LAW 1050: Law, Legal Theory, and Global & Local Food Systems
Fall 2024 • Section 21 • CRN 55602

Course Description

Debates about how food is produced and distributed are often debates about the structure of economic exchange—and thus also debates about the legal rules that govern markets. This seminar uses the production and distribution of food to study the role of law in economic development. We will begin this seminar with history—specifically a history of law and development that traces shifts in dominant ideas of law and development over the twentieth century. We will then study three global shifts in the structure of agricultural production, distribution and trade that roughly parallel this historical periodization. Throughout this investigation, we will ask how law and legal theory shapes food systems and facilitates their transformation and, in turn, how food law and food systems have contributed to development and, sometimes, baffled or misdirected it, producing a great deal of inequality and suffering in their wake. We will look at specific areas of food law and policy including trade liberalization, food aid, land (land reform and land grabs), and biotechnology. We will end the seminar with hopeful contemporary case studies on topics including fair trade, food sovereignty, and food cooperatives. Here, we will pay particular attention to how different actors use law to challenge economic concentration and inequality in global and local food systems and thus how these actors promote particular ideas of social and economic justice and market reform. The course aims to include one class visit to Philadelphia field sites focused on urban agriculture. Therefore, students should anticipate being asked to devote a few class hours on one set Friday to the course. Details of this outing will be discussed in the first class.)

Book List/Materials