The goal of this compulsory (capstone) unit of study is to provide Master of Jurisprudence students with an opportunity to pursue advanced research in an area of their choosing, under the limited supervision of a School member, with approval from the Program Director.

Please refer to JURS6034 Jurisprudence Research Project A.

This unit will address the role that constitutionalism is expected to play in a democratic state, and will explore various constitutional theories. The main focus will be on theoretical attempts at reconciling commitments to constitutionalism with emphasis on democratic participation: Is it paradoxical that a state governed by majority rules withdraws certain areas from collective decision-making? Various theories of constitutionalism, of constitutional interpretation, and of constitutional judicial review will be explored. The unit will also discuss the question of constitutional charters of rights, different models of judicial review, separation of powers, direct democracy and the functions of constitutions in transitions to democratic systems. The unit will follow a seminar format with the emphasis on class discussion of unit materials. First two days will be focused on the instructor's lectures while two remaining days on students' presentations.

Freedom of speech is among the most hotly discussed constitutional rights in a liberal democratic state. This unit of study will aimed at clarifying some of the fundamental conceptual and normative foundations of that freedoms, always against the background of specific legal rules, cases and controversies in Australia and around the world. It will consider such issues as the fundamental justifications (rationales) for freedom of speech, the idea of content neutrality and viewpoint neutrality of speech restrictions, the distinction between speech and conduct, etc. It will also look, more specifically, at such controversial issues as restrictions on racial vilification, obscenity, political communication, freedom of speech in cyberspace, and defaming speech. The last part of the unit of study will focus on relationship between freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

The judge has long been an important legal actor in common law countries, but over the past several decades, there has been a rise in judicial power globally, with the proliferation of constitutional courts and the strengthening of judiciaries in countries around the world. This seminar will consider views in jurisprudence which examines the judge, the activity of judging, and the proper role of the judiciary within a legal system and a just society more generally. Among the goals of the seminar are to determine the nature of judicial obligation, how judges ought to decide cases, the arguments for and against judicial review, the role of the judiciary in establishing and maintaining the rule of law, and the relation between the business of courts, politics, and morality.

The common law is an essential part of the Australian legal system, as well as many others around the world. This unit of study examines the nature of the common law from the point of view of jurisprudence. We will begin with a survey of the classic Common Law Theories developed in England during the seventeenth century; from there, a variety of problems surrounding the common law which these theories made salient, and which still puzzle us today, will be examined. Topics include: the nature and authority of precedent, the distinctiveness of legal reasoning, the nature and questions surrounding the validity of customary law, the relation between the common law and the ideal of the rule of law, among others.

Many legal doctrines in both criminal and civil law depend upon being able to characterise conduct as intentional leading to ascriptions of fault blame or responsibility. Most serious criminal offences depend upon establishing mens rea as a relevant mental element. Civil liability is often dependent upon whether conduct was intended or whether the cause of loss was brought about by either intentional conduct or conduct involving some lesser notion of fault. All of these doctrines make important assumptions about the nature of our mental states and the operation of mind. Many of these assumptions are philosophically controversial and current developments in the philosophy of mind may lead us to reconsider or radically revise our attitudes to the law. The unit will look at contemporary philosophical work on free will consciousness mind and causation and apply this work to present problems in regard to concepts of legal responsibility.

The unit will examine a number of contemporary debates regarding the nature of legal reasoning. The unit will examine the status of the modern doctrine of precedent and the current state of the Hart/Dworkin/Fish debate in regard to the nature of precedential reasoning. The unit will examine contemporary semantic theory and philosophy of language, and the contribution those fields can make to a proper understanding of the interpretation of legal texts. The unit will also examine the relationship between legal reasoning and moral reasoning and the new legal positivism of writers such as Goldsworthy and Shapiro. In a final segment, the unit will examine legal reasoning in regard to matters of fact, and the current debate as to whether legal fact finding can be modelled using Bayes' theorem and probability theory.

The unit will seek to analyse the central concepts of some of the main areas of civil law, including tort, contract and property from the perspective of a number of contemporary moral theories. The unit will examine the work of moral philosophers in the fields of distributive and corrective justice such as John Rawls, Jules Coleman and Ernest Weinrib. The unit will also consider theories associated with the economic analysis movement in legal philosophy, especially the theories of Richard Posner. The unit will apply moral theories on the one hand, and rational action theories such as the economic analysis view of law on the other, to better understand legal doctrine. In addition to property, contract and civil wrongs, the unit will look at constitutional structures and international law. While considering a wide variety of legal doctrines, the focus of the unit will always be on the way these doctrines are better understood from the perspective of theories of justice or versions of rational action theory.

Law cannot exist without language. We look at the central role of language in the law and in legal professions. Language is the medium through which norms and laws are established, from informal agreements to ironclad contracts. Human interaction in legal processes is conducted through language, from arrests to interrogations to courtroom cross-examination and sentencing. And language is a focus of forensic work, from verifying the identity of recorded voices to determining whether an apparent suicide note was in fact written by the deceased.