Date of Senate Approval   05/09/02

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Statement of Faculty Senate Action:

APC Document 32:   Addition of Legal Studies Minor

Effective Date: Fall 2003

Add: on page 136 before Interdisciplinary Studies: Master of Liberal Arts

INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES: LEGAL STUDIES (LEGL)
Assistant Professor Burchard (Director)

Minor in Legal Studies

The Legal Studies minor helps students to understand the nature of law and its role and functions from different disciplinary perspectives. Students must complete 18 hours from the list of courses below. (Note: prerequisites for these courses may increase the total number of hours.) Courses must be selected from at least three different disciplines and no more than nine hours can come from any one discipline. Appropriate special topics courses may be substituted with the approval of the director of Legal Studies. Students should understand that the minor is not intended as a pre-law program or as a preparation for law school. The courses must be distributed as follows:

At least six hours from the following list which explore the nature of law in society.

PHIL 305 Philosophy of Law

POLS 334 Political Foundations of Law

SOC 480 Sociology of Law

At least three hours from the following list which examine the nature of case law.

POLS 327 Constitutional Law

POLS 330 Individual Rights and Civil Liberties

MGMT 341 Commercial Law

At least six hours from the following list which either explore the role of law in different policy areas, develop analytical skills important in legal thinking, or provide a wider context for understanding law and legal issues.

CLAS 355 Athenian Democracy

CLAS 493 Roman Literature and Roman Life

DRAM 102 Public Speaking

ECON 316 Transaction Cost Economics

HIST 303 Colonial and Revolutionary America

HIST 340 Classical Greece

HIST 342 The Roman Empire

IST 283 Mediation

MCOM 490 Mass Communication Law and Ethics

MGMT 300 Legal and Ethical Environment

MGMT 421 Legal Environment of Health Care Institutions

PHIL 101 Introduction to Logic

PHIL 200 Introduction to Ethics

PHIL 214 Philosophy of Human Rights

POLS 335 Law, Ethics and Public Policy

POLS 387 International Organizations and Law

POLS 388 Human Rights and International Politics

SOC 200 Introduction to Criminology

SOC 340 Social Control and Deviant Behavior

171-3, 271-3, 371-3, 471-3 Special Topics in Legal Studies (1-3)
Courses not otherwise included in the catalog but for which there may be special needs. May be repeated for credit as subject matter changes. See program director.

Impact Statement:
The proposed minor is an attempt to coordinate existing University courses related to law. There should be no discernible change in terms of any department's needs and/or course offerings. The creation of an interdisciplinary minor does not entail the creation of any new courses.

Rationale:
There already are a substantial number of existing courses at UNCA dealing with law and legal studies. However, up to this time there has been no coordination of these courses. What also apparently exists is that students stay within the confines of their own discipline. Thus, the vast majority of students in the Philosophy of Law class will be from Philosophy; nearly all of the students in Constitutional Law will be Political Science majors, and so on throughout the campus. The creation of an interdisciplinary minor will achieve two goals. The first is to offer students a coordinated set of courses dealing with various aspects of law. The second goal is to promote cross-fertilization so that students from different majors with an interest in this field will be exposed to different disciplines and different approaches.