SMNR: Resilience in Law

• Semester: Spring 2026
• Course ID: 397S
• Credit Hours: 3
• Unique: 30225

Description

Resilience has become a powerful lens across disciplines—from ecology and psychology to economics and political science—and it now shapes debates in policy, governance, and even popular culture. Yet legal scholars have only begun to grapple with resilience as a concept for understanding legal institutions, doctrines, and remedies. This seminar explores how resilience might illuminate core questions of legal design and practice: How do legal systems absorb shocks? How should law respond to disruption, crisis, and change? How do lawyers stay resilient despite the intense demands of their profession? Students will engage cutting-edge scholarship and develop original research at the intersection of resilience and law. The course culminates in a substantial written work, giving students the opportunity to make a genuine contribution to an emerging field of legal thought.