Theories of Law and Justice - LAWS2326
Faculty: Faculty of Law
School: Faculty of Law
Course Outline: See below
Campus: Sydney
Career: Undergraduate
Units of Credit: 6
EFTSL: 0.12500 (more info)
Indicative Contact Hours per Week: 4
Enrolment Requirements:
Pre-requisite: 24 UOC completed in LLB courses or 24 UOC completed in Juris Doctor courses. Juris Doctor students who commenced prior to 2013 need no pre-requisites.
Equivalent: JURD7236, JURD7336, LAWS3326
Excluded: LAWS2320, LAWS2384, LAWS2820
CSS Contribution Charge: 3 (more info)
Tuition Fee: See Tuition Fee Schedule
Further Information: See Class Timetable
View course information for previous years.
Description
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.