LS1538: READING LAW IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES (2025-2026)

Different legal systems and legal cultures produce legal norms in different ways. Some use statutes, codifying statutes or comprehensive codes. Some use judicial decisions as guides to the interpretation of codes. Others use judicial decisions as potentially binding precedents to develop the law itself. Some place heavy reliance on juristic writings, whilst others do not. At the international level too, there are different norms or sources of law.

The aim of this course is to introduce students to these different methods of producing legal norms and to what are often thought of as ‘sources’ of law in a range of jurisdictions, and indeed at the international level. The course does not only seek to outline those methods of producing norms. It also provides students will a basic introduction to the ways in which lawyers in select legal cultures read those legal norms and sources as a matter of legal method. The idea is to give students certain basic skills in reading law in comparative perspectives.

By the end of the course, students will have awareness of the basic challenges of reading codes, statutes, judicial decisions, precedents and juristic works from different jurisdictions. They will learn that reading the law is always complex, in part because it is necessary to understand the methodological assumptions of the legal communities from which the laws in question emerged (e.g. the assumptions of cultures indebted in some way to the English common law which reason with precedent).

The course will begin by introducing these points, before proceeding to consider a) different approaches to the use of legislation in a range of jurisdictions; b) different approaches to the use of judicial decisions; and c) different approaches to the use of juristic writings. Points a)-c) will allude to the traditional – and somewhat misleading – dichotomy between ‘civil law’ and ‘common law’ jurisdictions (consider, e.g., the problematic proposition that civil law jurisdictions use codes, whilst common law jurisdictions use precedent). At the same time, it will seek to challenge that dichotomy as being overly simplistic. The course will then turn to d) the use of the sources of Public International Law and Private International Law in practice. The first tutorial and workshop will focus on points a)-c), with a view to preparing students for the first essay. The second tutorial and workshop will focus on point d), with a view to preparing the students for the second essay.

At the beginning and the end of the course, students will also be given detailed advice regarding legal research – using our library resources fully – and legal writing. They will be given detailed guidance about e.g. the use of proper referencing, how to set out an essay, and how to structure and advance an argument in a coherent and persuasive manner. Some of this will be built into the first and the second workshops.

The assessments used in the course will reflect its basic aims. Students will be given essay topics in which they will be asked to choose from a range of legal ‘sources’ (e.g. statutory law, case-law). They will then be asked to answer a series of questions about those sources, with a view to interpreting them in a manner broadly sympathetic to the interpretative assumptions of the lawyers who use those sources. The second assessment will focus on the use of the sources of International Law.

Information on contact teaching time is available from the course guide.

More Information about Week Numbers

There are no assessments for this course.