MSc in Legal and Political Thought
The MSc in Legal and Political Thought is a new degree programme jointly taught by the School of Law and the Department of Politics at the University of Glasgow, with additional support from the Department of Philosophy. Subject to approval, the degree will be available from the beginning of the 2009-2010 academic session (commencing in September 2009).
The MSc in Legal and Political Thought is a Masters programme taking one year (full-time) or two years (part-time). Students study three required courses, three further courses from a list of options (electives), and write a dissertation under close academic supervision.
The University of Glasgow has a long history as a centre of international excellence in legal and political thought, dating back at least to the time of the Scottish Enlightenment. The University is fortunate to have among its current academic staff an outstanding group of internationally significant researchers in this area, working in the School of Law and the Department of Politics, as well as in the Department of Philosophy. Additionally, the Adam Smith Research Foundation, established in 2005 as a centre of research excellence in the Faculty of Law, Business and Social Science, has as one of its core research themes ‘legal and political thought’. The new MSc will be explicitly linked to ongoing research activities undertaken at the Adam Smith Research Foundation.
Students may come to the programme with an undergraduate background in either law, politics, or philosophy. In this sense, and also in the sense that the programme will be taught by colleagues in the Law, Politics and Philosophy, the programme will be interdisciplinary in character. A second strong feature of the programme is that it will combine advanced study of aspects of contemporary legal and political thought with study of the history of legal and political thought. These twin features will make our programme unique in the United Kingdom.
While the MSc in Legal and Political Thought is a self-contained and free-standing degree, one of the aims of the programme is to provide ideal training for those students contemplating doctoral work in any area of legal or political thought. To this end we have ensured that students are able to take as electives on this MSc advanced courses in legal and/or philosophical research methods.
The required courses are as follows: British Constitutionalism, c. 1600-1800; Law and Democracy; and Political Legitimacy: Contemporary Perspectives. The first is taught by Professor Adam Tomkins (John Millar Professor of Public Law), who has a long-standing research interest in the history of constitutional law and politics in the UK. The second is taught by Professor Emilios Christodoulidis (Professor of Legal Theory), who has published extensively on matters of legal and political thought. The third is taught by Professor Chris Thornhill (Professor of European Political Thought), author of several books on German and European political theory, and currently engaged on a long-term research project examining constitutions and their legitimacy. The optional courses (electives) are chosen from a long list of Masters courses offered in the School of Law, Department of Politics and Department of Philosophy. Further details on these courses and on the members of our academic staff who are responsible for them are set out below.
All of these courses are taught as seminars for small groups. Classes will be capped at 20, although we anticipate that there will be in the region of 12-15 students in most year groups. Such seminars will allow for detailed and reflective examination and exploration of set readings. Some seminars may be student-led.
All of the courses in the programme are examined by assessed essay: students write an essay of 4000-5000 words for each course at the end of the semester in which the course is taken. In each course, students have the opportunity of submitting written work during the semester in order to obtain feedback and advice. In addition to the various courses, all students write, under close supervision, a dissertation of 12,000-15,000 words. This will be written over the summer vacation following the year(s) of study. This model of assessment allows for systematic training in advanced research and writing skills – ideal, among other things, for potential PhD students, but also enhancing skills that are transferable to a variety of workplaces.
The Director of Studies for the MSc in Legal and Political Thought is Professor Adam Tomkins, John Millar Professor of Public Law, School of Law, to whom any inquiries should be made: a.tomkins@law.gla.ac.uk
CORE COURSES
British Constitutionalism, c. 1600-1800
Convenor: Professor Adam Tomkins, John Millar Professor of Public Law, School of Law
The course examines a number of the main trends and threads in the development of British constitutionalism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While the bulk of the course focuses on British (i.e., English and Scottish) thinkers, events and developments, some Continental readings are also examined, where they throw particular light on (or were especially influential on) British constitutionalism. An example is Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws (1748). The course focuses in particular on the (two-way) relationship between constitutional theory and practice – both legal and political [e.g., tracts on the theory of divine right being read alongside case law decided by royalist judges from the early seventeenth century]. A second theme highlighted in the course is the persistence of a striking republicanism in British constitutionalism, albeit a republicanism (or, perhaps, a series of republicanisms) which ultimately appears to fail, both theoretically and in constitutional practice. Topics considered include the following: the divine right of kings, the emergence of parliamentarism and the first separation of powers, the Levellers, republicanism and Milton, Hobbes, Locke and resistance, the revival of parliamentarism in Bolingbroke and Burke, the constitutionalism of the Scottish Enlightenment, and the legacy of Tom Paine.
Law and Democracy
Convenor: Professor Emilios Christodoulidis, Professor of Legal Theory, School of Law
This course provides a theoretical analysis of constitutionalism and, with it, the relation of law to democracy. At the intersection of law and politics, the ambiguities with which the concept of constitutionalism is fraught attest to the tensions it contains: of law’s imperative to order and to stabilise expectations in social life on the one hand, and the inherent dynamism and a certain ‘restlessness’ of the political on the other. We look at how the tension is expressed as a certain ‘paradox of constitutionalism’, what theorists describe as the clash between ‘self-rule’ and ‘law-rule’, and at what - in various formulations - boils down to roughly this: how can we justify our commitment to democracy and thus to the right of a sovereign citizenry to determine the terms of public life and at the same time curtail that right in the name of constitutional rights? We look at the attempts to define, differentiate and circumscribe public law as a distinct field. The course explores the ‘discursive turn’ in constitutional thinking by analysing Habermas’s consensus theories and his argument about the ‘co-originality’ of law and democracy. It will contrast this accommodation of constitutional thinking in practical discourse with Luhmann’s account. We look at how conceptions of citizenship map onto these distinctions, and how to understand the appeal of ‘community’ in this context. Finally we explore the nature of the challenge that radical theories of democracy present to constitutional thinking.
Political Legitimacy: Contemporary Perspectives
Convenor: Professor Chris Thornhill, Professor of European Political Thought, Department of Politics
The main purpose of this course is to examine the transformation of concepts of political legitimacy in recent political-theoretical debate, and to consider how dominant contemporary models of legitimacy refer to and modify more classical accounts of the sources of state power and of the conditions under which states explain this power and justify the procedures for its exercise. The course focuses on some of the most influential recent philosophical and socio-theoretical analyses of political legitimacy and it discusses the ways in which these analyses have responded to: a) the weakening of the relation between power and constitutional forms; b) the erosion of the powers of national states; c) the de-coupling of law and legislation from single national executives; d) the process of economic internationalization known as ‘globalization’. Throughout the course attention is paid to the question of whether, and under what conditions, the normative contents of traditional theories of legitimacy (i.e. basic rights, constitutional guarantees of legal freedom, and participation in the political process) can be re-articulated and secured in contemporary societies.
REPRESENTATIVE ELECTIVES
N.B. This is not an exhaustive list of the electives available to students on the MSc in Legal and Political Thought. For more complete information, please consult the departmental websites of the School of Law, the Department of Politics and the Department of Philosophy. Please bear in mind that, owing to arrangements for research leave and the like, it may be that not all electives are available in every year of study.
Globalisation, Constitutionalism and Human Rights
Convenors: Professor Scott Veitch and Dr Gavin Anderson
What is the role of law and legal institutions in processes of globalisation? Specifically, what part do approaches to constitutionalism and human rights play in the global setting? This course considers these and other questions through a set of critical engagements with the economic, political and legal aspects associated with the (contested) meanings of global governance and accountability, democracy and human rights. It uses a range of empirical and conceptual material in analysing the main thematic questions, and through a series of case studies tries to understand some of the most pressing issues facing contemporary societies.
Advanced Course in Legal Methods
Convenor: Professor Emilios Christodoulidis
The course introduces students to a wide array of methodological approaches and literatures, and aims at deepening their understanding of key concepts of legal thought. It also encourages students to relate their own work to the methodological debates and issues explored. It provides a critical introduction to questions of ethical aspects with respect to the substance and conduct of research in law. The course includes detailed study of the following: traditions of social and legal inquiry (Hermeneutics, Marxism, Critical theory, Structuralism and Post-structuralism); legal research methodologies (comparative legal methodology; historical analysis; doctrinal approaches); and basic concepts of legal thought such as jurisdiction and standing; legal personality; responsibility and liability; and basic institutions of private law.
Freedom of Expression
Convenor: Dr Paul Graham
The course explores freedom of expression (or ‘freedom of speech’) from political-philosophical and legal perspectives. Drawing on moral, legal and political philosophy we consider justifications for free expression and for limitations on expression. Defining and justifying free expression requires grasping the distinctions between different concepts: truth (and the alleged value of its transmission), harm, value-pluralism and value-neutrality, offence and offensiveness, obscenity, hatred (and its incitement), access to the means of expression. The first part of the course focuses on these concepts and justifications, whilst the second half considers in detail a number of case studies. The primary focus is on the relationship between the individual and the state, rather than the relationship between states. However: (a) the examples are drawn from different countries and comparison is an important tool; (b) with the increasing importance of the internet as a medium of expression cross-national issues are necessarily raised; (c) the use of ‘private (non-state) power’ to restrict free expression is not ignored.
International Theory
Convenor: Dr Cian O’Driscoll
This course examines the major theoretical traditions and the principal critiques of these traditions in the study of international politics. Particular attention is paid to key historical, methodological, and epistemological debates that have shaped the discipline. The course begins with an introduction to the classical tradition of grand theory and its emphasis on the problem of war and the conditions of peace, order, and security. It proceeds by examining attempts by theorists to construct a rigorous science of war and peace by employing the methods of positivist social science. Attention is then focused on a series of critiques that focus on the socially constructed aspects of international politics, the economic mode of analysis favoured by Marxists, and the inadequacy of statist theories in accounting for transnational and supranational society. The final part of the course considers critiques advanced by feminists, critical theorists, post-modernists, and post-structuralists who are engaged in a project that stresses the centrality of gender, self-reflexivity, and the emancipation of subjugated knowledge
Political Obligation
Convenor: Professor Dudley Knowles
This course, taken in the Department of Philosophy with one of the UK's leading political philosophers, investigates concepts of legitimacy and authority, and explores in detail arguments concerning the nature, origin and content of political obligations and the duties of the citizen. It discuss varieties of anarchism and scepticism, arguments from consent (actual and hypothetical), from the receipt of benefits (fair play and gratitude), from justice and samaritanism, as well as associational accounts of allegiance. Among the principal readings is Dudley Knowles's own book on the subject, to be published by Routledge in 2009.