COURSE OBJECTIVES

At the end of the course students will be able to:

1.  Acquire an interdisciplinary vision in the conceptual approach to Law, with the pertaining detailed study of the different subjects and items involved.

2. Reflect upon the function that is discharged by the Legal System regarding the social organization in our complex and pluralist societies.

3. Understand and learn to correctly apply and value the interest of the different categories of basic legal concepts.

4. Develop a critical approach to the basic legal problems and issues, pertaining the role of law as the main mean to regulate the social relations, and considering its principal and crucial contribution to order the communities affected. Rationalize the different branches of Law, as singular and peculiar area of the scientific study, so that the student can learn not just to differentiate them, but to recognize its main characters pertaining all of them.

CONTENT

1. Theory of Law: preliminary considerations regarding the concept of Law, its definitions and functions.
2. Social determinants of Law: Law and morality; Law and religion; Law and politics; Law and economics.
3. Theory of the legal system: Law as a system, its essential elements and structure. Types and branches of Law.
4. Sources of Law: legal acts (statutes), customs, general principles of law, case law, legal doctrine.
5. Subjects of Law. Natural persons and legal entities. Legal personality.
6. Fundamental legal values: human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights.
7. Introduction to human rights law: human rights generations, absolute and non-absolute rights; legal protection of human rights.
8. Law and state. The state as a legal organization of power. State sovereignty. Division of powers. Forms of government. Types of the political system.
9. Map of the major modern legal systems (civil law, common law, customary law, religious law). 
10. National, International and the EU Law