Legal Studies

The course is designed to prepare students for leadership in a globally interdependent and culturally diverse workforce. Throughout the course, students are challenged to question, think, and respond thoughtfully to the issues they observe and encounter in the internship setting, and the designated city in general. Students have the opportunity to cultivate the leadership skills as defined by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), such as critical thinking, teamwork, and diversity. Assignments focus on building a portfolio that highlights those competencies and their application to workplace skills. The hybrid nature of the course allows students to develop their skills in a self-paced environment with face-to-face meetings and check-ins to frame their intercultural internship experience. Students complete 45 hours of in-person and asynchronous online learning activities and 225-300 hours at their internship placement.

This course analyzes prior constitutions and political events that led to the birth of the Fifth Republic. It then offers an in-depth study of constitutional law mechanisms to better understand the institutional framework of a working democracy and current trends in government. The course is divided into five parts: history of the Fifth Republic, the executive, parliament, the judiciary and constitutional justice, and the European Union constitutional law. 

This course introduces the basic structure of the American legal system and various topics of substantive law. 

This course provides an overview of the origins and the evolution of the European Union’s legal system, as well as the main features of its governance framework. It also provides an opportunity to debate relevant questions and news items as they unfold during the course. Considering the strong influence European norms have on national legal systems today, the knowledge acquired in this course is useful both to more advanced study in European Union law and to better understand how national and European norms are defined and how they should be applied. The course provides the key to understanding current debates related to democracy, economic integration, and the respect of the rule of law within the European Union.

This course examines in detail the basic principles of international taxation. It tries to identify the core issues in developing international tax rules, and study the different approaches countries have taken in dealing with these issues. Topics covered include basic theory of international taxation, jurisdiction for taxation, methods of international double tax relief, basic operation of double tax treaties, and international issues in tax administration. 

This course examines the sociological approaches to the systematic analysis of law, its operation, and its significance in society. It studies law as a major social phenomenon related to other aspects of society and explores its pervasive influence on human behavior and society. Topics include the sociology of law; the justification of law; major foundational works on law and society; the social basis of law, including folkways and mores, law and culture, legal pluralism, living law and book law, traditional or customary law and modern law, approaches to the study of law, and legal positivism; the consensus perspective or law as an integrative mechanism; the conflict perspective or law, power, and ideological control; law as an instrument of social change; the acceptance and legitimacy of law; the professional guardians of law; judges, courts, and disputes; and the enforcement and invocation of law.