Legal Studies

This course provides students with an understanding of the logistics and substance of public international law, that is, the law that applies to how states relate to other states and some non-state actors in global politics. It asks what laws exist in the global political arena and how those laws affect the structure, content, and outcomes of global political, social, and economic interactions. As such, the course explores both what international law is (how it comes to be, and when and how it matters), as well as various places in which international law might matter in the international arena (both in terms of the structure of the international arena and issues that arise in contemporary international relations).

In an era of technology, health crisis, and transnational thinking, this course covers cutting edge issues such as gender discrimination through algorithms, sexual harassment after #metoo, reproductive rights and strategic litigation, and how feminist legal theory questions the way the law is constructed and applied according to stereotypical views of identity and systemic discrimination. The course investigates how queer theory influences the legal field by rejecting a binary view of identity and encompassing issues challenging LGBTQI groups. It explores what is learned from these various legal standpoints while encountering changes in family, criminal, and employment law; whether queer theory influences gender law; and whether there are new ways to consider legal concepts such as consent, personal autonomy, and intersectionality.

This course provides a study of the principal characteristics of present-day international society and the effects of its structure and inner tensions in the creation and application of public international law. It critically examines the foundations of the international legal system, as well as the interactions between the international and national regulatory spheres and the legal consequences of including public international law in the Spanish legal system.

This course explores the meanings and functions of human dignity in a comparative and inter-disciplinary perspective. The course provides a critical and complex understanding of how the concept has developed, has been used, and should be used in constitutional and legal contexts. The course begins by identifying the intellectual origins of human dignity and mapping its meanings in philosophical discourse. Students explore developments in the uses and functions of human dignity in national constitutions from the 20th century to present day. The course examines the logic of drafting constitutional articles, and practices those principles on articles containing the concept of dignity in multiple functions. The course also gives tools to understand how justices employ the concept in various ways. The course also discusses topics including a psychological approach to human dignity as self-worth, dignity in medical ethics, dignity in prisons, and the uses of dignity by the Israeli Supreme Court.