Seminar assignments Contemporary Jurisprudence Uppsala University Faculty of Law HT 2014, B-period
Seminar questions 2(6) Question for the seminars Contemporary Jurisprudence 2013/B-period Seminar 1 General questions and legal positivism Penner J. E.: McCoubrey & White s Textbook on Jurisprudence, p. 40 82. John Austin: The province of jurisprudence determined, Lecture I H.L.A Hart: Positivism and the separation of Law and Morals, in Harvard Law Review, 1958 p. 593 Hans Kelsen: Pure theory of Law, download chapter 1 and 2 from the University library: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198 265658.001.0001/acprof-9780198265658-chapter-1 http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198 265658.001.0001/acprof-9780198265658-chapter-2 Study group one presents Austin s Lecture I. Study group two presents Harts article Positivism 1) Is there a distinct border between law, and morality/politics? Study group 3 presents the excerpt from Kelsens Pure theory of Law. Questions for the whole seminar group to discuss: 2) What are the consequences of Kelsen Pure theory of Law on the discussion about borders of Law? 3) Law is often said to be something practical. Discuss the actual impact of medical, technical, psychological and other knowledge in practice. Do you think that Kelsen also wanted to exclude such external knowledge?
3(6) Seminar 2 Penner J. E.: McCoubrey & White s Textbook on Jurisprudence p. 11 39, 83 97. Robert Alexy: The dual nature of Law Douzinas, Costas: A brief history of natural law in The End of Human Rights. Critical Legal Thought at the Turn of the Century 2000 p. 23 45 Dworkin, Ronald M: Is law a system of rules? in Taking Rights Seriously 1977 p. 38 65 Study group one presents Douzinas text. Questions for the whole seminar group to discuss 1) Give your own definition of natural law! 2) Does follow from that you are a natural law defender that you never separate positive law from natural law? Study group two presents Alexy s article. 3) Does law always rest on a claim about correctness, or even fairness? Study group three presents the text of Dworkin. 4) Does Dworkin say anything interesting about principles that have importance also outside common law countries? Final questions for the whole group_ 5) Do you think that lawyers have a professional responsibility, some kind of moral obligation to defend values imbedded in law? 6) Is the debate about positivism and natural law of any relevance still today?
4(6) Seminar 3 New landscapes of law Mattias Kumm: Who is the Final Arbiter of Constitutionality in Europe?: Three Conceptions of the Relationship Between the German Federal Constitutional Court and the European Court of Justice Common Market Law Review vol. 36 no. 2 s. 351 386 (Down load) Neil Walker Taking Constitutionalism Beyond the State in Political Studies 2008 vol. 56 pp.519-543 Case C 402/05 P and C-415/05 P Kadi/Barakaat case (Down load) Study group one presents the article of Walker. 1) Do we already live in the post-nation-state era? What implications does it have for constitutionalism? Study group three presents the Kadi/Barakaat case. Question for the whole seminar group to discuss 2) Do we need a new view on the question of who can be a lawmaker? Study group four presents the article of Kumm. Question for the whole seminar group to discuss 4) Is it not necessary to have some one in the legal system that has an ultimate say, national as well as international?
5(6) Seminar 4 Critical theory and Gender Penner J. E.: McCoubrey & White s Textbook on Jurisprudence p. 201 239 Peter Goodrich: Reading the Law s. 3 20 Kimberlé Crenshaw: Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics, in The Black Feminist Reader, 2000 s. 208 229 Vilhelm Lundstedt: Legal thinking revised s. 23 43 Study group one presents the chapter from Goodrich. Study group two presents the excerpt from Lundstedts Legal Questions for the whole seminar group to discuss 1) What do the critical in CLS ideas refer to? Critical about what? 2) Lundstedt talks a lot of reality. Discuss what we mean with reality? Study group three presents the text of Crenshaw. 5) Choose an area where you think intersectional analyses would be interesting, add something. What do you think the result would be of such an intersectional analyse?
6(6) Seminar 5 legal and scientific method Penner J. E.: McCoubrey & White s Textbook on Jurisprudence p. 240 261 J. M. Balkin: Deconstruction in A Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory (ed. Dennis Patterson) 1996 s. 367 373 1) How would you describe the legal method in your own country? What is a legal problem, what steps do you take to solve it, what material do you use? 2) How would you describe the normal scientific method for solving scientific problems? (Search the Internet, for answers.) 3) Try to describe, out of reading Balkin, step by step how a deconstruction is done? 4) Deconstruct the concept family!