Undergraduate Course: Global Legal Histories (LAWS10243)
Course Outline
| School | School of Law |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course takes a 'global' approach to the concept of legal history. Rather than focusing on one legal family or one legal culture only, it examines - through comparison - different legal families and cultures across space and time. Issues such as legal history and legal culture across borders, constitutional experiences in global perspective, and the history of judicial experiences will form the substance of the course. Students will develop an understanding of the relationships between national legal-historical traditions and global legal history. |
| Course description |
The course will consist of 10 seminars.
Seminar 1 will be devoted to an introduction and contextualisation of the course. The remaining 9 seminars will be divided (3 apiece) among the following 3 broader topics:
Legal history and legal culture across borders,
- What is legal culture?
- Legal culture(s) and legal families
- Comparing legal cultures across time and space
Constitutional experiences in global perspective,
- The enactment of the Turkish civil code
- Civil law and the Meiji restoration in Japan
- The codification of Thai civil law
The history of judicial experiences.
- Law-finding in common-law legal cultures
- Law-finding in civil-law legal cultures
- Finding and applying the law in a 'wicked legal system'
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate knowledge that covers and integrates most of the principal areas, features, boundaries, terminology and conventions of global legal history.
- Demonstrate a critical understanding of the principal theories, concepts and principles in this nascent field.
- Demonstrate a detailed knowledge and understanding of the three broad themes discussed in this course (legal history and legal culture across borders, constitutional experiences in global perspective, and the history of judicial experiences) which are at the forefront of a subject/discipline.
- Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the ways in which the nascent subject/discipline is developing, including a range of established techniques of enquiry or research methodologies.
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Reading List
Mathias Reimann, 'Rechtsvergleichung Und Rechtsgeschichte Im Dialog', Zeitschrift Für Europäisches Privatrecht 7 (1999): 496 - 512
Thomas Duve, 'Legal Traditions: A Dialogue between Comparative Law and Comparative Legal History', Comparative Legal History 6 (2018): 15 - 33
David M. Rabban, 'Methodology in Legal History', in Making Legal History, ed. Anthony Musson and Chantal Stebbings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 88 - 107
Thorsten Keiser, 'Europeanization as a Challenge to Legal History', German Law Journal 6 (2005): 473 - 481
David Ibbetson, 'What is Legal History a History of?', in Law and History: Current Legal Issues 2003 Volume 6, ed. Michael Lobban and Andrew Lewis, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1- 3
Matthew J. Festa, 'Applying a Usable Past: The Use of History in Law', Seton Hall Law Review 38 (2008): 479 -554
Richard A. Posner, 'Past-Dependency, Pragmatism, and Critique of History in Adjudication and Legal Scholarship', The University of Chicago Law Review 67 (2000): 573 - 606
Kjell Å Modéer, 'Abandoning the Nationalist Framework: Comparative Legal History', The Oxford Handbook of European Legal History, ed. Heikki Pihlajamäki, Markus D. Dubber and Mark Godrey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 100-114
Heikki Pihlajamäki, 'Tracing Legal History In Continental Civil Law', The Oxford Handbook of Legal History, ed. Markus D. Dubber and Christopher Tomlins, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 718 - 737
Olivier Moréteau et al., Comparative Legal History, Research Handbooks in Comparative Law (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Pub, 2019)
Jaakko Husa, 'Seeking a Disciplinary Identity - the Case of Comparative Legal History', Comparative Legal History 8 (2020): 173 - 193
David Ibbetson, 'The Challenges of Comparative Legal History', Comparative Legal History 1 (2013): 1 - 11.
David Ibbetson, 'Comparative Legal History', in Making Legal History, ed. Anthony Musson and Chantal Stebbings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 131 - 145
Thomas Duve, 'What Is Global Legal History?', Comparative Legal History 8 (2 July 2020): 73 - 115
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Skills and abilities in Research and Enquiry:
- Experience of synthesising complex information and the ability to subject it to informed critique
- Offer critical insights, interpretations and solutions to problems arising from the nature and function of comparison in the context of the 'global'.
- Critically review and consolidate knowledge, skills, practices and thinking in a subject/discipline.
- Interdisciplinary understandings of complex problems
Skills and abilities in Personal and Intellectual Autonomy
- Demonstrate some originality and creativity in dealing with complex issues arising from comparing legal histories across space and time.
- Synthesis of complex information and ability to subject to informed critique.
- Make judgments where data/information is limited or comes from a range of sources.
Skills and abilities in Communication:
Knowledge and understanding as well as the practice of it, transferable cognitive skills (such as research methods and critical analysis of primary and secondary sources), communication and ICT skills, autonomy, accountability and the ability to work with others.
Skills and abilities in Personal Effectiveness:
- Appreciation of the value of history in recreating the past and influencing the present.
- Autonomy in critical analysis of primary and secondary sources.
- Critical self-reflection on the purposes of history for the development and future directions of global law. |
| Keywords | legal history,global histories,civil law,legal culture,constitution |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof P Du Plessis
Tel: (0131 6)50 9701
Email: P.Duplessis@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms Tracy Noden
Tel: (0131 6)50 2053
Email: Tracy.Noden@ed.ac.uk |
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