Dr Kai Moller NAB7.01

This course is available on the LLM (extended part-time), LLM (full-time) and University of Pennsylvania Law School LLM Visiting Students. This course is not available as an outside option.

This course is capped at 30 students. Students must apply through Graduate Course Choice on LSEforYou.

This course examines a range of controversial issues in human and constitutional rights law from a comparative perspective. These issues include: abortion; “deviant” sexual practices; same sex marriage; religion in the public sphere; hate speech and denial of the holocaust; obscenity. We will approach them by comparing and contrasting judgments from courts all over the world, with a certain emphasis on cases from the U.S. Supreme Court, the Canadian Supreme Court, the South African Constitutional Court, the European Court of Human Rights, the U.K. Supreme Court, and the German Federal Constitutional Court. The goals of the course are, first, to introduce the students to the jurisprudence of those extremely powerful and influential courts, and, second, to invite them to think about and critically analyse some of the most controversial, difficult, and important rights issues of our time.

20 hours of seminars in the LT. 2 hours of seminars in the ST.

There will be a reading week in week 6.

One 2,000 word essay.

The course is mainly case-based; however, interested students may find the following book helpful: V Jackson and M Tushnet, Comparative Constitutional Law, 3rd edition, 2014.

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours, reading time: 15 minutes) in the summer exam period.