UCL - Philosophy of law

[DROP2153]

[30h] 5 credits

This course is taught in the 2d semester.

Teacher(s): Jacques Lenoble

Language: French

Level: Second

Aims
Main themes
Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Aims

The course is based on participatory teaching methods (learning through projects or problems, review of the relevant case-law and doctrine, debates with guest speakers, field studies ...) which allow the students to develop independently a critical, forward-looking and inventive look on public international law. Students are encouraged to participate and to get involved in learning, which has both an individual and a collective dimension.

Main themes

The philosophy of law course analyses the main contemporary trends in legal philosophy (analytical, hermeneutic and pragmatist approaches) and in political philosophy (debates regarding liberalism - communitarianism - republicanism).

First, these different approaches are analysed both with regard to their internal coherence (and, if necessary, in relation to the context of social and legal changes that are related to them) and, mainly, on the basis of their theoretical hypothesis. Second, these approaches are analysed with regard to their philosophical presuppositions and confronted with the hypothesis of "contextual proceduralisation" developed in UCL's Centre for Philosophy of Law.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

The course material comprises a set of articles that are representative of the different theoretical approaches analysed during the course. These articles are either in English or in French.

Two forms of assessment are offered:
- either assessment is based on students' personal work (written paper or oral presentation in front of the class) on a topic determined by the student in consultation with his/her professor.
- or assessment is by written examination (2 hours), which aims to test the students' understanding of the most important conceptual tools used in the course to reconstruct the issues in major contemporary debates in legal and political philosophy