LLM (R) in History and Philosophy of Law

 Programme Director: Dr Claudio Michelon

The LLM (R) in History and Philosophy of Law is a Masters degree that builds on Edinburgh Law School’s national and international reputation in the fields of Philosophy of Law and Legal History. Edinburgh’s current expertise in those fields is grounded in a long tradition of historical and philosophical research that can be traced back to the Scottish Enlightenment.

Edinburgh hosts one of the most important centres of Legal History in Scotland, the UK, and indeed in the world. The Centre for Legal History has an established international reputation and is staffed by renowned experts in the field of legal historical enquiry. The Director of the Centre for Legal History is Professor John Cairns, and the team includes Professor Hector MacQueen, Mr David Sellar and Dr Paul du Plessis. The members of the Centre also act as office bearers for some of the most important legal history bodies in Scotland and elsewhere (e.g. the Stair Society and the Scottish Eighteenth-Century Society).

In the fields of Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory, Edinburgh is one of the leading institutions in the world. That recognition is both given to the individual staff members and to the institution itself. The legal theory team which will be involved in the teaching and/or supervision includes Professor Zenon Bankowski, Professor Neil Walker, Professor Sir Neil MacCormick and Dr Claudio Michelon. Institutionally, legal theorists in Edinburgh are part of the Centre for Law and Society, which enjoys international institutional prestige as one of the most important research centres in the field worldwide.

Edinburgh is committed to providing a unique research student community in both legal history and legal theory. Our research students in legal theory, for instance, run their own Legal Theory seminar series and reading group.

Edinburgh offers the student a strong and active research community which fosters and encourages the development of researchers in legal history and legal theory at all stages of their careers.

The LLM (R) in History and Philosophy of Law was designed in such a way as to promote cross-fertilization between the fields of Legal History and Legal Theory, while allowing students to focus on the areas that interest them the most. There are courses (such as Traditions of Legal Enquiry) that expressly explore the relations between research in Legal History and research in Legal Philosophy. On the other hand, the students would be able to choose (under the guidance of the programme director) the optional courses and the dissertation topic that better reflect their interests (see below).

• History of Private Law
• Issues in Contemporary Constitutional Law
• Law and the Enlightenment
• Law, Culture and Rights in a Transnational World
• Law, Democracy and the Market (note: this course will not run in 2008-2009)
• Philosophy of Private law
• Legal Research Methods
• Key Issues in Law and Society (SPS)

Students might be allowed to take some or all of the 40 credits described in letter (d) from other courses offered by the School of Law or by other Schools within the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, at the discretion of the programme director.

These courses are designed in such a way that students might combine them to match their specific interests. A student with mainly theoretical interests might choose a combination of courses with a Philosophical focus (e.g. Law, Democracy and the Market and Philosophy of Private Law); a student with mainly historical interests might choose courses with a historical focus (e.g. History of Private Law and Law and the Enlightenment), a student with interests on the foundations of private law might choose courses with a focus on private law (e.g. Philosophy of Private Law and History of Private Law), and so on.

The LLM (R) in History and Philosophy of Law may be taken over one year (full-time) or two years (part-time; substantive course in Year 1, research courses plus dissertation in Year 2).

Applications for admission to the 2008-9 degree are now being received.

To apply, please go to the online prospectus page at:

http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate/finder/details.php?id=168

Should you wish to discuss any aspect of the LLM(R) in History and Philosophy of Law or your application, please do not hesitate to email Dr. Claudio Michelon (programme director) at c.michelon@ed.ac.uk or the Law School's Postgraduate Office at pg.law@ed.ac.uk

Traditions of Legal Inquiry
Legal concepts change through time as a result of reflection on the appropriateness of conceptual structures to help regulate and shape the social world. That reflection is carried out in different forms and at a different pace by courts, legal doctrine and legal theorists. Theoretical reflection and historical research are, therefore, intertwined as complementary aspects of any investigation on the foundations of any given legal concept, including the concept of law. The idea of legal traditions of rational inquiry brings that connection between legal theory and legal history home. The course aims at investigating precisely what a tradition of rational inquiry is and also at identifying paradigmatic examples of rational traditions of legal inquiry.

Theories and Philosophies of Legal Research
The course is designed to give students an overview of the full range of types of and approaches to legal research, and to introduce them to thinking about the nature of legal research as intellectual endeavour. The material covered by the course ranges from traditional doctrinal research, through law in context work, to socio-legal and empirical legal studies, and theoretical and philosophical research on legal phenomena.

History of Private Law
This course examines the history of key institutions of private law in Western Europe. These may include concepts such as property, contract, delict, restitution, family law, unjustified enrichment, succession. Differing legal traditions will be examined and the impact of various intellectual movements assessed.

Issues in Contemporary Constitutional Law
[Further information will be available shortly]

Law and the Enlightenment
This course examines legal theorising in the Scottish Enlightenment. In particular, through a reading of source material students will consider debates over Natural Law (reason, will or moral sense), over justice and utility, and over government, society and history. Eighteenth-century debates over liberty, property, wealth and virtue will be assessed.

Law, Culture and Rights in a Transnational World
This course explores socio-legal and anthropological approaches to the study of law in a transnational world. It covers key theoretical, empirical and methodological issues involving the nature of law and legal process, the relationship between legal and social science approaches to legal phenomena and the interpretation of law in a social context. It examines the impact of transnational relations and globalisation on law, culture and rights both within nation-states and beyond their boundaries and at a number of levels, incorporating local, national and international domains. Topics to be covered include legal pluralism and human rights, property relations and indigenous people, democracy and governance, citizenship, and gendered perspectives on law.

Law, Democracy and the Market
This course asks how individuals and societies, more specifically our liberal societies, live the life of law. What sort of ethical life do such people and institutions have? This raises questions of the rule of law, constitutionalism and democracy, justice and the market. These broad questions of social and political theory get broken down into moral and ethical questions. What does it mean to say that a society should be governed by rules? And what does that mean for our ethical lives and the institutions we live in?

Philosophy of Private Law
The course is structured as a discussion of the underlying justifications both of private law as a whole and of its most important institutions (specially contract, property, non-contractual liability and unjustified enrichment). In particular the course shall deal with the relation between, on the one hand, private law and its main institutions and, on the other hand, corrective justice, distributive justice, functionalist theory, and theories of private law centred in the human will.

Legal Research Methods
This course is intended to support the development of students' skills in legal research by introducing students to the methodologies and methods which can be used to conduct research in international, European and domestic legal studies, using a variety of different intellectual approaches. It will provide students with a thorough grounding in the nature and practicalities of legal research and writing, including the construction of research proposals, questions and strategies, and will to equip students with the necessary capabilities to conduct independent legal research.

 Please note that due to recent changes in legislation by the UK Border Agency, overseas students are only eligible to apply for full-time study.