LA4005:03
Jurisprudence
Townsville, Cairns
HECS Band 3
26 lectures, 13 seminars. Semester 1.
Available to LLB students. It is essential for those who seek admission to practice at the Bar. It will be offered provided there are a suitable number of students.
The philosophy of law and legal theory. This subject is concerned with the structure and purpose of law, with legal concepts and the framework of ideas which supports and explains them. Some topics to be covered are historical background, including natural and positive law theories; historical and sociological descriptions of law and social change; theories of legal reasoning and common law adjudication; theories of valid law and legal systems; and the relationships between law and society and the realist movement in law.
Learning Objectives:
- to encourage a philosophical, enquiring and interdisciplinary approach to fundamental questions of legal theory;
- enlargement of the students’ perception of the patterns of thought and fact from which present legal structures have emerged;
- questioning legal principles and the discovery of processes of change.
Assessment by oral and written seminar presentation (30%); final examination (70%) (subject to variation).