York University
Graduate Program in Socio-Legal Studies
SLST 6005 3.0 Advanced Research Strategies in Socio-Legal Methods
** Web version**
Fall 2014
Fridays, 11:30am – 2:30 pm
Location: Ross N814
Instructor: Prof. Dagmar Soennecken
Office: 136 McLaughlin College
Office hours: Mondays, 1-2 pm, Fridays, after class and by appt.
E-mail: dsoennec@yorku.ca
Course Synopsis & Pedagogy
This seminar surveys the various ways in which data are commonly
conceptualized, collected and analysed in socio-legal studies. It brings together
students in both the MA and PhD stream with the goal of making them reflect on
where they stand as researchers (their “epistemology”), how they view the world
(their “ontology”) and what research methods they are prefer over others.
The course is taught as an “interactive” graduate seminar. As a result, aside from
in-class discussions, we will also hear from and engage with guest speakers,
participate in group activities and sample other learning strategies designed to
foster ‘meta’ learning (“learning about yourself”) and proficiency in research
methods. The goal is to create a student-centred classroom that allows for
significant learning experiences, fosters plenty of reflection and also solidifies
your research methods skills.
Course Requirements
Required readings:
a) Jonathon W. Moses and Tørbjorn L. Knutsen, Ways of Knowing:
Competing Methodologies in Social and Political Research (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). (Available for purchase at the York bookstore,
1 copy is also on reserve at the Scott library.)
I consider the textbook mainly a good source for background reading. It is more
on the philosophical end. Some chapters are on the ‘required’ part of the reading
list below.
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b) Weekly readings are available electronically through our York moodle
course site, either as pdfs under the “fair dealing” guidelines, or as links to
e-articles or e-book chapters, which can be accessed only through the
York proxy servers as required by copyright law.
The weekly readings contain a mixture of contributions, both philosophical and
methodological, along with a number of socio-legal research examples, many of
which have received or been nominated for awards. They are drawn from books,
journals or edited volumes that include other contributions that you may also find
interesting. And remember that the reading list is just a small sample of what is
out there (on the web, at the library etc.).
Assignments:
1. In-class participation and preparation
20%
2. Participation in moodle discussion forums
5%
3. Researcher diary
20 %
4. Methods assessment
20 %
5. Research ethics proposal
25 %
Course Policies
Assignments
All assignments are due electronically (via moodle upload) on the due date
specified above.
Late penalty: 5 percent per day, 7 days a week. If you really need more time, talk
to me before the due date! (Obvious exceptions: cases of documented medical
illness or equivalent, e.g. family crisis.)
Electronic Devices
You will find this class much more enjoyable if you concentrate on it, rather than
on whatever is going on elsewhere in the electronic world. Using any electronic
devices takes your attention away from class, plus it often distracts your
neighbours as well. I may ask you to turn off the device or leave the classroom if
I find your behaviour disrupts my ability to conduct the class. Plus, there will be a
break during which you can reconnect.
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Accesssibility
Students with health-related, learning, physical, psychiatric, or sensory
disabilities who require reasonable accommodations in teaching style or
evaluation methods should discuss their concerns with the course instructor as
soon as possible so that appropriate arrangements can be made.
Please make sure you also consult http://accessibilityhub.info.yorku.ca/ for
additional information and remember to educate yourself on the counselling
services available to you at York at http://www.yorku.ca/cds/
Academic Dishonesty (Plagiarism)
Plagiarism is representing someone else's ideas, writing or other
intellectual property as your own.
This includes:


Presenting all or part of someone else's published work as something you
have written
Paraphrasing someone else's writing without proper acknowledgement
Any use of the work of others, whether published, unpublished or posted
electronically (e.g., on web sites), attributed or anonymous, must include a
correct reference to the source.
In other words …… In order to avoid plagiarism, you must reference the
original source properly, which includes putting in all of the required
quotation marks if you are using direct quotes.
For more:
Test and educate yourself using the ‘academic integrity’ tutorial and the webresearch tutorial:
http://www.yorku.ca/tutorial/academic_integrity/ and
http://www.yorku.ca/webclass/.
Read the key points of York’s Senate policy on academic dishonesty:
http://www.yorku.ca/tutorial/academic_integrity/polpoints.html.
Read up on the use of www.turnitin.com and your alternatives in a course, such
as this one: http://www.yorku.ca/tutorial/academic_integrity/polpoints.html and at
http://www.yorku.ca/academicintegrity/students/turnitin-students3.htm.
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Use the services of the various Writing Centres and Learning Skills Centres
on campus: http://www.yorku.ca/laps/writ/centre/,
http://www.yorku.ca/acadres/writing_centres.htm and http://lss.info.yorku.ca/.
FGS GRADING SYSTEM
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Exceptional
Excellent
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Highly Satisfactory
Satisfactory
Conditional
Failure
Incomplete
Weekly reading schedule
1
2
Sept
12
Sept
19
Introduction

Moses & Knutsen, ch. 1
Interdisciplinarity & the challenge of asking researchable
questions
The “what” of a project



3
Sept
26
Simon Halliday and Patrick Schmidt “Introduction: Beyond
Methods” and Heribert Kritzer, “Conclusion: “Research is a
Messy Business” in Halliday & Schmidt (eds.) Conducting
Law and Society Research: Reflections on Methods and
Practices. New York: Cambridge University Press,
(2009).(York e-book, ch. 1 and 23)
Kirby, Sandra, Lorraine Greaves, and Colleen Reid (2006)
"Planning the Project: Developing a Research Focus and
Research Question(s)," in Experience Research Social
Change: Methods Beyond the Mainstream. Toronto:
Broadview Press, 2010: 63-85.
Readings for central question exercise – TBA
Jurisprudential & legal case analysis
How do lawyers think? Thinking unlike lawyers

Diana Majury, “Women Are Themselves to Blame,” in
Melanie Randall et.al. (eds.) Making Equality Rights Real
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006) (York e-book)
4


Niyta Duclos (Iyer), "Disappearing Women: Racial Minority
Women in Human Rights Cases" (1993), 6 Canadian
Journal of Women and the Law 25-51.
Monica Varsanyi, “Rescaling the “Alien,” Rescaling
Personhood: Neoliberalism, Immigration, and the State,”
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 98(4)
2008: 877-896.
Recommended
 Moses & Knutsen, ch. 7
Guest: Maura Matesic, Scott library, mmatesic@yorku.ca
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Oct 03
Comparisons across space, place and time
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5
Oct 10
Dagmar Soennecken, “Extending Hospitality? History,
Courts and the Executive,” in Studies in Law, Politics and
Society, ed. Austin Sarat, Vol. 60 (2013) 85-109.
Valverde, Mariana (2012) Everyday Law on the Street: City
Governance in an Age of Diversity. Chicago, 2012. “Chapter
1. Introduction.” (York e-book).
Ran Hirschl, “On the blurred methodological matrix of
comparative constitutional law,” in The Migration of
Constitutional Ideas, ed. S. Choudhry, Cambridge, 2006.
York e-book. Chapter 2.
***Researcher diary # 1 due***
Observation, participation & ethnography



Sally Engle Merry, Human Rights and Gender Violence, ch.
1: “Introduction: Culture and Transnationalism”. Chicago,
2006 (York e-book), p.1-35.
Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics, ch. 3:
“Why do drug dealers still live with their mothers?”
HarperCollins: 2006.
Sarah Morando Lakhani, “Producing Immigrant Victims’
“Right” to Legal Status and the Management of Legal
Uncertainty,” 38 (2) Law & Social Inquiry 2013: 442–473
Recommended
 John Flood, “Socio-legal ethnography,” in Theory and
Method in Socio-Legal Research, ed. by Reza Banakar and
Max Travers, Hart, 2005.
 Moses & Knutsen, ch. 9
 Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive
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Theory of Culture” in Robert Emerson ed. Contemporary
Field Research: Perspectives and Formulations. 2nd edition
(Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2001
Guest: Annie Bunting (SLST faculty)
6
Oct 17
Archival & historical research



James Walker, “Race,” Rights and the Law in the Supreme
Court of Canada: historical case studies; Wilfrid Laurier
University Press, 1997. “Invitation” and parts of ch. 1
(section 3, “approaching the past”)
Soren Frederiksen, “Case Comment: The Trial of William
Palmer, a Mid-Nineteenth Century English Scientific
Evidence Case,” Journal of Law, Information and Science
(2011) 112-127.
Amanda Glasbeek, Feminized Justice: The Toronto
Women’s Court, 1913-34, UBC Press, 2009. Introduction.
Guest: Amanda Glasbeek (SLST grad director)
7
Oct 24
Interviews



Nancy Nicol and Miriam Smith, “Legal Struggles and
Political Resistance: Same-Sex Marriage in Canada and the
USA,” Sexualities 11 (6) 2008.
Vic Satzewich, “Visa Officers as Gatekeepers of a State's
Borders: The Social Determinants of Discretion in Spousal
Sponsorship Cases in Canada,” Journal of Ethnic and
Migration Studies (2013).
Andrea Fontana and James H. Frey, "The Interview: From
Neutral Stance to Political Involvement," in Norman Denzin
and Yvonne Lincoln eds. Sage Handbook of Qualitative
Research 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005), 695728.
Guest: Yael Machtinger (SLST PhD candidate)
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9
Oct 31 Co-curricular days – no class
Nov 07 Experiments & surveys

Carroll Seron et. al., “The Impact of Legal Counsel on
Outcomes for Poor Tenants in New York City's Housing
Court: Results of a Randomized Experiment,” 35 (2) Law &
Society Review (2001) 419-435.
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

“Tom Tyler and Why People Obey the Law” in Simon
Halliday and Patrick Schmidt in Conducting Law and
Society Research: Reflections on Methods and Practices.
New York: Cambridge University Press, (2009) (York ebook, ch. 13, p.141-151.)
Readings re. coding and/or qualitative software - TBA
Guest: Lesley Jacobs (SLST faculty)
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Nov 14 Discourse, narrative & media analysis



Sherene Razack, “Simple logic”: race, the identity
documents rule and the story of a nation besieged and
betrayed,” 15 Journal of Law & Social Policy, 2000: 181209.
Michael McCann et. al., “Criminalizing Big Tobacco: Legal
Mobilization and the Politics of Responsibility for Health
Risks in the United States,” 38 (2) Law & Social Inquiry
(2013) : 288-321.
Allyson Lunny, book chapter - TBA
Recommended:
 Teunn A. van Dijk, "Principles of Critical Discourse
Analysis," Discourse and Society 4: 2 (1993): 249-283
 Moses & Knutsen, ch. 6
Guest: Allyson Lunny (SLST faculty member)
Nov 21 Quantitative analysis & statistics



Ashley Rubin, “The Unintended Consequences of Penal
Reform: A Case Study of Penal Transportation in 18th
Century London,” 46 (4) Law & Society Review 2012: 815851.
Moses & Knutsen, ch. 4 &11
Haggerty, Kevin (2001) “Introduction and “From Private
Facts to Public Knowledge: Authorship and the Media in
Communicating Statistical Facts” in Making Crime Count.
pp. 3-9 and pp. 161-186. Toronto, University of Toronto
Press.
Recommended:
 Collins, Randall (1984) “Statistics versus Words”
Sociological Theory. 2: 329-362.
Guest: Daniel Perlin, Osgoode library, DPerlin@osgoode.yorku.ca
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***Researcher diary # 2 due***
12
Nov 28 Documents, data & access to information
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
13
Mike Larsen and Justin Piché, “Exceptional State,
Pragmatic Bureaucracy, and Indefinite Detention: The Case
of the Kingston Immigration Holding Centre,” Canadian
Journal of Law and Society 24: 2 (2009): 203-229.
Justin Piché, Accessing the State of Imprisonment in
Canada: Information Barriers and Negotation Strategies,”
(ch. 9) and
Sean H. Hier, “Accessing Information on Streetscape Video
Surveillance in Canada,” (ch.10) in Brokering Access:
power, politics and freedom of information process in
Canada, ed. Mike Larsen and Kevin Walby, UBC Press,
2012. (York e-book but restricted no. of users)
Dec 05 Research Ethics



Panel on Research Ethics (jointly created by CIHR,
NSERC, SSHRC), Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical
Conduct for Research Involving Humans (2nd edition; site
offers comparison with 1st edition [1998] 2010
amendments).
Research Ethics at York and FGS Research Ethics Forms
and Procedures
Yvonne S. Lincoln, "Institutional Review Boards and
Methodological Conservatism: The Challenge to and from
Phenomenological Paradigms," in Norman Denzin and
Yvonne Lincoln eds. Sage Handbook of Qualitative
Research 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005), 165182.
****Research ethics assignment due***
Dec 7 = last day of classes
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