The Department of Sociology at Tufts University introduced a new minor in Legal Studies at the start of the semester, adding to the university’s informal pre-law track.
The new minor will require five classes: a course in the social domain of law, a legal perspective course, two electives and a gateway course titled Law and Society. Students can fulfill the electives by choosing from a selection of sociology courses.
Students will be encouraged to use their electives to establish a thematic focus in criminal justice, environment, immigration, justice and rights or technology and law. Students can potentially count experiential learning, including internships or courses taken in The Experimental College at Tufts, to help fulfill the minor.
Approximately 135 Tufts students, including current and recently graduated, apply to law school each year, according to Jill Weinberg, an associate professor and chair of the Department of Sociology. The university offers pre-law advising through the Career Center but no formal pre-law track.
Weinberg highlighted the minor’s interdisciplinary design and its emphasis on coursework beyond sociology. She explained that the minor was developed due to a desire to provide more of a scaffold for pre-law students, improve legal literacy and broaden students’ knowledge of rights.
“We’re here to train students to think about the moral dimensions of law, the lived experience of law, how law shapes our central institutions like gender, media, race [and] the criminal justice system. We encourage the minor to have students taking courses outside of sociology,” she said.
As of late September, 14 students have declared the minor, which has been available since the start of the semester. According to Weinberg, the number of declared students roughly equals the number who graduate with a minor in sociology each year at Tufts.
“The number will probably grow during registration time, and it will probably grow when graduation checklists are due at the end of the year,” she explained.
First-year Jasmine Mongue, an attendee at a Sept. 30 information session hosted by faculty, said she viewed the new minor as a strong “entry point” for her budding interest in law.
“I’m excited to have a more institutionalized way of engaging with academics that are law-related at Tufts,” she said.
Amy Goldstein, director of the ExCollege, said the college has a long history of hosting law-related classes, many of which will now count towards the legal studies minor.
The ExCollege frequently offers roughly one to four law-related courses a semester, including three in the fall of 2026: Medicine, Ethics and the Law, Forensics: From Crime Scene to Courtroom and The Right to Privacy in Modern America.
Many of these courses are taught by practicing attorneys, who Goldstein said offer a “practical, on-the-ground perspective” on legal practice and tend to bring in guest speakers.
The long-running Right to Privacy in Modern America course, for example, is co-taught by Doug Martland, assistant attorney general for the commonwealth of Massachusetts, and Steve Sharobem, assistant United States attorney.
Goldstein also emphasized the new minor’s flexibility with awarding retrospective credits for courses relevant to the major.
“If students took a previous course and they want to know if it counts, they should definitely check in with the legal studies program and see,” Goldstein said.
The legal studies minor is accessible for a spectrum of students who would like to explore their interests in law.
“We’re trying to envision it as a larger ecosystem, where the moment you have an interest in law, whatever that may be — a minor, taking a course, or just talking to faculty about legal careers — we really want to take those students in and really put them in the best place possible as they go on to pursue law school or legal careers,” Weinberg said.
