Module POL2098 for 2021/2
- Overview
- Aims and Learning Outcomes
- Module Content
- Indicative Reading List
- Assessment
Undergraduate Module Descriptor
POL2098: What is Law? Jurisprudence from Stone Tablet to Brain Imaging
This module descriptor refers to the 2021/2 academic year.
Module Aims
Despite tremendous changes in technology and culture, modern polities face many of the same challenges with law and legal institutions that were faced by early civilizations. All political systems need to have mechanisms for solving questions about what the law is, about how it can adapt to new problems, and how to adjudicate complicated ambiguities. However, law is typically heavily contested, from its foundations in morality, theology, custom, politics, etc. to the pragmatic details of how it is implemented and its varying effects on individuals and groups involved.
In thoroughly exploring the foundations of legal theory, you will examine arguments about the nature and sources of law from a very broad range of sources. You will delve into the debates about the moral standing of the law, its political efficacy, its ontological, epistemological, and theological sources. You will explore these debates from a variety of perspectives: Eastern and Western, Ancient and Modern, Philosophical and Pragmatic.
With an understanding of these foundations in place, the course examines the degree to which these ancient questions and assumptions are altered by new work in biology and neuroscience. Do we change our views about culpability when we know that a pattern of criminal behaviours arose only after a brain tumour? How should treat work predicting criminal recidivism with brain imaging? Does it matter that political and legal views change based on biological factors like genetics or even diet? Is there something about law that is not merely contingent on what the judge had for breakfast or a citizen’s emotional state in the voting booth?
By the end of the course, you will be able to engage in complicated debates about human nature and translate them into practical consequences. You will see connections between cutting age scientific research and old political, moral, and theological controversies. You will understand the complications of law in diverse political bodies with ranges of competing beliefs, perspectives, and interests. And, you will be able to engage with important political issues at the heart of some of the most complex controversies of the day.
| On successfully completing the programme you will be able to: | |
|---|---|
| Module-Specific Skills | 1. Integrate and analyse competing theories with diverse philosophical and methodological foundations 2. Understand the connection between metaphysical and epistemological assumptions and pragmatic implications in the context of law and policy. |
| Discipline-Specific Skills | 3. Develop rigorously supported arguments that are tightly connected to supporting evidence 4. Comprehend complex philosophical and scientific texts |
| Personal and Key Skills | 5. Write and communicate effectively while bringing together complex empirical and normative claims 6. Use appropriate strategies for anxiety management when faced with intellectual challenges at the edge of your competence 7. Learn how to achieve the psychological state of flow by increasing skills along with the complexity of the cognitive task |
Indicative Reading List
This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.
Basic reading:
Lon Fuller's “The Case of the Speluncean Explorers”
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
Moses, Exodus 19-24
L.W. King “Code of Hammurabi”
Wing-Tsit Chan “The Natural Way of Lao Tzu”
Benjamin Hoff “The Tao of Pooh”
Ernest Weinrib (1988) “Legal Formalism: On the Immanent Rationality of Law”
Karl Llewellyn “A Realistic Jurisprudence – The Next Step”
H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law
Ronald Dworkin, Law’s Empire
Daniel Dennett Freedom Evolves, Chapters 1 & 2
Jeffery Rosen, “The Brain on the Stand” NY Times
Micheal Gazzaniga and Megan Steven, “Free Will in the 21st Century”
Jonathan Fugelsang and Keven Dunbar “A cognitive neuroscience framework for the understanding of causal reasoning and the law”
Eyal Aharoni et al. (2013) “Neuroprediction of future rearrest”
Iris Vilaresa et al. (2017) Predicting the knowledge–recklessness distinction in the human brain
Morris Hoffman “The neuroeconomic path of the law”
Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen “For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything”
Stephen Morse, “New Neuroscience, Old Problems”
Patricia Smith Churchland “A review of The Ethical Brain by Michael Gazzaniga”
Patricia Smith Churchland “Moral Decision-Making and the Brain”
Oliver Goodenough and Kristin Prehn “A neuroscientific approach to normative judgment in law and justice”
Oliver Goodenough “Responsibility and punishment: whose mind? A response”
