Legal Studies

This course provides an introduction to French law and the judicial system. Students learn about the judicial organization, fundamental rights, the differences between a natural and a legal person, as well as the rules to carry out a contract. Topics like criminal, civil, and administrative liability are also taught.

This course provides an analysis of the relationship between the regionalization of criminal policy and the globalization of criminal law. It introduces the concept of and analyzes the types of criminal policy. The course provides a comparison of national, regional, and international criminal policy; and compares a variety of methods of regionalization of criminal policy towards drug crimes. It identifies and analyzes the challenges and explores the efficiency of joint regional criminal policy. 

This course examines individual labor law or employment law, with a focus on the employment contract. Topics include: concept, function, origin, and history of labor law; sources of labor law and the employment relationship, and principles of application; the labor administration system and labor courts; the employment relationship between employee and business owner; the job market, employment policy, and the employment contract; defining the job to be performed; quantity and features of employment benefits. 

The course is intended covers issues from a number of different perspectives, specifically considering cultural, political, legal, but also economical aspects, including those relevant outside a Western context. It provides an overview of the legal situation in a national, European, and international setting. Participants gain an understanding of the various forms of intellectual property (copyright, patent, trademark, etc.) and expanding or antagonistic concepts including the creative commons, open access, open source, and piracy. 

This is a special studies course involving an internship with a corporate, public, governmental, or private organization, arranged with the Study Center Director of Liaison Officer. Specific internships vary each term and are described on a special study project form for each student. A substantial paper or series of reports is required. Units vary depending on the contact hours and method of assessment. Graded P/NP only.

This course examines basic philosophical and theoretical problems about law in constitutional democracies—its origins, its nature, its grounds for legitimacy, and its scope and force. The course introduces theories of law from the natural rights tradition, social contract theory, legal positivism, and legal realism. It concludes by examining theories of law influenced by interpretive theories (hermeneutics), by various schools of critical theory, including critical race theory and feminist theory, and by scholars working in law and society. The course examines several influential theorists and philosophers from the Western legal tradition, although it pays some attention to contemporary Korean legal theorists and philosophers. Students read important works by Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, H.L.A. Hart, John Rawls, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Hannah Arendt, Brian Tamahana, Jurgen Habermas, Jeremy Waldron, Roberto Unger, Mari Matsuda, Derrick Bell, and Mark Tushnet. 

This course introduces the spatial effects the law has in everyday life's urban spaces, problems related to geography in general, and cities in specific. It examines the relationship between space and law, and how law and legal theory are essential starting points in understanding cities and vice versa. The course also confronts legal and social theories using architecture, literature, film, art, and legal ethnographic approaches. It addresses inquiries such as how law creates space; how national and international laws construct cities; how law, literature, and film represent cities; and how it is possible to do legal research in this field.