Module description
Available to Law students and Non-Law Students
Below is the description for the full-year Law and Social Theory module (6FFLK025). The first term-only version of the module will vary; please contact the course convener Professor Christoph Kletzer if you have any questions.
The course seeks to examine law from the point of view of social theory. It aims at giving students the chance to reflect on and deepen their understanding of the contexts and paradoxes, presuppositions and ramifications of law in modernity. It enquires the role of modern law as a tool for both domination and liberation and the possibility of critique.
The early seminars look at general themes concerning the enlightenment and its dialectic, liberalism, capitalism and community. They consider the role of law in a liberal society when faced with questions of history, power, totalitarianism and crises of legitimation. The later seminars pursue case studies on the role of law: in post-national contexts, in relation to issues of gender, race, and the analysis of secularisation.
Indicative List of Topics (some subjects may vary):
Semester 1
Introduction & Kant’s what is Enlightenment?
A. Conflict and Rationality: Classical Theories of Law and Society
Marx: Law, Legal Form, Modes of Production
Durkheim: Law, Moral Solidarity and Individualism
Weber: Legal Rationality, Subjectivity and Capitalism
B. Law and History, Reason and Dialectics:
Hegel I: Law and History
Hegel II: Law and Dialectics
Kojève: the end of History
C. Law, Power, Identity
Foucault: Power and Identity
Radical Feminist Legal Theory
Postcolonialism
Revision
Semester 2
Nietzsche: Crisis of Liberal Consensus and Roots of the Postmodern
D. New Problems: Liberal Law, Ethics and Legitimacy
Schmitt: The Challenge to Liberal Law (SM)
Habermas: Law and Ethics, The Relation Affirmed
Derrida: Liberal Law and the Deferral of Ethics
E. Law, Ethics and Ideology
Arendt: Law and the Erosion of Modern Ethics
Gramsci: Politics, Social Movements & the Hegemonic Role of Law
Frankfurt School: Tolerance and the Changing Function of Law
F. Secularisation and the Death of God
Blumenberg: the Legitimacy of Modernity
Bourdieu: Habitus, Symbolic Power and Legal Culture
Revision
Assessment details
This is the assessment pattern for the full-year version of the module; this will potentially differ in the first term-only module.
3-hour closed book examination (60 %);1 summative essay – 3000 words (40%)
Teaching pattern
This is the teaching pattern for the full-year version of the module; this will potentially differ in the first term-only module.
Lecture (1 x 2 hours per week)
Tutorial (1 x 1 hour per week)