Legal Studies

The course deals with substantive, procedural and political issues relating to international criminal justice, its origins, reach, legitimacy, and articulation with (post-) conflict management and peace making. It covers historical and recent international and national efforts undertaken to address these crimes. After presenting the framework and principles of international criminal justice, the course discusses contemporaneous issues. Experts and practitioners contribute to equipping students with the tools necessary to understand the role and impact of justice in international affairs.

The course introduces the study of global crime and justice, a developing field of inquiry which examines the impact of global changes on issues that pertain to crime and punishment. The purpose of the course is to both study criminal phenomena and the available responses to them on the global level as well as to explore the ways in which these issues supplement but also challenge our conventional thinking about crime and punishment. In that sense, the course covers key problems that pertain to global crime and justice and also provides the students with the necessary skills to critically assess the challenges posed by supranational phenomena and the adequacy of responses that we currently have.

The course provides a general and comprehensive approach to world affairs while introducing the international legal perspective. It covers both the essentials of public international law and particular legal regimes such as coercion, use of force, human rights, State territory, and space law with respect to selected world affairs and international conflicts. The course highlights the interaction between international politics and law and the role of international law in the world governance. It’s focus both on theory and practice and on interdisciplinarity allows a better understanding of international negotiation, norm-making, legal argumentation, and interpretative techniques.

This introductory course aims to give students basic familiarity with the systems and language of law in England, the United States, and Australia. The course also aims to provide students some degree of confidence in tackling the difficult task of reading primary legal materials (cases and statutes) from these countries, which is essential in their future work as legal professionals or white-collar workers.

This course analyzes the rights linked to European citizenship as well as for those residing in the EU territory. It explores case law developed by the Court of Justice of the European Union, as well as the tools available for civil society to participate in the policies and decision-making processes in the EU. It focuses on the means of communication that EU citizens and residents have before the institutions of the European Union for expressing their opinion, practical needs and concerns.

In this course, the topic of human rights is explored from a legal perspective, but with a view to discussing the salience of current political debates about human rights and against the background of the historical development of this field of international law.

Topics include

• Basic features of the protection of human rights in the international legal system I: Historical development and UN level
• Basic features of the protection of human rights in the international legal system II: The European regional level
• Critical perspectives on human rights
• Extraterritorial application of human rights
• Climate change litigation before human rights courts and treaty bodies
• Human rights in the digital sphere
• Decolonization and human rights
• Indigenous peoples and human rights
• Human rights in the urban age: The role of cities and local governments
• The Relevance of the African Human Rights System in the Urban Age

This course explores the essential elements of electoral law that regulates the election of government officials. It analyzes the Mexican electoral system including electoral zones, registration procedures, state financing, voter registration, candidacies, political parties, propaganda, vote counting, and electoral observation.

This course provides an overview of the basics of international law, including its history and legal sources. The course examines issues and disputes between nations through the basic structure and perspective of international law.

This course introduces the legal, regulatory, and policy issues raised by social media platforms. It provides an accessible overview of current legal issues relating to social media, with a focus on European law. The first half of the course examines how platforms and states govern online content. The second half broadens the focus to the legal and political issues raised by social media platforms' business models and ownership structures. The assigned readings and lectures provide a thorough overview of the core issues and encourage critical thinking about the underlying power structures and conflicts of interests that shape legal decisions.

This course explores the laws governing and/or related to the Internet and various forms of technology and spans numerous interrelated topics such as free speech, privacy, reproductive technologies and other medical and technological “wonders.” While the course draws extensively upon Anglo-American scholarship, legal texts, and case studies, it also introduces different philosophical foundations of free speech and other relevant concepts as various as privacy, property, and personhood, with the goal of providing conceptual tools for students to examine the laws and case studies in their home jurisdictions.