In this Colloquium, participants will address some of the most challenging questions of international law and politics by studying the cutting-edge work of the field’s leading scholars. Each class meeting will feature a guest speaker who will present their research; subjects include issues in international trade, human rights, arbitration and litigation, refugees and migration, and international legal theory. Colloquium students will be expected to produce short comments in response to the assigned workshop papers and to actively participate in workshop discussion.

Instructor: Joshua Cohen and David Grewal

This course will follow Law's Academic Calendar meeting Fridays January 14th-April 22nd (14 weeks).  Please contact psgradadvise@berkeley.edu if interested in this course.

The rise and fall of world communism was one of the great dramas of the 20th century, born in wars (World War I, World II, the Vietnam Wars), offering an alternative conception of modernity to that of the capitalist world, but ultimately succumbing to the pressures of Cold War, capitalist globalization, and popular disaffection. The result was either systemic collapse (the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe) or a fundamental alteration of key economic and foreign-policy features of the communist system (China, Vietnam, Laos). Beyond that, two states remain---North Korea and Cuba---that are very different from each other, but that have in common that they have neither collapsed nor fundamentally altered their systems. We will trace communism’s origins in Marxism and Leninism, its victory in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, its construction of an “anti-imperialist” international sub-system (the “world communist movement”), its spread throughout Europe and Asia (plus Cuba), and its ultimate demise or alteration. What did communist revolutions, states, and non-ruling communist parties have in common, in both their domestic and international orientations? How did they differ from each other? Why did international communism fracture into competing models of domestic and foreign policy? Why did the Soviet Union and, with it, the world communist system ultimately collapse? What should we make of China’s remarkable rise after altering its economic (but not its political) system? And, looking back, how might we assess the communist legacy: achievement or tragedy?

Book will be provided by Instructor.

This course is a workshop for discussing work-in-progress in moral, political, and legal theory. The central aim is to enable students to engage directly with legal scholars, philosophers, and political theorists working on important normative questions. Another aim is to bring together scholars from different disciplines and perspectives, such as economics, history, sociology, and political science, who have normative interests.

The theme for the Fall 2021 workshop is Rawls’s A Theory of Justice fifty years on.

The format of the course is as follows: for the sessions with guest presenters, a designated student commentator will lead off with a 15-minute comment on the paper. The presenter will have 5-10 minutes to respond and then we will open up the discussion to the group. The first part of the course will be open to non-enrolled students, faculty, and visitors who wish to participate in the workshop discussion. We’ll stop for a break at 2:00 and those not enrolled in the course will leave. Enrolled students will continue the discussion with the guest until 3:00.

This is a cross-listed/room-shared course with the Philosophy and Political Science Departments. Students may enroll through Law (Law 210.2), Philosophy (Philosophy 290-09), or Political Science (PS 211). The first class will be on Friday, August 20th - 12PM-3PM, and the final class meeting is November 19th .

This semester the workshop is co-taught by Joshua Cohen and Veronique Munoz-Darde

20^th August            –          Introduction – no speaker     

27^th August            –          Lara Buchak, Princeton

3rd September       –          Thomas Piketty, EHESS & the Paris School of Economics

10^th September       –          Samuel Scheffler, NYU         

17^th September       –          Samuel Freeman, University of Pennsylvania

24^th September       –          Sarah Song, UC Berkeley

1^st October            –          Tommie Shelby, Harvard

8^th October            –          Seana Shiffrin, UCLA

15^th October          –          T. M. Scanlon, Harvard

22^nd October          –          Arthur Ripstein, University of Toronto

29^th October          –          Teresa Bejan, Oxford

5^th November        –          Erin Kelly, Tufts

12^th November       –          Josh Cohen, UC Berkeley

19^th November      –          Kenzie Bok, Harvard