Reading Seminar: Essays on Justice

This reading seminar focuses on reading essays focused on questions of law and justice. 

The essay has become a dominant form of popular writing in the last few decades—with a longer history rooted in famed writers like James Baldwin, William Buckley, Susan Sontag, Elizabeth Hardwick, and more. In part due to the corporate takeover of journalistic and news outlets, academics and intellectuals now regularly turn to the essay to engage ideas in a more creative and timely fashion than what scholarly books and articles allow. As a result, many of the days pressing debates and ideas take shape in a whole slew of old and new magazines and outlets in the form of the essay. 

We will read essays about law and justice, with attention on questions of war, protest, democracy, the courts, constitutionalism, fascism, and more. We will talk about the substance of these essays and what questions they raise while we will observe the writing strategies writers use to advance critical thinking.