Legal Studies

This course offers an introduction to antitrust as a mechanism for keeping private power under control. It goes beyond black letter law and integrates legal rules within the broader societal and historical developments that have shaped their enactment and evolution. Instead of discussing antitrust as a set-in-stone collection of rules and case law, the course presents antitrust as a living body that adapts to changes in technology, ideology, and politics.

This course provides a general introduction to intellectual property law. It focuses on copyright law, one of the intellectual property laws, which is most pertinent to the diverse laws and regulations derived from the most current information and communication technology. Relevant intellectual property legal system, which has changed dramatically with the advent of Internet technology, will be introduced as well. 

This course considers key issues of new technology, constitutional rights, and economic issues in the 21st century, with a specific focus on how new technology and constitutional rights interact. Many examples come from the US context, but focus is global, not exclusively American. Some topics include New York Times v. Sullivan, freedom of the press; Wikileaks, privacy, and government classified information; copyright and "fair use" doctrine; Net neutrality; intellectual property law background; Napster, Grokster, and ABC v. Aereo; and the future and the past, technology versus traditional values. Readings include relevant US Supreme Court cases, international law treaties, and leading scholars' articles.

This course discusses the history of Spanish law from the arrival of Roman law to the Iberian Peninsula through the Constitution of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931.

This course examines how law frames the human relationship to the environment and non-human world, including issues of democracy, environmental justice, the treatment of animals and global inequality. It will draw on case studies in Australian, comparative and international law. It will invite students to explore the way that various areas of law are implicated in environmental problems and injustice, and to consider how law can be reformed to perform a protective function. 

This course offers a study of victimology as a necessary subject within the field of criminology to examine the person and their role as victim. It discusses the role of the victim today and identifies perceptions and reciprocal attitudes about offenders and victims. Lastly, this course explores the idea of knowledge of the victim as a means to prevent crime.

This course provides an introduction to the concepts, principles, institutions, and debates that define public international law today. Students begin with an overview of the international legal system, considering the sources of international law, the scope of responsibility for its breach, and its role in the creation and empowerment of states. In this connection, students examine the work of the International Court of Justice, the WTO Appellate Body, various human rights courts and committees, the International Criminal Court, and the ad hoc international criminal tribunals, along with judgments of national courts invoking international law. Students take up a range of topical issues of global concern, studying their international legal dimensions. The issues to be discussed are likely to include war, trade and investment, human rights, climate change, and international crime. Students also investigate aspects of the history of international law, its relation to the establishment and retreat of European empires, and its contemporary significance and prospects.