The aim of the unit of study is to provide an understanding of the economic analysis of law and to clarify fundamental differences between legal argument and the analysis of public policy. The unit defines the role of government within the framework of welfare economics and examines the social and economic effects of legal regimes within that framework. Particular attention is given to the concept of a competitive market, to the available empirical evidence on market failure, and to the need for government intervention in response to market failure and its negative consequences for social justice. Topics covered include: theoretical concepts of social justice; social insurance; externalities and the environment; monopoly regulation, tort rights and remedies; asymmetric information, adverse selection and moral hazard with applications to medical malpractice; agency, corporate governance and managerial incentives; family law; taxation; and the measurement of inequality.

This unit of study will introduce the fundamental notions of jurisprudence understood as a theory about the aims, functions and values of law and legal system. It will aim to provide students with the critical understanding of the central issues in philosophy of law understood as a general, abstract, normative reflection on law as such rather than an examination of a concrete legal system. Nevertheless, the purpose will be to provide students with the conceptual means allowing them to conduct a critical scrutiny of particular legal systems and legal rules with which they are familiar. The course will consider, in particular (1) the notions of legitimacy, validity and authority of law; (2) the idea of rights and the nature of the rights discourse; (3) the justifications and limits of liberty rights; (4) the concept of justice, as applied to law, (5) the sources and limits of our obligation to obey the law, etc.

This unit of study aims to provide students with a critical understanding of contemporary philosophical debates about justice. The unit focuses on liberal conceptions of justice and critiques thereof. It examines various moral values in terms of which the law might be assessed. The moral values that it considers include liberty, community, utility, fairness, and equality. Among the themes that it explores are the limits of and connections between these ideals, the prospects for their realisation in contemporary societies as well as the politics with which each is associated.

This unit asks whether obedience to legal norms is required by morality. It examines various arguments for a moral obligation to obey the law.

This course will explore the nature and value of the rule of law through a critical examination of classical and contemporary writings in jurisprudence. Among the problems we will consider are: What features of a legal system contribute to bringing about the rule of law? What is 'legality'? What is the relationship between the rule of law and the rule of good law? Is it always a virtue, other things being equal, to apply valid legal rules? How far is the rule of law consistent with the indeterminacy of law or with discretionary decision-making? Is the rule of law an 'unqualified human good'? Why is it good? Should the rule of law ever be sacrificed for the sake of other goods? What does the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index measure? Is it defensible from a jurisprudential point of view, and useful in determining the nature and value of the rule of law? Readings will include historical sources from the ancient Greek and early modern periods, contemporary essays in legal, moral, and political theory, and other primary legal sources.

This unit reflects on the ways in which law, morals and politics are thought of within our tradition and in particular the connections and the tensions between legal positivism, Kantianism and liberalism.

What are states? Should we have them? This unit of study seeks to enable critical reflection on (i) various conceptions of the state and (ii) various arguments for and against it.

This course examines and evaluates theories of law through the perspective of the criminal law. It has been said that criminal law may be understood as an application of certain tenets of liberal moral and political philosophy. But the politicisation of crime, penal populism and the rise of the administrative state and the co-evolution and fragmentation of notions of personhood, citizenship, and society challenges this assumption. The course surveys leading theories of criminal law and attempts to use them to critically assess the evolving mix of criminal law doctrines, practices and procedures in place in legal systems such as those of Australia. Topics include the nature of criminal responsibility, the moral limits of the criminal law, objects of criminalisation and legal subjectivity. This unit satisfies the Part 2 (Jurisprudence) requirement of the LLB.

This unit of study introduces the history of legal theory through a critical analysis of the central debates in jurisprudence over the last two centuries. Students will read canonical Anglo-American legal thinkers (like Jeremy Bentham, H. L. A. Hart and John Finnis) and their contemporary interlocutors (like Ram Mohan Roy, Karl Marx and Marcia Langton). The unit situates each debate in its historical context exploring themes ranging from socialism versus capitalism, revolution versus reaction, and 'race' and 'sex'. For example, students will study how the Hart-Devlin debate (1957-65) connected the policing of homosexuality in 'Swinging London' to the policing of black bodies in colonial Africa. Students will develop skills as critical legal thinkers and intellectual historians that will assist them as lawyers engaged in contemporary Australian and international debates on the nature and future of law. This unit satisfies the Part 2 (Jurisprudence) requirement of the LLB.

This unit of study seeks to enable critical reflection on rights, including legal, moral, and human rights. It considers philosophical work on their nature, their holders, and their justification. It examines what they are, who can have them, and what grounds them.

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 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.