Legal Studies BA

About this programme

Legal Studies is an interdisciplinary, liberal arts major that engages the meanings, values, practices, and institutions of law and legality. The Legal Studies curriculum examines how law shapes and is shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces. The major is designed to stimulate the critical understanding of and inquiry about the theoretical frameworks, historical dynamics, and cultural embeddedness of law. The Legal Studies faculty and students grapple with important questions of social policy within the framework of significant concerns in jurisprudence and theories of justice. These concerns include individual liberty, privacy, and autonomy; political and social equality; the just distribution of resources and opportunities within society; the relationship between citizens and the state; democratic participation and representation; the moral commitments of the community; and the preservation of human dignity. The major’s course offerings examine law and legality from both humanist and empirical perspectives. Courses are organized into interdisciplinary topical areas that transcend disciplinary boundaries in the interest of collaborative inquiry. The Legal Studies major is under the academic supervision of the School of Law faculty. Declaring the Major Students may declare the major after completing two of the four prerequisites with a 2.0 grade point average (GPA) between the two courses and an overall UC Berkeley GPA of 2.0. For details regarding the prerequisites, please see the Major Requirements tab on this page. All courses taken for the major must be taken for a letter grade. A score of 3 or higher in the following AP exams will fulfill three of the four prerequisites: Statistics: AP Statistics History: AP U.S.