UCL - Ethics as applied to law

[DROI1309]

[30h] 3 credits

This course is taught in the 1st semester.

Teacher(s): Philippe Coppens, Axel Gosseries

Language: French

Level: First

Aims
Main themes

Aims

Law students are usually expected to be capable of understanding positive law and of making it understood. However, they also need to be capable of rigorously expressing their opinions on the question of knowing to what degree of rigour the legislation is applied and above all on that of knowing how the existing legislation should be adapted to the margin, deeply reformed and even radically transformed.

In order to fulfil this role correctly, the law students should be capable of formulating and defending the ethical principles that they need to evoke in a coherent and lucid way, to be able to give their views on such questions. The aim of the course is to help them acquire this skill, both by introducing them to the principal ethical contemporary theories
and by teaching them to argue concrete juridical questions on the basis of those theories.

Main themes

The first part of the course presents the principal ethical theories evoked implicitely or explicitely during the contemorary debates.
The second part looks at special controversial questions relevant to the different domains of law and questions the way in which the different ethical theories apply to them.

Lectures completed, as far as possible, by possible debates prepared by teams of students, in order to initiate them into explicit ethical argumentation on controversial questions in the various domains of law.