Legal Studies

This course provides a Law and Politics study on current issues of "Democracy in Crisis" from the perspective of comparative law. The course also covers what the rule of law might mean to democracy and how these two fundamental political ideas play a mutually complementary role for each other in practice and in theory. Students explore the foundations of democracy vis a vis reasons why this political regime is still important to - and conceived as pivotal in - civil society today.  

Topics include Weakening of Referee Institutions in India, Democracy in Crisis in Southeast Asia, State Capacity and Accountability in Low-Income States, Democratic Backsliding and the Politicization of Public Employment; Nationalist Passion, Economic Interest, and the Moral Economy of the Hungarian Civic Right: 2002-2010, Election Administration and Democratic Fragility in the USA, Post-Communist Democracy, Civil Society, and the Problem of Accountability, Civil Society Resistance to Democratic Backsliding, Social Media, Disinformation, and Resilience of Democracy, and Security Imperative and Right Nationalist Politics in Contemporary Europe and USA.   

The course offers a critical reading of the work undertaken by all international criminal courts and tribunals. Throughout the course, the basic tenets of Criminal Justice and their application at the international level to discover the fragility of the international legal system, its interplay with global, regional, and local politics, and the challenges of reconciling justice with the interest of states are studied. Topics covered include the selection of cases at the international level, the relation of courts with states (participants and by-standers), the setting of goals and the measuring results of courts, determining the societal impact that courts have in the international community, determining the impact courts have on individuals (end-users) such as victims and accused, the role of international criminal courts in the writing/re-writing of history, the effectiveness of courts in responding to ever-growing international criminality and the alternatives available to address the same. The course presents challenging debates regarding the state of international criminality and justice, tests criticisms in the field with real-life practice, and sparks debates regarding solutions or alternatives to all the limitations of the international criminal justice system.

This course examines how police, prosecutors and courts exercise the state's most coercive powers – the power to stop, to detain, to deport, to imprison, even to execute. Why does the US have 4% of the world's population but 20% of its prisoners? Students will examine whether facial recognition and algorithmic sentencing make justice fairer or automate existing biases. The course shows how online hate travels from screen to street – and whether law can stop it without chilling free speech. Additionally, it compares democracies that have abolished the death penalty with ones that sentence children to die in prison.

The approach is comparative, interdisciplinary and hands-on. Students review landmark cases and study the legal rules that govern state power across jurisdictions (US, Canada, Europe and Australia) – but also engage with cutting-edge empirical research that reveals how police, prosecutors and judges actually make decisions in practice.

This course provides a solid foundation in corporate finance law covering three components. The first component is an introduction to corporate finance theory, which covers the nature of equity and debt as well as an introduction to how capital markets work and the theories of capital structure and valuation. The second covers the regulation of legal capital, including the relevant core accounting concepts, the regulation of dividends and share buy-backs. The third addresses the issuance of debt and equity, and related aspects of securities regulation such as insider trading and disclosure regulation, as well as mergers and acquisitions.

The course explores some of the principles and doctrines underlying the criminal law. It investigates some of the theoretical (and particularly, ethical) problems that criminal law raises. The course increases students’ understanding of many of the principles underlying the criminal law, especially those concerning the scope of criminal prohibitions and the criteria for attributing responsibility and blame to individual wrongdoers. With increased understanding of those principles, students learn to integrate analysis of general issues and principles with argument about particular rules and doctrines in the criminal law.

This course examines the relationship between crime and the media. It encourages students to develop an understanding of how the media help to influence the public views of crime and criminalization. It will do this by focusing on media portrayals of crime and criminal behavior, media effects and theories of media and communication.

This course examines through three case studies how we should develop legal responses to the challenge of AI. Today AI is used by the police, other law enforcement agencies, and even by private citizens to build smart surveillance networks through the use of live facial recognition cameras and so-called “hot spot” policing. This has the potential to impact our privacy and personal data and risks bias and error in design and deployment. The use of AI in law enforcement is the first case study. The second, the deployment of AI in medical practice and treatment, raises questions of autonomy, consent, confidentiality, and liability. The third case study looks at how public authorities deploy AI in ways which impact all, including digital transformation of public administrative systems, the use of AI in the legal profession and the courts, and the deployment of AI at borders and to manage immigration. 

The focus of the course, which draws on insights from a range of disciplines including law, psychology and economics, is on contemporary dispute resolution theories across a range of settings, with a particular emphasis on how the legal system should understand the interests of disputing commercial parties. The course examines the interface between theory and practice and assists students in using theories of conflict resolution and dispute management to understand and address contemporary challenges as to how various methods should be used to settle claims in different contexts.

This course examines the nature of crime in Australia and the different approaches to understanding criminal behavior. The course seeks to ground students with an understanding of the causes of crime, the major methods for measuring crime, as well as the dominant theoretical perspectives in the field of Criminology.