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2022/2023

Theory of Law

Code: 102267 ECTS Credits: 6
Degree Type Year Semester
2500786 Law FB 1 1

Contact

Name:
Noelia Igareda Gonzalez
Email:
noelia.igareda@uab.cat

Use of Languages

Principal working language:
catalan (cat)
Some groups entirely in English:
No
Some groups entirely in Catalan:
Yes
Some groups entirely in Spanish:
Yes

Teachers

Pompeu Casanovas Romeu
Lucia Ortiz Amaro
Noelia Igareda Gonzalez
Adrian Pascale
Marc Abraham Puig Hernandez
Lorena Garrido Jimenez

Prerequisites

The basic knowledge of philosophy and sociology will help in the follow-up of the subject.

 

Group 1. Theory: Adrian Pascale (Spanish)

Seminar 11: Lucía Ortiz (Catalan)

Seminar 12: Lorena Garrido (Spanish)

Seminar 13: Adrian Pascale (Spanish)

 

Group 2. Theory: Pompeu Casanovas (Catalan)

Seminar 21: Noelia Igareda (Spanish)

Seminar 22: Marc Puig (Catalan)

Seminar 23: Pompeu Casanovas (Catalan)

 

Group 51. Theory: Pompeu Casanovas (Catalan)

Seminar 511: Lucía Ortiz (Catalan)

Seminar 512: Lorena Garrido (Spanish)

Seminar 513: Pompeu Casanovas (Catalan)

 

Group 70. Theory: Pompeu Casanovas (Catalan)

Seminar 70: Marc Puig (Catalan)

Seminar 71:  (Catalan)

Seminar 72: Pompeu Casanovas (Catalan)

Objectives and Contextualisation

Theory of Law is a subject that is taught in the first four months of the first year of the degree of Law. It is an introductory course to basic legal concepts for the development of all subjects. The subject develops the great areas of contemporary law theory, starting from the plurality of schools and visions that form the theory and philosophy of modern law.

The major areas that arise in the program are:

The forms of approach to law: law science, sociology and philosophy of law.

Theory of the norm and the legal order.

Application and interpretation of the law.

Values of rights and theories of justice

Fundamentals of the sociology of law.

The main training objectives of the subject are:

Know the main forms of approach to law from the science of law, sociology of law and philosophy of law

Identify, know and apply the basic concepts of the theory of law.

Understand the fundamentals of legal argumentation.

Reflect on the values and functions of law

Understand the formation of contemporary legal concepts in their historical and social context.

 

 

Competences

  • Applying ethical values and principles associated with the professional practice of law.
  • Arguing and laying the foundation for the implementation of legal standards.
  • Defend and promote the basic values of coexistence in democracy.
  • Defending and promoting the essential values of the social and democratic State of Law.
  • Demonstrating a sensible and critical reasoning: analysis, synthesis, conclusions.
  • Identifying, knowing and applying the basic and general principles of the legal system.
  • Integrating the importance of Law as a regulatory system of social relations.
  • Present information in a way that is appropriate to the type of audience.
  • Properly analysing the issues related to equality between men and women.
  • Students must be capable of communicating their points of view in a compelling way.
  • Students must be capable of demonstrating a critical awareness of the analysis of the legal system and development of legal dialectics.
  • Students must be capable of demonstrating the unitary nature of the legal system and of the necessary interdisciplinary view of legal problems.
  • Students must be capable of perceiving the impact and implications of the decisions taken.
  • Students must be capable of producing initiative, creative and innovative knowledge, as well as new ideas.
  • Students must be effective in a changing environment and when facing new tasks, responsibilities or people.
  • Working in multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary fields.
  • Working in teams, being either a member or a coordinator of working groups, as well as making decisions affecting the whole group.

Learning Outcomes

  1. Defend and promote the basic values of coexistence in democracy.
  2. Defining the importance of the legal deontology.
  3. Defining the jusnaturalist (natural law), positivist, and realist legal theories and its view on the unitary nature of the legal system.
  4. Defining the legal instruments oriented to eradicate social inequality between men and women.
  5. Defining the main basic principles of the legal system.
  6. Defining the relationships between law and morals in the social and democratic state of law.
  7. Demonstrating a sensible and critical reasoning: analysis, synthesis, conclusions.
  8. Describing the different critical contributions to the theory of Law.
  9. Describing the law-society relationships.
  10. Distinguishing the theories and necessary concepts for the analysis of the inequality between men and women.
  11. Enumerating the different contemporary theories of the legal reasoning.
  12. Identifying the contemporary deontological problems.
  13. Identifying the problems of law implementation.
  14. Identifying the sexual discrimination factors in law.
  15. Identifying the socio-legal problems in the current socio-legal theories.
  16. Identifying the values of the social and democratic state of law.
  17. Interpreting the contributions of the sociology of law.
  18. Interpreting the evolution of the social and democratic state of law.
  19. Present information in a way that is appropriate to the type of audience.
  20. Producing theoretical discussions about the role of the principles in the legal system.
  21. Students must be capable of communicating their points of view in a compelling way.
  22. Students must be capable of perceiving the impact and implications of the decisions taken.
  23. Students must be capable of producing initiative, creative and innovative knowledge, as well as new ideas.
  24. Students must be effective in a changing environment and when facing new tasks, responsibilities or people.
  25. Working in multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary fields.
  26. Working in teams, being either a member or a coordinator of working groups, as well as making decisions affecting the whole group.

Content

1. Ways to approach the Law: Science of Law, sociology of Law and Philosophy of Law.

2. Law and Society

3. Law, power and moral.

4. Law and State

5. Concepts of the Law: del Dret: Iusnaturalism, Iuspositivism, Legal realism.

6. Theory of the norm

7. Legal system

8. Interpretation of the Law.

9. Application of the Law and theories of argumentation. 

10. Fonamental legal concepts.

 

Methodology

Attendance at seminars, except in some case of justified reason, will be compulsory for students

The teaching of the subject and the training of students is based on the following activities:
 
1. Directed activities:
 
1.1 Lectures: where the students reach the conceptual bases of the subject and its normative and jurisprudential legal framework. The master classes are the activities in which less interactivity is required of the student and are conceived as an exhibition to establish the conceptual references in each subject.
 
1.2. Seminars: where the students, in small groups, analyze together with the teachers practical cases previously prepared. In specific cases, cases will be developed in class. The basis of practical work is the understanding and application of the concepts explained in the theoretical classes.
 
2. Supervised activities:
 
These are activities that the students develop in the classroom, with the supervision and help of the teaching staff. It is about the elaboration of some practical assumption in the classroom.
 
3. Autonomous activities:
 
Preparation of documents of practical activities: that will be delivered and analyzed in the classroom.
 
Search of bibliography and instrumental materials for the resolution of practical cases. In some or some cases students must perform the autonomous search of the documentation

Annotation: Within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.

Activities

Title Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Type: Directed      
Seminars 19.5 0.78 10, 14, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17
Theoretical classes 19.5 0.78 4, 5, 2, 6, 3, 8, 9, 20, 11, 16, 18, 17
Type: Autonomous      
Assessment 5 0.2 6, 7, 13, 18
Individual works 36 1.44 21, 24, 7, 23, 22
Reading and study of materials 45 1.8 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 17
Teamwork 20 0.8 21, 24, 23, 22, 26, 25

Assessment

The final grade will be obtained from the following elements:

 
1. Continuous evaluation of the classes. (50% of the grade)
 
 
In each teaching group will be published on the Virtual campus, before the start of teaching, the specific date or the week of realization of evaluable activities, without prejudice that, exceptionally and due to force majeure, these may, with notice and sufficient time, be modified.

Attendance at seminars, except in some case of justified reason, will be compulsory for students

2. Final exam (50% of the grade)
 
The final exam must be passed with a grade higher than 5 to make average with the rest of the grades of the continuous evaluation.
 
The maximum grade in the reevaluation exam will be 6.
 
A student who cheats or try to cheat an exam will have a 0 as a mark. A Student who submits a paper o practical in which there is evidence of plagiarism will have a 0 as a mark and will receive a warning. In case of repetition, the students will fail the subject.
 
Re-evaluation
 
The re-evaluation of the part relative to the final exam is possible.
 
In each teaching group, the calendar of activities will be published in the Virtual Campus before the start of teaching. The specific date or week of relation of the evaluation activities will be published, without prejudice to the fact that, exceptionally, and due to forcemajeure, they canbe modified with sufficient advance notice
 
 
 

 

 

Assessment Activities

Title Weighting Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Evaluation tests 50% 5 0.2 4, 5, 2, 6, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 20, 11, 16, 18
Individual and teamwork 50% 0 0 21, 1, 4, 24, 7, 10, 14, 12, 13, 15, 18, 17, 19, 23, 22, 26, 25

Bibliography

BASIC BIBLIOGRAPHY

AÑON, M.José; AYMERICH, Ignacio; DALLI, María A.; FALLADA, Juan Ramón; GALIANO, Angeles; GARCÍA CIVICO, Jesús; GARCÍA PASCUAL, Cristina; GARCÍA SAÉZ, Jose Antonio; GASCÓN, Andrés; MERINO, Víctor; SOLANES, Angeles, Teoría del Derecho, Valencia, Tirant lo Blanch, 2021.

 

COMPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

ATIENZA, Manuel., El sentido del derecho, Barcelona, Ariel, 2001.

ATIENZA, Manuel, Filosofía del Derecho y transformación social, Madrid, Trotta, 2017.

ATIENZA, Manuel, Una apología del Derecho y otros ensayo, Editorial Trotta, 2020

CALVO Garcia, Manuel, Teoría del Derecho, Madrid, Technos, 2000.

CALVO Garcia, Manuel; PICONTÓ, Teresa, Introducción y perspectivas actuales de la sociología jurídica, Barcelona, Editorial UOC, 2017.

DE LUCAS, Javier, (coord), Introducció a la teoria del dret, Editorial Tirant lo Blanc: València, 1997 3ª ed.

DE SOUSA SANTOS, Boaventura, Sociología jurídica crítica. Para un nuevo sentido común en el derecho, Madrid, Trotta, 2009.

DWORKING, Ronald, Los derechos en serio, Barcelona, Ariel, 1994.

LLOYD'S, Introduction to Jurisprudence, Sweet & Maxwell, New York, 2008. 

PUIGPELAT, Francesca, (Coord), Teoria del dret, Barcelona, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, 1996.

RODRIGUEZ, Palop, Maria Eugenia, La nueva generación de derechos Humanos, Madrid, Dykinson, 2010.

RUIZ RESA, Josefa, Teoría del derecho. Editorial Tirant lo Blanc: València. 2017 (electronic version available at the UAB Library)

 

Software

The subject does not requiere any specific software