A Classical Approach to Law. This course consists of two main parts. The first part will be a standard course on Roman private law. Using Barry Nicholas’ Roman Law, students will study the essential features of classical Roman law: persons, property, successions, obligations, and actions. Students will also study basic legal problems through study of select cases, recorded in Justinian’s Digest. The second part of the course will then introduce students to major texts and debates in jurisprudence, such as legal positivism, modern natural law theory, and interpretivism. This is an upper-level undergraduate course. Latin is not required, but students will be expected to learn key legal vocabulary in Latin.

Subfields:  Political Theory and Public Law

PS117L "Jurisprudence" used to be numbered PS116L "Roman Law".  Students who have taken PS116L "Roman Law" in Spring 2023 cannot take PS117L "Jurisprudence" due to the substantial course overlap.  

In Political Science, sovereignty is often understood
to be a quality exclusive to states. Its origins,
however, can be traced to the political theology
concerning the sacrality of kings and priests as holy
and inviolable objects of veneration. What was the
theological function of ‘sacrality’? Does sacrality
confer immunity and absolute powers? How and when does
sacrality become a legal and political concept? Are we
witnessing a revival of sacrality and a politics of
veneration in the logic of constitutional and
international law?
Seminar readings will (likely) include works by Weber,
Durkheim, Figgis, Schmitt, Kantorowicz, Agamben,
Elshtain, Taylor, Koskenniemi as well as primary source
texts (in excerpts) by Bodin, Grotius, Montesquieu,
Rousseau, and Hegel. We will also study select
excerpts of Roman and Canon Law.