LAWS2326 is a Core Course. Students wishing to complete Theories of Law and Justice as an Elective should enrol in course code LAWS3326. Enrolment is by school consent and you should email law@unsw.edu.au to request enrolment.


This course seeks to understand the nature of law and justice and, in particular, the relationship between the two in contemporary society. It begins by exploring the question “what is justice”? Since this is an enduring philosophical question, posed differently at different times, it will be approached historically. We examine some of the key thinkers in the philosophical and jurisprudential tradition from the Greeks to the present and how they have understood justice. The focus here will be not only on explaining and critically analysing different general theories of justice, but especially upon determining how these theories articulate the specific relation (or lack of relation) between justice and law. The course will then put these ideas to work through a consideration of a number of contemporary problems concerning law and justice. For example, how in modern circumstances might we ground the criteria of justice? Is it helpful to understand modern law on the model of either distributive or corrective justice? Is any interpretation of law always based on an understanding of legal justice? And what are we to make of various claims to justice, for instance, international justice, intergenerational justice, historical or transitional justice?

More information can be found on the Course Outline Website.