Course

Theories of Law and Justice - LAWS3326

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: 3

Enrolment Requirements:

Prerequisite: Completion of 78 UOC in LAWS courses.

Excluded: JURD7236, JURD7336, LAWS2326

CSS Contribution Charge: 3 (more info)

Tuition Fee: See Tuition Fee Schedule

Further Information: See Class Timetable

View course information for previous years.

Description

Laws 3326 is an Elective Course. Students who want to enrol in Theories of Law and Justice as a Core course should enrol in LAWS2326.


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.
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