Legal Studies

This course provides an overview of international law and its approach to several burning security issues of global scope, including terrorism, forced displacement, cyberwarfare, pandemics, and disinformation. This thematic overview imparts a basic understanding of the international legal landscape surrounding current security policy conversations, while reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of international law. In the process, the course also exposes most branches of international law, including the law regulating armed conflict and the use of force, human rights law, refugee law, and international criminal law.

This course provides an introduction to the international legal and regulatory framework for finance, especially banking. It provides both an academic, theoretical framework and a practitioner's perspective. It presents the most important bodies involved in the governance of globalized finance, e.g., IMF, BIS, Basel Committee, FATF. It offers an overview of the international regulation in place, with a focus on the implications of the Global Financial Crisis in sparking regulatory reform. The course also refers to particularly significant experiences at the regional (e.g., the European Union) or national (e.g., United States) level to provide concrete examples. Where appropriate, experts from relevant authorities may be invited to offer students a hands-on perspective.

The International Internship course develops vital business skills employers are actively seeking in job candidates. This course is comprised of two parts: an internship, and a hybrid academic seminar. Students are placed in an internship within a sector related to their professional ambitions. The hybrid academic seminar, conducted both online and in-person, analyzes and evaluates the workplace culture and the daily working environment students experience. The course is divided into eight career readiness competency modules as set out by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), which guide the course’s learning objectives. During the academic seminar, students reflect weekly on their internship experience within the context of their host culture by comparing and contrasting their experiences with their global internship placement with that of their home culture. Students reflect on their experiences in their internship, the role they have played in the evolution of their experience in their internship placement, and the experiences of their peers in their internship placements. Students develop a greater awareness of their strengths relative to the career readiness competencies, the subtleties and complexities of integrating into a cross-cultural work environment, and how to build and maintain a career search portfolio.

In this course students acquire knowledge about: Public Health law in international, European, and domestic settings; the nature of law, and broad legal principles behind the law's contribution to public health; the way that different types of procedures are used to regulate the public health (e.g. medical committees and officials, criminal law, privacy, public interest arguments, etc.); other normative considerations relating to framing public health responses; how public health responses operate. The course also trains students to: read and understand legal documents (particularly treaties and European legislation, and guidance documents and codes of practice); understand how legal and ethical arguments are constructed at different points in relation to public health, particularly how human rights decisions are made at the European Court of Human Rights; apply these insights to “live” public health issues. Students are also trained to: consider the difference between life science, medical, political, legal and ethical judgments; consider how each type of judgment is constructed; consider how different judgments are given authority and enforced in society. Finally, through this course students are able to: construct effective, logical, and evidenced arguments to influence political decision-makers; consider how far discussion can be useful in the creation of normative arguments and responses; develop effective skills in presenting arguments.

This course introduces the international regime of refugee protection and acquaints students with its origins and historical development. It provides an in-depth understanding and knowledge of the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. The course highlights limitations of international refugee law, drawing on international human rights law and international humanitarian law as complementary bodies of law. It explores the role of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and sheds light on contemporary challenges to refugee protection.

This course covers the concept of law and its sources, purpose, modes of approach, and methods of interpreting legal texts. It also discusses the theories of legal argumentation, the role of logic in law, and the major theories of legal positivism and American realism.

This course discusses state terrorism during the military dictatorship and issues in the quest for truth and justice. It explores the concept of human rights as encompassing issues related not only to political repression but also ethnicity, nationality, socio-economic inequality, and gender. This course studies different cultural products that represent aspects of human rights including: literature; photography; painting; theater; film.