INTRODUCTION In this course we will study some key questions about law, legal values and concepts. We will try to understand certain conceptual questions which arise in all legal systems, although not all of them attract a general answer applicable to all legal systems. We will begin by assessing various answers which have been given by positivist and natural law schools to the big and deceptively simple question: What is the fundamentals of the Law and legal systems? What defines our obligation to obey the law? How should a legal system be constituted? These questions in turn breaks down into a number of subsidiary questions within many traditions. In the first part of the course we shall focus on clarifying legal experience and thought, rather than to judge its quality. Philosophers from both legal positivist and natural law school shall be discussed here including Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, John Austin, Hans Kelsen and HLA Hart. From here we shall move to the natural law tradition and read Plato, Aristotle, John Locke and Lon Fuller Although the boundary is not sharp, clarificatory jurisprudence can be contrasted with evaluative jurisprudence, the job of which is to judge the quality of legal experience. Here we encounter problems such as: Should the law enforce moral standards? can morality be based on an objective standard? Do we owe the law any moral allegiance? What makes a legal system just? What is equality? How should the basic structure of a liberal democratic state be evaluated? How should the concept of an ‘individual’ be understood for the purpose of law? Is it possible to achieve liberty and justice at the same time? These are the second set of key issues with which we will be concerned. In this part of the course, we shall read Imannuel Kant, John Rawls, Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Michael Walzer, Robert Nozick, Milton Friedman, Friedrich A. Hayek, Ronald Dworkin, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Some central concepts of law like equality; liberty, property etc will be discussed as essentially contestable from different perspectives here. The next part of the course will let us see our conceptual understandings of law in a very critical perspective. This part will include critical legal studies, legal realism and feminist legal philosophy. Here we will try to unlearn some of the basic understandings and assumptions about law and legal systems to develop critical perspectives about modern law that we value as and often demand to be universal and value neutral. We will be reading Duncan Kennedy, Mark Tushnet, Peter Gabel, Patricia Williams, OW Holmes, Karl Llewellyn, Catherine Mackinnon, Andrea Dworkin etc. here. Learning Outcomes Students will be able to think philosophically about the law. Students examine the main methodological, ontological, and normative questions concerning the law and its legitimacy. Students will survey knowledge of some of the most influential legal and political philosophies and their theses on law. Students will be enabled to think about doctrinal legal questions from a philosophical perspective. Students to develop legal reasoning skills by training them in constructing abstract, philosophical arguments.
- Teacher: Nithin V Kumar