Categories: International and Comparative Law

Instructor(s)

Hendley, Kathryn

Course Data

Room 2211
TR 8:00am-9:20am

Pass/Fail: No

Course Description

Meets Legal Process graduation requirement.   As we look around the world, law exists in every country.  But law does not work in the same way in every country.  In this course, we will be exploring how law differs as we move across geographic boundaries.  Our exploration will include a number of different legal traditions.  Not just our own common law system, but also civil law, Islamic law, Hindu law, and Far Eastern law.  We will ask how the basic understandings of what can be expected from law varies depending on its historical legal tradition and whether globalization is having the effect of blurring these distinctions.  We will investigate how courts are organized in a variety of countries, how constitutions work, and will look into how the role of lawyers differ as a result.  We will consider the influence of globalization and ask whether countries are increasingly being pressured to change their laws and legal institutions in order to gain admittance to trade alliances and to attract investment.


The course materials will include court decisions, statutes, constitutions, and regulations from a wide variety of countries, as well as excerpts from articles published in law reviews and social science journals.  All course materials will be in English.  No prior background in comparative law or comparative politics is expected or necessary.

 

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