Political Science

This course focuses on the study of justice systems from a comparative perspective. It introduces students to different justice systems, with a special focus on common law and civil law jurisdictions. The course explores concepts of substantive and procedural criminal law, from the elements of crime and forms of participation to different systems of trial. Globalization and its role and influence on justice systems around the world is explored. The role of supranational and international judicial institutions (European Court of Justice, International Criminal Court) in bringing different legal traditions together is also examined. The course discusses topics including sources of law in different legal systems, aspects of various criminal justice systems, concepts of substantive and procedural criminal law in a comparative perspective, and international criminal justice.

The course examines economical and social rights, the legal obligations that governments have to realize these rights, why governments vary in their efforts to realize these rights, and other international and domestic factors that affect the realization of these rights.

The Brexit referendum of 2016 was a clash between two types of political representation in Britain: the "people’s will" versus the sovereignty of parliamentary sovereignty. Is this such a new phenomenon? This course explores this tension between the popular control of Parliament and the doctrine of indirect representation by Members of Parliament over the last 200 years British history.

The course provides an overview of working in the United Kingdom and examines the changing organizational structures of work in Britain. It examines the social and economic changes that affect the workplace in the UK. Topics covered include the sociology of work; trade unions; oppression at work; generational changes at work. 

The course exposes students to the closely coupled worlds of decision making and technology in the modern world of public service and public policy. Students learn how to analyze decisions and consequences from different units of public policy analysis such as the individual, organization, and culture. The course covers the role technology and machines are playing in shaping this modern context. It course begins with rational human theory, builds toward administrative and organization behavior, and looks at what this means for the institutions that maintain society. The course then looks at how the tasks that decision-making focuses upon can be completed either by humans or by machines. The fields of public administration, law, and machine behavior are used to analyze these concepts. This approach will seek to establish a broad and interdisciplinary approach to human decision making within public service and the corresponding capacity to utilize machines to augment, automate, and generate new tasks to be completed through a decision-making process.