Legal Studies

This is a seminar course designed to cover the common law trial systems through providing the students opportunities of analyzing cases, in-class discussions, and/or mock trial practices, and facilitation for the students to learn the main legal theories of litigation and trial practices of the common law system.

Through taking this course, the students are expected to learn legal terminologies, enhance the ability of comprehending legal English, and understand the common law trial proceedings in a systematic way. The students will be trained to use English as a tool to understand the law and to be capable of analyzing and resolving legal problems.

This course analyzes the structures and functions of international public law using the methodological and theoretical tools of political economy. Rather than treating law as an autonomous system of norms, the course interrogates how legal regimes emerge, operate, and evolve in relation to power, interests, and material structures at the international level. We examine how legal frameworks reflect and institutionalize global distributions of power, economic interdependence, and the strategic behavior of states and non-state actors. Topics include sovereignty, trade, development, human rights, investment law, and environmental regimes, with a focus on power asymmetries, institutional design, and enforcement. Adopting a political economy approach to analyzing law - and public international law in particular - has a number of analytical, critical and empirical advantages. It highlights underlying power relationships; the political economy approach enables one to understand who writes law, for whose benefit, and in what structural context (imperialism, capitalism, inter-state rivalry).

This course questions the place of researchers in the 21st century and law through the ethnographer's field. Is there such a field? The course introduces basic concepts of law and anthropology, human sciences, its colonial background and methodological critiques to further how lawyers can lean in and explore anthropology's paradigm of alterity to further critical legal thinking and how anthropologists and other social scientists can look at law as a cultural technique. The course discusses why using empirical work, sometimes uncomfortable for a researcher, similar to looking in the mirror, can contribute to better addressing today's ethical and political challenges. Through the revision of diverse examples, old and new, students learn about the method of “explorers."

This course will focus on the complicated role that law has played in the economic reform. It will analyze such a role from five perspectives, namely, constitution, government, property, regulation, and globalization. Together, these perspectives will help the students to build a multi-dimensional understanding of the political economy of law in modern China.

This course considers the limits and potential of using law to pursue justice and achieve social change. It looks at key goals of law reform (such as access to justice, rights and equality) as well as considers a different understanding of justice and what constitutes a just outcome. It focuses on the importance of the process of law reform and having an awareness of its social, historical, cultural and political dynamics, as well as the central role of community organizations in advocating for social and legal change. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. At the end of the course, the student: is able to understand the fundamental philosophical issues raised by law and their significance; has knowledge of legal-philosophical conceptions in their historical development, from their origins to contemporary perspectives, and can reconstruct how these conceptions provide answers to these issues; can critically evaluate the theoretical advantages and limitations of the various conceptions; possesses basic notions of legal theory and the theory of legal interpretation. The course consists of two parts:

• The first part (Conceptions of Law) introduces the three main conceptions of legal theory – natural law theory, legal positivism, and legal realism – and discusses their theoretical implications; then, some contemporary trends (law and economics, critical legal studies, and legal feminism) are introduced and discussed, also in connection with the traditional views.
• The second part (Hart: The Concept of Law) discusses in details H. L. A. Hart’s masterpiece “The Concept of Law” and its Postscript, also in the light of some contemporary debates in legal theory that derived from it: particularly the Hart-Dworkin debate, but also the debate on inclusive and exclusive legal positivism (Raz on authority).

This course explores the complex regulatory environment of AI systems, which ranges from regulations and governance instruments to ethical principles and industry standards. It starts with an introductory session explaining what AI technologies are, zooms in on their benefits and the novel risks they give rise to, and investigates the role different legal modules can play in regulating them. At the end of the semester, it explores the question of whether the race for AI will thwart regulatory efforts, and to what extent ethical principles can serve as a complement to legal and industry norms.

This clinical course provides practical aspects of lawyering, including interviewing clients, identifying and summarizing legal issues and evidentiary matters, conducting research, writing papers on legal problem solutions, and preparing legal memoranda. These tasks are undertaken under close supervision of instructors or practicing lawyers. Students gain the capability to handle cases independently and effectively. Legal Clinic 2 provides clinical case studies of criminal and administrative law. Through this course, case study of criminal and administrative law is explored, and appropriate research, practices, papers, etc., are provided for students. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. The course provides students with a comprehensive understanding of the comparative dimension of the European legal space through primary institutions and principles, with a particular emphasis on solidarity. The course will lead the students to acquire and improve the following skills: techniques for reading and understanding constitutional norms, legislation and case law from different legal systems, as well as critical skills for the comparative examination of European constitutionalism; ability to find and understand legal sources of the European legal space; skills to elaborate innovative norms and policies in both the public and the private sector.

The course content is divided as follows:

• Comparative Methodology
• Practical and Theoretical Targets of Legal Comparison
• European Legal Families and Political/Territorial Systems
• European Constitutionalism and Comparative Understandings of the Principle of Solidarity
• EU and Domestic Legal Framework of Solidarity
• Solidarity in Inter-territorial relations
• Financial, Migration, and Environmental Norms and Policies on Solidarity
• Constitutional Adjudication and Interaction with European Courts

This course focuses on two major aspects of market integration: Free movement of persons (as part of the internal market and the AFSJ) and Competition law (as a complement to the internal market).  Free movement of persons within the framework of EU law has many different dimensions. From an economic perspective, people thus move around the EU to perform or receive services on a temporary basis (e.g. as a tourist, or to receive or perform medical treatment). They may also decide to move permanently to another EU Member State, to work there either as a self-employed person (establishment) or to work for a company or public or private institution (worker). As such, they enjoy many different rights, based not only on the principle of equal treatment but also on the basis of the principle of EU-citizenship and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU. So, also people that are not economically active, such as students and pensioners, enjoy certain rights of free movement under EU law. The realization of the free movement of persons within the EU requires a lot of balancing of various interests and rights, e.g. the entitlement to free movement of workers versus protection of local workers in construction and transport and protection of fundamental rights of migrants versus (social) security interests of EU-citizens. The internal market rules are geared primarily towards states/public authorities, so as to make sure that their laws, regulations and other actions will not obstruct the free movement of persons, as well as of goods, services and capital, unless there is an objective justification for this based on the protection of some public interest. The competition law rules as contained in articles 101 and 102 TFEU are to be seen as a complement to the internal market rules, by stipulating specific obligations for companies to refrain from any behavior that may obstruct the internal market. While within this framework economic interests are balanced very often with consumer protection interests, an important question remains what scope there is for the balancing of other public interests such as environmental protection and sustainability. As one of the biggest societal challenges is a fast-growing digitalization, at the end of the course, there is a reflection on developments of EU law and policies in respect to a European approach to digital transformation.  The course is taught in the same form in both period 1 and 3. In learning about these topics, students will make use of legal texts (Treaties, regulations, directives, case law) and an academic textbook. In addition, some academic articles and news issues relating to current events may be used.