Legal Studies

This course examines the historical, social and political forces shaping contemporary relationships between the criminal justice system and racialized populations. It uses criminological theory and research to explore the common and distinct factors contributing to the disproportionate criminal justice contact experienced by a range of racialized populations across the world, from the Aboriginal and African communities of Australia, to African Americans and Latinos in the United States, and foreign nationals in European countries. The course further evaluates some of the key attempts criminal justice agencies have made to improve their relationship with certain racialized populations, identifying and analyzing the conditions under which practices such as police-community building initiatives, specialist Indigenous courts, and culturally-specific prison programs have emerged, and asking students to consider the tensions that remain within these responsive racialized practices.

This course covers Japanese Constitutional Law from political and social perspectives. It comprises four parts: 

1) “Invitation to Japanese Constitutional Law” introduces the basics of Japanese Constitutional Law and constitutional law in general; 

2) “Basic Principles of Japanese Constitutional Law” covers basic principles of Japanese Constitutional Law such as pacifism, popular/national sovereignty and fundamental human rights; 

3) “Human Rights and Governance” explores some crucial provisions in human rights and governance; and 

4) “Current Topics in the Japanese Constitutional Law” covers recent topics to discuss the role of Japanese Constitutional Law today and in the future.

Each class is composed of student presentations, lectures and discussion. 

This course examines the nature of environmental law; the merits and disadvantages of statutory and common law approaches to environmental issues; the evolution of environmental concern; particular legal problems arising out of the nature of environmental issues; the precautionary principle; philosophies of human relations with the natural world; possible implications of environmental necessity for political, social, constitutional and economic organization; environmental economics and issues of public and private property and historical and present-day case studies. 

This course examines the major forms and structures of punishment in our society, including why we punish individuals, how we do so, and how the punishment process can be viewed in a wider social context. The first part of this course considers the broad justifications for punishment, and experiences of imprisonment with particular emphasis on hidden groups such as female and indigenous prisoners. We consider the process of punishment, from sentencing to imprisonment and punishment in the community. The second part examines the work of major writers who have provided a theoretical critique of punishment and the role it plays in our society. By the end of the subject students should have a good understanding of the correctional system and be familiar with the work of important theorists like Foucault, Cohen and Garland.
 

This course examines regulation of technological platforms, the different types of platforms and forms of technology, and the challenges brought by Artificial Intelligence. It covers how platforms are regulated in the fields of hate speech and obscenity, defamation, privacy and data protection, copyright, and political communication; and the limits of competition law in the regulation of platforms. The approach will be comparative, though particular reference will be made to the law of Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.

The course provides an introduction to tax policy that links real-world debates about the tax system with ideas from a range of academic disciplines, including political theory, economics, and sociology, as well as law. It addresses real-world debates about tax policy as they appear in the media and in politics, but to do so in an academically rigorous way. The course adopts an interdisciplinary approach that draws on ideas from across the social sciences to address two main questions: why do we have the tax policies we have, and how can our current tax system be improved? The main examples will be taken from the UK and US contexts, but the insights generated are truly global.

This course examines the Australian legal system, a common law system, and contrasts it with the civil law system. It covers the historical origins of the Australian legal system, some of the principles underpinning the legal system, including the importance of the concept of the rule of law. It also covers the operation of the principal institutions of the legal system, the legislative and executive arms of government and the judiciary and courts. This will include the jurisdiction of Australian courts, the process by which cases are decided and the doctrine of precedent, consideration of alternative methods of dispute resolution and an examination of the role of the legal profession. There will also be an overview of the main branches of law. Aboriginal customary law will be looked at and there will be a critical analysis of the circumstances of the adoption of the common law in Australia and the effect on the indigenous people. There will also be examination of the recognition of customary law and native title.

This course examines the basic legal knowledge of criminal procedures in Hong Kong. It covers the criminal justice system; rights of arrested persons/defendants; powers of law enforcement agencies; criminal jurisdiction of courts in Hong Kong; classification of criminal offences; commencement of criminal proceedings; pre-trial and trial processes; sentencing principles and options; costs in criminal cases; and appeal mechanisms for criminal proceedings.

This course  looks at a number of criminal trials, both high-profile cases and everyday proceedings, to understand how judicial proceedings have changed over a long time period while also retaining some essential structures. Through deep reading of sources from each trial as well as secondary literature, it considers how notions of "fairness," "due process," "evidence," or the "law" have evolved and how trials reflect normative expectations that are specific to and indeed highly revelatory of their respective temporal, spatial, and social contexts. The course investigates if and in what ways modern trials differ from their predecessors, how meaningful comparisons can be made, and whether or not there is a hard, systemic core to the "law" as opposed to politics, society, and culture which can be identified and studied by historians. Case studies include the trials of Jesus, Jeanne d'Arc, and the alleged witch Tempel Anneke, as well as the Stalinist show trials of the 1930s and cases from international tribunals such as those for Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. No prior legal knowledge is required.