Syllabus

• Week 1

  An unjust law is no law at all?

  • Getting started

    In this activity you'll find out about the value of studying the philosophy of law and what to expect when studying the course.

  • Introduction to Week 1

    Here, we'll start by seeing what you think about the nature of law.

  • Introduction to strong and weak natural law

    In this activity you'll explore natural law – the theory that holds there must be a close connection between law and morality or reason. In its strong version, an unjust law can't be a law at all. But does this make sense?

  • Classic legal positivism

    Legal positivism is the view that what the law is and what the law ought to be are separable because the validity of a law doesn’t depend on it being moral. Classic legal positivism says that this is because law is like a command.

  • Modern legal positivism

    Modern legal positivism also seeks to reject natural law. It does this by explaining that law is a social fact, but without relying on the idea that law is a set of orders to be followed because of habits or predictions.

  • Reviewing the theories

    All these theories have competing ideas about the nature of law and the conditions it must meet to be counted as law. Which seems most correct to you? Is there a practical difference among them?

• Week 2

  Guilty mind: neuroscience and responsibility

  • Introduction to Week 2

    In this activity you'll find out about what to expect this week.

  • Neuroscientific evidence and philosophical issues of mind and brain

    In this activity you'll consider the use of neuroscientific evidence in courts - in this case from functional magnetic resonance imaging. You'll explore the reliability of this evidence and the philosophical issues it raises.

  • Law and insanity

    In this activity you'll explore criminal responsibility in cases where the accused may have a brain abnormality or a mental illness.

  • Murder and sleepwalking

    In this activity you'll explore criminal responsibility in cases where the accused may have been sleepwalking at the time of the crime. How credible is this defence? And how similar is it to the insanity defence?

  • Addiction and responsibility

    In this activity you'll explore criminal responsibility in cases where the accused has an addiction to drugs. You'll consider how neuroscience helps us understand addiction and whether brain scans are useful evidence in court.

  • Child killers

    In this activity you'll explore how the law functions in relation to the age of criminal responsibility. You'll do this in by reading and reflecting on a famous case, Roper v Simmons [2005].

  • Review of Week 2

    In this activity you will review and reflect on the week.

• Week 3

  Why should I be responsible for my inadvertent actions?

  • Introduction to Week 3

    In this activity you will hear about this week's theme – how inadvertent actions can be considered in relation to responsibility from both a moral and a legal perspective.

  • The puzzle of inadvertent actions

    In this activity you will test your own intuitions about responsibility for inadvertent actions by engaging with two puzzling scenarios.

  • The moral and legal responses to responsibility for inadvertent actions

    In this activity you will explore the differing moral and legal responses to Scenarios 1 and 2. You will then bring the knowledge gained from this week's study to make a judgement on a fictional case of inadvertent actions.

  • Week 3 review

    In this activity you will review and reflect on this week.

• Week 4

  Law and economics

  • Introduction to Week 4

    In this activity you'll find out what to expect this week.

  • Exploring normative reasoning

    In this activity you'll be introduced to the idea of moral or 'normative' reasoning and begin to start using it.

  • Two types of normative reasoning

    In this activity you'll learn about two different types of normative reasoning – consequentialism and 'non-consequentialism'.

  • Consequentialist reasoning and the law

    In this activity you'll begin to see consequentialist reasoning at play in the context of a real legal case.

  • Contract law: which promises should be contracts?

    In this activity you will see how the economic analysis of law approach can be used to theorise about which promises should be contracts. You will compare this approach to the traditional rights-based approach to this question.

  • Week 4 review

    In this activity you will review and reflect on this week.

• Week 5

  Law and contemporary social issues

  • Introduction to Week 5

    In this activity you'll find out what to expect this week.

  • Consent and law and morality

    In this activity you will consider the case of Brendan McCarthy, R v BM, and what this tells us about consent, autonomy and the limits of the law.

  • The problem(s) of sexual harassment

    In this activity you will look at the theory behind the law on sexual harassment and see how the law works in the real world. This will reveal the relevance of theory to practical issues such as law enforcement.

  • Course review

    In this final activity we review the course, consider the skills you've gained, and reflect on the course's big question – the relevance of theory to practising law.

Who will you learn with?