Here is the book that I used in my most recent Philosophy of Law course. Notice the price: $122.35 for a paperback book (albeit a thick one). It's outrageous. I've decided to do things differently in my next Philosophy of Law course (scheduled for spring 2010). I'm going to put together a coursepack of essays and court cases. "What's the big deal?" you ask. "Lots of professors use coursepacks." The big deal is that there will be nothing for the students to purchase. United States Supreme Court cases are accessible online for free, via the Legal Information Institute (LII). So are many law-review articles and philosophical essays. My students and I have access to JSTOR, which is a repository of periodicals.
Here's how it will work. I will supply the students with a list of readings on the first day of class and instruct them to locate the items online, either through our library gateway (in the case of JSTOR) or directly (in the case of LII). The students may have to pay for paper to print the items, but that's it. If they want, they can download the items to their computers and read them on their screens. I don't feel as though I'm sacrificing anything to adopt this approach. To the contrary, I'm going to have a hard time limiting myself to certain topics and essays. Right now, I'm thinking of two topics: homosexual "marriage" and torture. I may add terrorism to the list. Other possibilities are the legal status of animals (which is a hot topic), affirmative action, punishment (or, more specifically, capital punishment), the Second Amendment, legal reasoning, legal interpretation, adjudication, and the nature of law. If you think I'm missing an important topic, let me know.
