Introduction to Contemporary Legal Thought

Recommended Prerequisites

NA

Teaching Methods

NA

Learning Outcomes

The goal is one of challenging incoming Law graduate students with the current plurality of concepts of Law. The course will consider mainly our present circumstancesin which legal thinking (as discourse and practice) seems to have lost (or at list overcome) its paradigm without replacing it by another.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

Introduction : the different maps possible and the option in favor of a main grid

Chapter I – The various paths of normativism and its understanding of the autonomy of Law and legal thinking: in the name of a cognitivist “isolation” of normativity (of a certain normativity-ratio), such understanding is causing the hypertrophy of an unconditionally formal representation of autonomy. A thoroughgoing exploration of the categories of intelligibility and the methodic model. The example of the counterpoint between 19th century dogmatic normativism and Kelsen’s normativism.

Chapter II – The exploration of the different material functionalisms and systemic functionalism in their categories of intelligibility and methodic models. A special development on the proposals by Critical Legal Studies and by Law and Economics as a counterpoint to the different proposals by autopoietic functionalism.

Chapter III – Jurisprudentialism and similar proposals.

Head Lecturer(s)

Ana Margarida Simões Gaudêncio

Assessment Methods

Assessment
final exam or two midterm tests: 100.0%

Bibliography

Linhares, J. M. A. Sumários de Introdução ao pensamento jurídico contemporâneo,disponível no Material de Apoio.
Neves,A. Castanheira.Teoria do Direito.Lições proferidas no ano lectivo de 1998/1999, policopiado, Coimbra 1998.
Id.,«Apontamentos complementares de Teoria do Direito(Sumários e Textos)»,Coimbra 1999, disponível no Material de Apoio
Id.,«Entre o legislador,a sociedade e o juiz ou entre sistema,função e problema—os modelos actualmente alternativos da realização jurisdicional do direito»,Boletim da Faculdade de Direito LXXIV,1998