Content: The first part of the course gives the student an overview of the Western legal tradition. The focus is on the differences between common law and civil law families. Sources of law, judicial organisation and legal actors in each legal system will be taken into account. The perspective thus enabled will also be addressed from the Scandinavian legal tradition's viewpoint. A discussion will also be on the Scandinavian legal systems which should be considered as a separate legal family. However, the French, German and English legal systems will be in the focus of sub-course 1.
Sub-course 2 of the course examines some particularly interesting overseas legal traditions. The focus will be on religiously-based legal traditions, such as Islamic, Hindu and Hebrew law and legal developments in Africa, and in some Asian countries such as Japan and China. The course will also provide students with some basic knowledge of legal anthropology. In particular, the relationship between Western (colonial) law, which applies in the cities, and local customary law, which applies in the villages, will be analysed. The course will conclude with an open discussion on the distinguishing features of the Western legal tradition.
During the last sub-course (sub-course 3) will the students compose a final paper in the field of comparative law. |
