Curriculum

Law is no longer a discrete or autonomous body of knowledge, if ever it was, and the practice of law can no longer be neatly separated from the practice of other disciplines. Law affects and is affected by other disciplines and other professions in at least three ways. First, some other area of knowledge and the disciplines and practices which concern it may at times be the subject of legal control and regulation: for example, legal regulation significantly affects the promulgation of knowledge and expertise in the liberal arts, through constraints on a university's system of promotion and tenure. Second, the expertise provided by another organized body of knowledge may at times be necessary to the resolution of a particular legal issue. The "expert testimony" of a mental health professional, for example, is often central to a judgment of culpability or non-culpability in a criminal law proceeding. And third, law may be the subject matter of another discipline. Thus, the study of law might be sensibly regarded as not only preparation for a profession, but also as a branch of the humanities or the social sciences. If so, then literature, philosophy, cultural studies, economics, history, or sociology might all provide insights into the nature of law.

Some of the interdisciplinary offerings at Georgetown fit neatly into one of the three categories described above, but a number of them address all three sorts of interdisciplinary concerns. What all of these courses share is their interdisciplinarity: all of the courses in this cluster require of the student (and instructor!) a willingness to acquaint him or herself with the tools and basic building blocks of another discipline, whether toward the end of better understanding the law or the idea of law, toward the end of incorporating knowledge gleaned from the other discipline into a legal decision, or toward the end of achieving a just legal or regulatory regime of the discipline in question. It is worth stressing, however, that only a few of the interdisciplinary offerings at Georgetown require specialized knowledge or familiarity with the other discipline as a prerequisite for enrollment in the class. Rather, what is required of the student is simply a willingness to work toward some level of proficiency in the sister discipline, and a willingness to entertain the possibility of applying its insights in arguably novel ways to legal and jurisprudential questions.

The Legal Regulation of Knowledge and Practice
A number of the interdisciplinary offerings at Georgetown aim to elucidate the ways in which law affects, shapes and perhaps even defines the promulgation of knowledge and practice in some other discipline or profession. Often, the "law" that controls another discipline or profession comes from a wide range of "traditional" subject matters. Thus, the Law of Cyberspace looks at the legal regulation, through the law of intellectual property, tort, contract, criminal and commercial law of burgeoning cyberspace activity, and the Law and Higher Education Seminar examines the regulation, through constitutional law, antitrust law and the traditional law of tort and contract, of higher education. Similarly, Health Law and Policy looks at the legal regulation of the health professions and of medical knowledge through the lens of various areas of law. The Law and Science Seminar looks at the control of science through congressional, judicial, and agency action, and the Law and Religion Seminar examines the status of religion in American law.

These seminars and courses share a number of common themes. They all ask, in different ways, and with a different focus, whether traditional legal categories are adequate to suit the needs of the particular discipline or profession. Thus, the course in Law of Cyberspace asks whether, for example, the traditional law of contract formation can be adapted to the peculiarities of commerce conducted via the Internet, while the seminar on Law and Higher Education asks among much else whether traditional malpractice law, contract doctrine, or antitrust law can be suitably employed in the context of higher education, or whether the unique structures and missions of higher education require a more innovative legal regime. They also all examine, again in different ways and some more explicitly than others, the ways in which the legal regulatory regime actually defines as well as restricts the body of knowledge or set of disciplinary practices in questions. Thus, the Law and Science Seminar looks with some care at the extent of governmental control of science, and the Law and Religion Seminar similarly examines the impact on religion of its legal regulation. And finally, at least some of these offerings looks at the intersection of law, the discipline in question, and the specifically ethical questions to which the discipline gives rise. The Bioethics and the Law Seminar, for example, looks in detail at both legal regulation over and ethical reasoning about both professional and non-professional decisions regarding informed consent, death and dying, fetal treatment and research, and reproductive technologies, among many other issues.

Specialized Knowledge, Experts and Expertise

Some of the interdisciplinary offerings at Georgetown look in detail at the role of the "expert," and of specialized expertise itself, in legal decision-making. The Law and Psychiatry Seminar, for example, introduces psychiatric methodology with an eye toward elucidating the central role of the expert in the civil commitment, diagnosis, treatment, and containment of the mentally ill (as well as the role of the lawyer in the mental health system). More generally, the Law and Social Science course examines the various uses of social science experts in litigation and in other forms of legal decision-making, explicitly contrasting the methodology of social science with the methods of law in evaluating and weighing empirical claims.

The Interdisciplinary Study of Law
Georgetown offers a number of seminars and courses designed to enrich our understanding of law by examining the idea of law, particular areas of doctrine, and various legal processes with tools of analysis and insights borrowed from other disciplines. These courses in turn subdivide into two areas: those which examine law as essentially a branch of the humanities, and those which examine law through the lens of economics.

Law and Humanities. Law and Humanities offerings all aim to place law in the context of our cultural history. There are also several specialized seminars that look to literature and other art forms for insight into the role of law in history and in contemporary life, and also look to literary and cultural theories for a greater understanding of the humanistic processes by which we write, read and interpret legal texts. Other offerings seek an enriched appreciation of the idea of law in western culture by examining arguments about law and legalism propounded by major political and moral philosophers. The Films and the Law Seminar addresses the interplay between law and film. It examines the effect of film on legal cultures, the influence of films on public perception of the legal systems, the use of film of advocacy, and the use of film as an alternative to written text. Additional Law and Humanities offerings are described under the Jurisprudence and Legal History heading of this publication.

Law and Economics. Lastly, a number of course and seminar offerings at Georgetown look systematically at law, legal doctrine and jurisprudence using the tools of economic reasoning. The Economic Reasoning and the Law course both applies economic reasoning to legal problems, and addresses the strengths and limitations of the "law and economics" jurisprudential movement.

Students who want to pursue economic analysis beyond these offerings should consider applying for the Law and Economics Workshop. The workshop meets weekly for a year. At most meetings outside speakers present a paper on an issue touching on law and economics. Students are responsible for preparing brief weekly memoranda that discuss and question the presented papers.

Who should take interdisciplinary courses? Students with prior training in or a strong interest in the related discipline or profession, such as medicine or computers, might obviously find an interdisciplinary offering concerning that discipline of great interest, whether or not he or she intends to return to the profession after law school. Students interested in pursuing an academic career in law would be well advised to take at least one offering from the "law and economics" curriculum and one from the "law and humanities" field, as well as courses in legal history and jurisprudence.

Even beyond students with specialized interests or training, or with legal-academic aspirations, however, it is our belief that all students would be well advised to fit at least one interdisciplinary offering, and hopefully more than one, into their curriculum at some point in their legal education, for at least two reasons. First, familiarity with other disciplines is an obvious necessity in some areas of practice. While the smattering of specialized knowledge that comes with one course in law school will obviously not sustain a practice, a lawyer unintimidated by the prospect of familiarizing herself with the conceptual tools of other disciplines and professions will have an enhanced ability to use her own legal expertise in a meaningful way, where those disciplines intersect with law. It makes sense to develop the confidence as a student that the requisite level of mastery of another discipline is indeed possible. Second, and independent of particular career aspirations or goals, all lawyers serve or ought to serve both the felt, contingent needs of people who seek legal counsel or are affected by the law's reach, and the more inchoate yearnings of all of us for a just society. The teachings of other disciplines, and particularly the teachings of both the sciences and the humanities, can guide the lawyer in her attempt to provide a service for others, and can give some meaning to her quest for justice through law.

Anyone searching for definitive answers in the humanities or social sciences to the deep questions regarding the meaning of law will no doubt be disappointed. But the systematic study of these questions using the tools and insights of other disciplines can provide a fresh approach and can instill a confidence that the quest is a meaningful one. Equally important, it can acquaint the student with a community of peers who are equally committed to the intellectual work. That community, in turn, is one with whom a lawyer may remain fruitfully engaged through the course of her professional life -- an interaction which, as much as any other professional activity, may provide that life with its less material but more lasting rewards.

Full-time and Visiting Faculty:
J. Peter Byrne
Viet D. Dinh
James V. Feinerman
Steven P. Goldberg
Neal K. Katyal
Charles R. Lawrence
Carrie J. Menkel-Meadow
Naomi Mezey
John Mikhail
Richard L. Roe
Steven C. Salop
Heathcote Woolsey Wales
Robin L. West