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Dec 03, 2024
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LAW 936 Jurisprudence (3 credits)
Jurisprudence is a legal philosophy seminar. It studies general questions such as the nature of law, the relation between law and morality, and how judges should go about deciding individual cases, as well as more specific and controversial topics in areas as diverse as constitutional law and torts. Instead of using a casebook, we will read several important original works of Anglo-American legal philosophy written since 1960. The book cost and total pages assigned will be comparable to a course with a casebook. Jurisprudence is a seminar, so there is a course paper (which can satisfy the AWR-Research component), but there is no final exam. Papers may be written on any topic or author we cover in class or any area reasonably related to course topics and authors. There are no prerequisites for this course and no background in philosophy is necessary. Since Jurisprudence is not a bar course, some students wonder what practical use this course can be to them as future lawyers. I answer that question in this way–it is the only course that you can take in law school that can help you acquire a very important legal skill, that of making legal arguments when all the usual grounds of argument (precedent, statute, tradition, etc.) are on the other side.
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