Anne Barron NAB6.05

This course is available on the Master of Laws and Master of Laws (extended part-time study). This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course will be relevant to the following LLM specialisms: Legal Theory.

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

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Drawing on major themes of modern European philosophy, this course re-frames the questions that have been taken as defining jurisprudential inquiry: What accounts for the foundations of legal orders and their durability across space and time? How and why do legal norms change? What explains the normativity of law? What is the connection between sovereignty and legal validity? Is there a connection between democracy and legal validity? Is it part of the definition of a legal norm’s validity that it advances morality or the common good? Is it part of law’s essence that it institutionalizes individual rights, and if so, which ones? Throughout, these questions are addressed in relation to the philosophical tradition that links Kant, Hegel and Habermas; hence the focus of the course is on how, and how far, modern law enables the realisation of the ideals of autonomy and mutual recognition.

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

Students on this course will have a reading week in Week 6, in line with departmental policy.

All students are expected to produce one 2,000 word formative essay during the course.

Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (Polity Press 1996); GWF Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right (trans. H. Nisbet) (Cambridge University Press 1991); Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy (ed. Mary Gregor) (Cambridge University Press 1999); Arthur Ripstein, Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 2009); Allen Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge University Press, 1990).

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours) in the main exam period.