Module Catalogue 2025/26

Pre Requisite Comment

Either LAW1221 or LAW1220 & LAW1240

Co Requisite Comment

n/a

Aims

To provide an understanding of the leading schools of legal theory, and to appreciate their understanding within wider intellectual movements. To develop the particular theoretical, critical and interdisciplinary skills that are appropriate to legal study. To develop the various skills listed below. To encourage students to contemplate post-graduate work in this field. This aim reflects the fact that, over many years, students taking this course have gone on to study legal theory as post-graduates.

Outline Of Syllabus

Introduction to Legal Theory.

Natural Law (the Classical Tradition and Procedural Natural Law)

Legal Positivism

American Legal Realism

Ronald Dworkin

Alan Gewirth’s Contribution to Secular Natural Law and its Practical Applications

Law, Power, and Political Philosophy (examining John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt, and Michel Foucault)

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

(i) Demonstrate a thorough knowledge and nuanced understanding of the important schools of legal theory (natural law theories, legal positivism, American legal realism, Ronald Dworkin’s contribution to legal theory, Carl Schmitt’s contribution to legal theory);

(ii) Demonstrate familiarity with a range of jurisprudential media, including treatises and articles on legal and political theory.

(iii) Demonstrate a thorough knowledge and nuanced understanding of relevant contributions to political philosophy from, inter alios, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Michel Foucault, and G.W.F. Hegel; and -

(iv) Demonstrate a thorough knowledge and nuanced understanding of issues in legal theory that are enduring sources of controversy, including the relationship between law and morality, the application of knowledge acquired on the course to particular matters of practical concern: e.g., the limits of state sovereignty and the relationship between law (as an institution that claims authority) and power.

Intended Skill Outcomes

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

(i) Identify and demonstrate nuanced understanding of the central arguments in legal theory;

(ii) identify and bring into sharp focus (through rigorous analysis) issues that merit research from the standpoint of legal theory (and associated disciplines: e.g., political philosophy);

(iii) Engage in inter-textual study and research;

(iv) Structure arguments that relate to issues in the field of legal theory; and -

(v) Convey a contextual understanding of contentious legal issues (e.g., sensitive to the historical circumstances in which such issues have arisen).


More general skills:

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

(i) Identify and order issues by relevance and importance;

(ii) Synthesise materials from different sources (including the contributions of legal theorists, positive law, and other disciplines (e.g., political philosophy));

(iii) Identify and weigh merit and points of weakness in arguments in the field of legal theory;

(iv) Make reasoned choices between a range of interpretations and arguments.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

The use of lecturing as the principle teaching method is justified in terms of providing an overarching narrative coherence to the course. It is necessary in order to secure the requisite knowledge base needed in order to underpin stated learning outcomes. Seminars are used in order to effect the development of a critical and contextual understanding of the various theories of law covered in the lectures. Private study is directed so as to supplement the development of seminar skill, to confirm the establishment of the basic knowledge base, and to concentrate research skills in particular areas of individual study.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Prior to the submission of the summative essay, there will be a formative self-assessment (with academic oversight). Students will prepare a plan (on one piece of A4 paper) of the (summative) essay they aim to submit. Following the date by which this plan has to be completed, generally applicable assessment criteria (aligned with the law School’s marking criteria) will be made available to students taking the course. They will then self-assess their respective plans by reference to the assessment criteria made available to them. This self-assessment exercise will be followed by an online question-and-answer session. This self-assessment exercise has the following purposes: (i) to provide opportunities to seek clarification on the guidance given, (ii) to spur further critical reflection relevant to the delivery of the summative essay, (iii) to encourage engagement with the Law School’s marking criteria (a source of guidance that few students attend to closely, if at all), and (iv) to build resilience in students as they wrestle with the exacting task of composition.

A research-based essay assignment is the most appropriate means by which to assess the development skills (in the areas of analysis, argument, research), whilst also making it possible for students to demonstrate the development of necessary subject-specific knowledge bases.

General Notes

N/A