HJS 250 Justice in the Western Traditions

3 hours 

This course is the first of five required courses in the core of the Humanities and Justice major. It is an introduction to the normative history of "justice" as a principle of human personal and social organization in the experience of peoples living in the "Western" world. An emphasis on primary texts allows the student to encounter first principles, and selected secondary readings introduce the student to questions posed by the attempt to define justice. Issues under study may include determinism and free will and the implication of each for the meaning of the “unjust” act; retribution and the rhetorics that justify or condemn it; divinity, hierarchy and the community as sources of justice; the social construction of such ideas as justice and “crime”; law as the structure of rules regulating coercion; and the use of force.