The law touches every field of study, from biology to sociology to literature, and that interaction is the focus of the Center for Law and Humanities, a new academic initiative that teaches students to use lessons learned in the arts and sciences to examine the way legal questions affect society.
Based in Greensboro, the center bridges programs on main campus with those underway at the Elon University School of Law. The joint effort between the law school and Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences, invites scholars, legal practitioners and policymakers to speak with students about these connections. Undergraduate and law school courses in Law and Humanities underpin the programming.
“Almost any discipline they’re going to study has interaction with the law,” Eric Ashley Hairston, a professor of English and of Law and Humanities who directs the center, said of undergraduates in the dozens of majors offered by Elon. “Ultimately, these diverse populations must understand their relationship to the law, and the law should contemplate itself in this larger social and intellectual community.”
The Center offers courses and additional resources to Elon students in the prelaw program.
Elon’s Mock Trial team is one such affiliated project. Coached by second-year Elon Law student William Warihay and advised by Hairston the undergraduate squad advanced this spring to the American Mock Trial Association’s 2009 Opening Round Championship Tournament, competing in a field that included the likes of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Hairston conceived the idea for a center after studying African American authors who commented on social issues. He noted that many of the authors had a legal background, which afforded them unique insights into the human condition and how it is formed by legal developments.
The project was further refined as a project through the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, and then supported by the law school and the college. The Center is also supported by a grant from the Hillsdale Fund.
University leaders cite the Center for Law and Humanities as the most recent example of Elon’s emphasis on connecting its professional programs with its core strength of teaching the liberal arts and sciences.
“It is not the intent to impart what the law and justice should be,” Hairston said, “but rather to ask the question.”
One of Hairston’s advisees, Doug Colvard, completed a law and literature course offered as part of the Center for Law and Humanities. Colvard shared his own observations on the value of the program.
“We get that judges and juries are supposed to be unbiased and neutral bystanders, but the reality is that it simply is not true. We always come with our own predispositions, and we always come through with our own understanding and our views about the world,” he said. “Part of that is shaped by your cultural background and identity and experiences – it’s all of that.
“This is part of what the class taught,” he continued. “As unbiased as you want to be, naturally you’re going to view certain situations differently. Each person holds key elements of a story or a narrative closer than other people do.”
For more information on the center for Law and Humanities, click on the link to the right under the E-Cast section. The Law and Humanities site contains links to Elon’s prelaw program and to the Mock Trial program.