Undergraduate - UnitLAW4130 - Law and social theory

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 3, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Law
Offered	Clayton First semester 2015 (Day)

Synopsis

This unit examines law, particularly international law, as a social question. It considers relationships between global law and power, authority, community, spatiality, dispossession, exploitation, violence and resistance in a variety of contexts: totalitarianism; genocide; revolution; rightlessness and colonialism. Classes will focus on a series of individual theorists to elucidate different ways to think about the social dimensions of global governance: Hannah Arendt; Pierre Bourdieu; Michel Foucault; Zygmunt Bauman; Alain Badiou; Frantz Fanon; and Jacques Derrida.

Outcomes

At the successful completion of this Unit, students will:

Be aware of, and be able to demonstrate their grasp of, the significance of social theory to the understanding of law as a social phenomenon;
Be aware of the nature of social theoretic scholarship, and of the theoretical and methodological underpinnings that distinguish research and scholarship in the social sciences and humanities from research in law;
Be able to produce written work that is adequate relative to the theoretical and methodological underpinnings mentioned in (2);
Have closely read a number of primary texts in the social theoretic tradition having implications for the study of legal topics (both classical and contemporary texts, demonstrating a range of social theoretic approaches);
Be able to communicate, in written form, the outcomes of the reading described in (4), and thereby display familiarity with, articulate the content of and undertake sustained critical analysis of those texts, synthesise multiple texts, and integrate their own social theoretic insights;
Learn and work autonomously and use feedback to improve their own capabilities and performance.

Assessment

Research essay (3000 words): 60%
Examination (2 hours writing time plus 10 minutes reading/ settling time): 40%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. The unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Deborah Whitehall

Prerequisites

For students who commenced their LLB (Hons) course in 2015 or later:
LAW1111; LAW1114; LAW1112; LAW1113; LAW2101; LAW2102; LAW2112; LAW2111

For students who commenced their LLB course prior to 2015: LAW1100 OR LAW1101 and LAW1102 or LAW1104 or ATS2868/3868, ATS2869/3869 or ATS2905/3905