The Court of Student Excuses: Structure, Agency and the Law

Abstract

The exercise involves students building a new ‘court’ to adjudicate the excuses university students communicate to instructors. Once the court is built, students will be presented with a number of hypothetical cases which the court must address. Drawing on rich, tacit student knowledge, this in-class, discussion-based activity will allow students to apply concepts involving structural inequality, personal responsibility and agency, and the function of the judicial system. It will also allow students to engage with the difficulty of translating various individual needs and concerns into broad rules and creating just institutions and for an exploration of the malleability of rules, the role of relative power, context and choice, and the possibility of unequal burdens of access and consequence. This exercise is best suited to an introduction to a sociology or law & society course. It could also be used in a class concerning structural barriers, power, agency, personal responsibility, the shortcomings of institutions, or mass incarceration and associated phenomena.

Keywords: courts; class activity; law and society; law and social science; law and social change; mass incarceration; justice; legal complexity

JEL Classification: K42