Ms A Barron, NAB6.05

For LLM students, MSc Regulation, MSc Regulation (Research), MSc Law, Anthropology and Society students, and other Master’s level students with permission.

The course is divided into two parts. During MT the work of four major figures in modern European philosophy  - Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Habermas - will be explored by way of a close reading of important texts by these philosophers that have shaped the central debates in jurisprudence and legal theory. In LT a range of topics in contemporary jurisprudence and legal theory will be considered against this philosophical backdrop.

20 two-hour seminars.

Students are asked to submit two 2,000 word essays.

Readings will be provided in advance on a weekly basis.

Penner, Schiff & Nobles, Introduction to Jurisprudence and Legal Theory: Commentary and Materials (Butterworths, 2002); Sebastian Gardner, Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason (Routledge 1999); Stephen Houlgate, An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History (2^nd ed. Blackwells 2005); Allen W. Wood, Kant (Oxford: Blackwells 2004); Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (Polity 1997); James Gordon Finlayson, Habermas: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press 2005); H L A Hart, The Concept of Law (2nd edn, OUP, 1994); Robert Alexy, A Theory of Legal Argumentation (Oxford: OUP, 1989).

One two-hour formal examination contributing 50% of the final mark and one assessed essay (8,000 words) contributing 50% of the final mark.