Jurisprudence

3 units

An introductory course for law students on the main currents of thought in jurisprudence, legal philosophy, and philosophy of legal science. The course explores themes such as law versus morality, natural law versus positivism, legal realism versus formalism, law as an autonomous science, legal science as a science, and includes an introduction to the work of Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Hume, Bentham, von Jhering, Kelsen, Popper, Llewellyn, Hart, Kuhn, Lakatos, Fuller, Rawls, Dworkin, Nozick, Posner, Kaplow & Shavell. Throughout the course, emphasis is put on the applicability to recent political and legal discussions. Classroom instruction is by lecture and discussion. The grade will be based either on a 24 hour take-home essay examination, or (if the student prefers) on a 15 pages long paper.