Bachelor of Socio-Legal Studies
3 years full time
4 years full time (Honours)
The Bachelor of Socio-Legal Studies is designed for students who are interested in studying and understanding legal ideas, institutions and practices from the perspectives of the humanities and social sciences. It is not a professional law degree, but an opportunity to engage with the every-changing relationship between law and society using the methods of a broad range of humanities and social science disciplines, including history, philosophy, political science, sociology, social policy, performance studies, anthropology, literary studies, and economics. It combines a clear focus on the core socio-legal subjects with the breadth provided by a second major in Arts and Government and International Relations, as well as a pool of related electives.
Whether your interest is participating in the many exciting fields of research studying legal ideas and institutions in their historical, cultural and social contexts, or working in the fields of professional practice that link an understanding of law with other forms of knowledge, the Bachelor of Socio-Legal Studies will provide you with the skills and capacities you need. As well as giving you a solid starting point for a research degree in socio-legal arenas, the degree will provide the foundation for a wide variety of professional fields which lie outside the legal profession itself, but articulate closely with it: social policy, government and business administration and management, non-government organisations, criminology, public advocacy, etc.
The basic requirements for the Bachelor of Socio-Legal Studies are:
- a major in Socio-Legal studies comprising two introductory, Junior units and six Senior units, three of which are restricted to the BSLS students;
- a second major from the Part A list of subject areas in the Faculty of Arts;
- a choice of four Senior units from a pool of units in the Arts and Economics & Business related to Socio-Legal studies.
An additional honours year is also available for suitably qualified students.
Dr Howard-Wagner’s area of research expertise is socio-legal studies, including identities rights and the law, Indigenous people, issues and the law, terrorism, refugees, environmental, and tort law reform. Dr Howard-Wagner has applied qualitative and quantitative socio-legal research experience, particularly in relation to Indigenous law and personal injury and compensation law.
Her most recent research includes a study of changes to the motor vehicle accidents compensation scheme and a study of changes to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services. She has taught a number of socio-legal courses, including socio-legal research theory and practice and Indigenous people, issues and the law. She has also presented papers at a number of international socio-legal conferences, for example, considering the public liability crisis as a moral panic, applying whiteness theory to an analysis of native title judgements, and examining the relationship between neo-liberalism and the repositioning of Indigenous rights.
Dr Howard-Wagner joined the Department of Sociology and Social Policy in 2006, and was formerly the Deputy Director of the Justice Policy Research Centre within the School of Law at the University of Newcastle. Prior to that she was worked for the Commonwealth Public Service for eight years, which included working for the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and Department of the Environment on Indigenous and environmental issues.