What inspired you to pursue a career in history, and how did you develop your specific research interests?

By the time I got to college, science was where my passion lay–it didn’t hurt that everyone said the surest path to a job was a BS, either, especially since I was a non-traditional student working full time (sometimes more) to put myself through school. So, I started as a chemistry major, and as my fascination and interest in quantum mechanics grew, I also fell in love with theoretical physics. I loved theory so much that I changed a long-standing hobby, philosophy, into my minor. When I learned that most women at the time who earned college degrees in chemistry or physics ended up working in oil or paint companies or medical labs, I found myself getting less and less interested in the major. So, I decided to switch from science to the humanities. Switching majors meant I got to take a lot of electives, so I took as many literature, philosophy, and political science classes as possible. I loved all of them, but I wanted to learn more about the historical and intellectual contexts in which the ideas and structures we were studying emerged. So, I enrolled in some history courses and was especially fascinated by those that focused on the impact of law on society and, more importantly, the impact of society on law. These courses resonated with me, in part, because I worked and volunteered for the Coalition for the Environment and some grassroots ballot initiatives to improve environmental laws to preserve and protect wetlands (rivers, streams, swamps, all of it). I was also involved in grassroots organizations focused on getting more people to vote in state and national elections. I had in mind to build a career as a political organizer. But, after a couple of years working in a major bookstore to pay the bills so I could afford to volunteer and work on campaigns, I realized I wanted to pursue an advanced degree in history more. Some major life changes pushed me further in that direction, including having a child. When she was 18 months old, I started a PhD program.  At first, I wanted to continue studying 19th-century German intellectual history, which allowed me to bring my interest in moral philosophy, history, and politics together, especially concerning the history of civil and human rights. By the end of my first year in graduate school, I realized that as much as I loved all aspects of the 19th century, almost all of my research questions drew me back to 16th- and 17th-century political and legal thought.

How do your courses contribute to students’ understanding of the relationship between law, history, and society?

As a historian of political and legal thought, I teach courses that grapple with how societies define (and attempt to secure) the line between a rule of law and a rule of tyranny. Understanding the relationship between law, history, and society is central to exploring how and why the line seems always to be shifting (within and between societies) either to secure the power and domination of a few in the name of their security or to recognize and respect the dignity and standing of many in the name of justice. Exploring the push and pull between law and power through thematic questions, case studies, and primary sources (in historical context and perspective) enables us to study fundamental shifts in cultural, religious, and political practices and moral values within societies over time, which, in turn, reveals how vulnerable the rule of law has been throughout history and continues to be today. Some of my courses explore these issues over a broad chronological span and expansive geographical space. For example, Hist2190: Pirates, Brigands, and Tyrants, Hist2100: Western Legal Traditions, Hist3102: Great Trials in History, Hist4100: From Natural Law to Human Rights, and Hist4115: Human Rights in History emphasize ideas and traditions rooted in a distant past that, although they have changed over time, continue to serve as clarion calls for change in our preset. Other courses I teach focus on changes in more discreet contexts, such as Early Modern Britain (Hist3042), or the European Renaissance (Hist3052), wherein attention to the relationship between law, history, and society is central to understanding state formation and the emergence of the so-called modern rule of law and, with it, conventions and norms that inform (and underpin) modern international law. 

Can you share a specific example from your research or teaching illustrating how legal institutions, laws, or norms have shaped cultural or social change in a particular historical context?

This is a hard question to answer since, as noted above, the shifting line between the rule of law and the rule of tyranny tends to inform all of my classes that fulfill the law, history, and society major concentration requirements. 

How do you incorporate interdisciplinary approaches, such as political, economic, or cultural perspectives, into your research and teaching, especially in relation to legal systems, norms, and procedures?

Legal systems, norms, and procedures are all products of humans who make choices to construct them. Therefore, if we wish to understand why they were created in the first place and why they are constantly undergoing reform, we must pay very close attention to the socioeconomic, cultural, and political contexts of the people who construct, administer, interpret, and enforce the law. We need to pay attention to all of those contexts when we study those who are subject to all aspects of the law, as well. 

Whether we realize it or not, nearly every aspect of our lives is framed by legal systems, norms, and procedures. Of the many questions this prompts us to ask, among the most fascinating, I think, is why and how this came to pass. Why is it that law serves as a source of all of society’s ills for some and the source of all its remedies for others? These questions, in turn, prompt us to ask questions about other issues tied up with identity, religion, gender, as well as economic and political status, etc. I don’t think this is unique to law, history, and society, as even the study of history, as a discipline over time, requires an interdisciplinary approach. But I do think that it’s impossible to really understand the push and pull between a rule of law and a rule of tyranny without attending to all these different contexts. 

What challenges do historians face when studying the impact of legal systems on different societies, and how do you address these challenges in your work?

Among the biggest challenges for historians of political and legal thought is the instability of the vocabularies of law and legal traditions.

For example, the meaning and significance of terms like freedom, liberty, power, and tyranny, as well as questions about who gets counted as human and who gets to have rights and what kind, have been contested throughout history. As such, it’s a challenge to ensure that the word being used to convey an idea is the word that properly conveys it in the historical, intellectual, and textual context that the person (or people) using it meant to represent.

A good example that illustrates this is the 1789 French Declaration of The Rights of Man and Citizen. The document’s title and historical context immediately call into question what the term ‘man’ means in this case. Is it short for all humankind, or does it mean only males? If the former, is it all humans regardless of their age, economic holdings, or status as free, freed, or unfree? And what makes one a member of humankind, and more importantly, what excludes another from that category? If ‘man’ means only males, does this include all males, regardless of their age, economic holdings, or status as free, freed, or unfree? And to each of the above questions, we must add: are their exclusions applied based on one’s place of origin, religion, hue, or culture? We have not even gotten around to trying to unpack what citizen means in this context, nor what it means to tie the rights of man and the rights of citizens together in a single declaration. Or whether the rights of man are human rights, and what that would mean in terms of our understanding of who counts as a citizen.

Trying to figure that out is what makes the study of the history and development of political and legal thought, and the documents that this history underpins, so fascinating. But it also makes it complicated and messy. 

The same goes for another example, more familiar to most students, namely, the 1776 American Declaration of Independence. To understand the preamble, let alone the list of grievances that follows, one has to understand what ‘the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God’ refers to (and, with it, the long tradition of political and legal thought that it draws on) before one can understand it. The term carried a much more nuanced and complex meaning to those who wrote it than appears at first sight, so we have to take a second and third look at the traditions (ancient, medieval, and early modern) that Jefferson et. al. drew from.  We also have to pay attention to the movement in the preamble itself to understand how a document that claims that all men are created equal before governments are instituted among men ultimately calls those who live in political societies outside of their own savages. The shift is not exceptional but exemplary of how the vocabularies are complicated and messy and always seem to change even within a single document. 

Finally, it’s important to add that what makes studying the history of political and legal thought and the intersections of law, history, and society even more challenging is that *none* of the words used or meanings conveyed are unintentional, nor are they merely semantic. Rather, they are chosen to create and promote certain ends,  often leading to violence, death, and sometimes genocide. As such. sometimes, the challenge of studying these things comes down to not being overwhelmed by their intensity and remembering that people can–and in fact do–use the language of rights and law to fundamentally change the world for the better, too! 

What do you find most rewarding about teaching and mentoring students in your courses?

I love all of it, though the best moments are always tied to seeing a flash of excitement illuminate a student’s face when they realize they have an original insight to share in discussion—leading to an active and engaged debate among all. Those moments are gifts, not because they are rare but because they signal the class is completely absorbed in the topics or themes under exploration. In other words, those moments signal when the class achieves flow.

In what ways do you see your course preparing students for careers or further study in fields related to law, history, or public policy?

It is important for everyone, no matter their career path, to be able to place law, legal systems, and legal traditions into historical perspective–so that they can explore, analyze, and understand what is at stake when we invoke ideas of justice, security, and the common good. Doing so enables everyone to approach the law as a diagnostic tool that allows us to track societal changes over time. These changes are most observable when tensions between cultural values and existing norms erupt into conflicts of rights that societies expect to be resolved through due process, the ballot box, or jurisprudence. As such, studying these moments often reveals how people call on the law either to advance their greatest hopes or confront their greatest fears. Of course, there is more to history than law, but how societies turn to and use laws can reveal much about all aspects of history.

For all these reasons and more, it is especially important for those who want to go into law and politics to learn how to read legal documents, sources, debates, etc., critically and carefully — with an eye to the society that created, reformed, or rejected them–so that they are reminded, always, that law is not something that is given to society so much as something that societies use to try to address current conditions or respond to previous problems.

What are your favorite undergraduate courses to teach, and why are they your favorites?

Since most of the courses I teach fall under the LHS major concentration, it’s no lie to say that I love teaching all of them! Of course, it’s no coincidence that most of them also directly intersect with my research interests. This means I am always learning something new from the readings as much as from discussions! 

Beyond the LHS major concentration, I enjoy teaching classes that focus on the history and development of historical methods and trends in historiography. 

Courses taught that fulfill requirements in the Law, History, and Society Major Concentration:

Find more about Dr. Susan Longfield Karr