonomous, formal
legal rationality, Rational legal domination, substantive legal equality, capital logic theory of law, romantic crimes,
structural Marxist conception of law, living law, Pareto optimum conception of law, feminist jurisprudence, plain
fact view of law, Charismatic domination, gapless theory of law, result-equality feminism, social contract theory of
law, law as integrity, originalism, restorative justice, Khadi justice, enclosure movement, legal pragmatism, State
action requirement, Substantive inequality, victim perspective on racial discrimination, 1935 Nuremburg Law, Jim
Crow Laws, Brown v. the Board of Education, Common Law understanding of Aboriginal land claim, Quickening,
Roe v. Wade, Midwifery, medicalization of birth, legal realism/legal pragmatism, Compelling state interest, Citizen
plus, Critical legal studies, Public interest litigation, Cause Lawyer, Social Movements, Rights
consciousness, medical model of disability, Nothing about us without us ideology, cultural injustice,
Rhenish thefts of wood law, Protected class, strict scrutiny, Security certificate, Counter-law, Security
Cleared special advocates, Space of radical openness, Social relations of production for temporary
foreign workers, borderline Citizenship regime, Exceptional State, Biopower, borders versus boundaries
for non-status immigrants, Race thinking, Reliance interest and the Supreme Court, battered women
Syndrome, Gender dysphoria
Section 2: Answer any one of the following questions. Using class lectures, group presentation slides and class
discussion. Be sure to be precise when referring to case law cited in readings and groups presentations in your
answer where applies. Make certain to cite relevant readings in your answer (60 marks)
1. Max Weber and Marx are the two most important classical sociological theorists of law that best
explained the problematic nature of law in the formation of capitalism. Explain their epistemological
grounding for law in capitalist social formation. What is the function of law in capitalist social formation
according to Weber and Marx? How are the two thinkers alike and different in their analysis of the law
in capitalist society? Use the Rhenish thefts of wood law and other cases to illustrate the point of
departure between Marx and Weber. How is Durkheim different from both Weber and Marx? What
aspect of Durkheim sociological theory of law gives insights into capitalism and the law relationship?
Why did the emergence of capitalism in England pose a problem for Weber in his explanation for the
relationship between law and capitalism?
.
2. Law can have a variety of different functions depending on the theoretical perspective one applies to
analyze the law. With respect to women and law evaluate the function of law from a liberal legal
feminist perspective as well as from the critical/structural legal feminist perspective. Why do radical
feminists depreciate liberal feminist jurisprudence as an effective strategy to achieve equality rights for
women? Describe how liberal jurisprudential approach to law has historically denied First Nations
Peoples and colonial subjects in Africa both formal and substantive equality and justice. In what way
can liberal pluralist and “living law” perspectives offer hope of legal equality and substantive justice to
indigenous and African peoples?
3. Drawing upon your lecture notes and textbook readings evaluate the balance or weight of terror,
coercion and legitimacy in the development, evolution and application of the law since the sixteenth
century up to the mid twentieth century in Britain. Give two contrasting theoretical and empirical
perspectives on the various functions law served during this period. In what way was the law an
instrument of oppression against women racial minorities and labour in Canada in the late nineteenth
century to mid twentieth century and colonial subjects in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Douglas Hay is correct in arguing that law is an instrument of elite domination, what theoretical
framework is he basing his understanding of law? What aspect of the law he may be ignoring?
4. Liberal legal jurisprudence has exercised a dominant legal hegemony in the legal order of western
civilization yet liberal legal jurisprudence has not had a stellar jurisprudential record of accomplishment
on substantive justice or as it? Give your explanation for the hegemonic dominance of liberal legal
jurisprudence in western civilization include in your discussion concrete legal-sociopolitical
achievements. In the area of women’s justice and equality rights Feminists such as Eisenstein, Smart
and Mackinnon argue that the hegemony of liberal jurisprudence lacks intellectual legal legitimacy.
Explain how they analytically justify this claim. Make sure to differentiate the distinctiveness of each of
the authors’ argument and the areas of women lived experiences they focus on.
5. In Western liberal capitalist countries like Canada and United States the role of the judiciary is
indispensable to the functioning and stability of the politico-economic and socio-legal order. A. First,
defined institutionally the judiciary. B. Discuss how the judiciary contributes to the stable functioning of
the politico-economic and socio-legal order. C. What should be the role of the judiciary in societies that
are marked by injustice? D. What are the principal criticism that critical race theorists and critical legal
theorists and radical feminist legal theorists’ level at the judiciary in Societies such as Canada and the US?
E. Are these legal theorists unreasonable in their assessment of the judiciary?
6. Liberal formal legal framework presents law as neutral, rules based, above ideology and above politics,
rights and liberty enforcing, and ultimately fair minded in administering the law. A. First, discuss how
liberal formal legal theorists justify their claims about law. B. Discuss the ways in which criminal sanctions
in the areas of capital crime, corporate crime and environmental crime contradict the premise of the
liberal formal legal doctrine. C. How would you describe the role/action of the judiciary in dealing with
these crimes? Is legal determinacy a useful concept in helping you analyze these categories of crime? Why
or why not? D. How does critical race theory and Marxist approach to law serve to expose the true
objective of the liberal legal framework and serve as a corrective to the flaws of the liberal formal legal
framework?
7. A. Discuss the ways in which the liberal formal legal framework has been productive in reversing racial
discrimination advancing the substantive justice of racialized groups, advancing the rights of women and
re-shaping family law to reflect substantive equality; what are the legal tools that have been used by
liberal formal legal framework to advance justice for those whose law as unjust. Use the United States
and Canada and relevant case law to illustrate your argument. B. Explain why critical race theorists,
Critical legal studies theorists, and critical feminist theorists dismiss the liberal formal approach to law as a
remedy for justice for those who seek justice. C. Why are these critical approaches to law suspicious of
the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and other legal doctrines such as the Equal Rights Amendment. E. Are
the critical approaches right to be skeptical about liberal legal formal framework?
E. P. Thompson famously made the following observation regarding law:
“The rhetoric and rules of a society are something a great deal more than sham. In the same moment
they may modify, in profound ways the behaviour of the powerful, and mystify the powerless. They may
disguise the true realities of power, but, at the same time, they may curb that power and check its
intrusions. And it is often from within that the very rhetoric that a radical critique of the practice of the
society is developed: … We ought to expose the shams and inequities which may be concealed beneath
the law. But the rule of law itself, the imposing of effective inhibitions upon power and the defence of the
citizens from power’s all-intrusive claims, seem to me to be an unqualify human good.”
8. The social movements versus law debates as instruments of social change in the United States reflect
intellectual and ideological ambivalence belies Thompson’s faith about law’s purpose. With respect to
the civil rights movement and African Americans quest for equal rights, critically assess the social
movements versus law debates/strategies in the achievements or lack thereof of equal justice for
African Americans. In the end of your assessment give your analysis as to whether Thompson’s view
of law is tenable. In your answer:
a) Refer to the readings by Michael McCann, Charles Epp, Gerald Rosenberg and Patricia J.
Williams
b) Refer to themes that run through these articles – the role of social movements and law in the
fight for racial justice, Brown v. Board of Education, Civil Rights Act, Title V1, formal justice
versus substantive justice, neoconstitutionalism versus legal mobilization, rights versus needs
dualism, efficacy of court and judges in social change and co-optative role of law versus
transformative role of social movements
c) Refer to case law to help you make your case including case law form the pre-civil rights
movement era to the civil rights era
9. Drawing on the readings on transgender identity politics, analyze why the struggles of transgender
people for equal rights and justice have proven to be a more difficult struggle to win, as compared to
civil rights struggles organized around the issue of race. What is it about the transgender people’s
struggles for equal rights and justice that problematizes why the struggles have not been straight
forward even in a world in which the Charter and Fourteenth Amendment exist? What can the
transgender social movement learn from the civil rights movement? Why framing their cause as a civil
rights movement not led to the same success for the transgender movement as is the case for African
Americans and other racial minorities?
10. The blatant disregard for the rule of law and the fair application of procedural and substantive
justice in the treatment of Muslims cannot be justified on the basis that the nation’s need for security
trumps the rights of the Muslims to equal right and justice. Discuss this statement. In your answer draw
on Foucault’s concepts of biopower and governmentality; Razack’s concepts of race thinking and camp,
Said’s concept of orientalism, and the transformation of the liberal the state into a biocultural
ethnonational state, and law’s contradictions in removing Muslims from the safe harbor of rights and
equal justice.
11. How is the space for mobilization/resistance/agency/voice different for non-citizens in Bonn, Paris
and Montreal? How do citizenship regimes in the three places impact the struggles of non-status
immigrants for agency, voice, recognition and inclusion? The politics of borders and boundaries is
framed as a politics of security and risk, but the true politics of borders and boundaries is all about racial
cleansing and the reconstitution of the state as a bio-ethnic imaginary. How are the counter law
articulations in these jurisdictions related to the contradictions in the transformation of the liberal state
to neoliberal state? Draw on Foucault and Razack and other readings in your answer.
12. Discuss the proposition that the temporary foreign worker program in all its various sub-programs is
not only racist and inequitable but have hyper-exploited vulnerable racialized foreign workers by having
them subsidize the capital accumulation process, as well as underwriting the weakened social safety on
the cheap. In an age in which rights consciousness has taken center stage and Canada prides itself for its
commitment to multiculturalism and diversity how do we explain the state and the judicial system
silence on the right to seek rights for these workers. It is important that you draw on the readings
lecture notes, round table discussions and group presentation in your
