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LW313 AUT/SPR: A Critical Introduction to Law (2018/2019) (Lectures (Week…
LW313 AUT/SPR: A Critical Introduction to Law (2018/2019)
Lectures
Week 3
Nuremberg
War Crimes Trials 1945-9
The Trial & its Aftermath
Week 4
Nuremberg
The Aftermath: Legal Theory & International Law
ICTY
The Tribunal
Nuremberg is used as a template for ICTY
ICC investigations
Investigations are under scrutiny
1 more item...
Week 2
Habits of Critical Legal Thought File
Week 1
Week 6
The Einsatzgruppen Trial & the IG Farben Trial
Week 7
Learning Law: Harvard File
Week 8
Learning Law: Oxford File
Week 5
Medical Ethics & the Doctors Trial
Seminars
Week 4
Nuremberg.
Questions:
In not more than 200 words, write the response to the Defendants’ Motion that you would have given had you been the presiding judge.
To what extent do you believe Robert Jackson’s assertion that the prosecuting powers had stayed the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submitted their captive enemies to the judgment of the law?
Giving reasons for your view, consider whether the 1945 Charter established a legal framework for the prosecution.
What reasons did the Nazis imagine there were for the passage of the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases?
Do you think a prosecution in law could have been brought against those who pursued the policy of enforced sterilization enacted under the 1933 Nazi statute?
Following the German Federal Court’s decision in Groening (see BBC news item at 6, above), how many individuals are currently being prosecuted for the commission of Nazi war crimes or murders, and how many are being investigated?
Do you think the German Federal Court was right to overturn the 1969 ruling that just being a staff member at Auschwitz was not enough to secure a conviction?
Week 5
Reading week
Week 3
R v Jogee [2016] UKSC 8.
Questions:
What is ‘parasitic accessory liability’?
Why is R v Jogee UKSC 8 important?
Consider the extent to which the law on accessory liability is an extension of a wider political and social context.
Was the earlier decision in Chan Wing-Siu v The Queen [1985] 1 AC 168 racist?
Why is the South China Morning Post interested in the judgment in Jogee?
Week 6
Nuremberg: The Trial and its Legacy in International Law.
Questions:
In your view, did the Trial of the Major Nazi War Criminals (the Trial) take place under the rule of law? In your view, did the Trial take place under law?
What does the post-Trial history of the ICTY, ICTR and ICC suggest about the separation of law and politics? What, if anything, does it suggest about the relationship between the rule of law and power?
Giving reasons, consider in turn whether ICTY, ICTR and ICC are courts of law.
Giving reasons, consider whether you would like to work for the ICC.
Find one example of conduct reported in the news in the last week which, in your view, might lead to a charge for either a) war crime(s); or b) crime(s) of aggression.
Week 2
Introductory Session.
Week 7
Nuremberg, Medicine & IG Farben.
Questions:
Who was Karl Brandt and what was the Nazi T-4 Euthanasia programme?
Critically assess Brandt’s comment that: “we German physicians look upon the state as an individual to whom we owe prime allegiance, and we therefore do not hesitate to destroy an aggregate of, for instance, a trillion cells in the form of a number of individual human beings if we believe they are harmful to the total organism – the state – or if we feel that the state will thrive without them”.
Does the ‘Nuremberg Code’ of medical ethics set out in the Doctors’ Trial constitute ex post facto law?
Why does Lee Heib worry that physicians and surgeons in the US are increasingly becoming ‘government doctors’? Critically assess Heib’s view that “Karl Brandt was not a monster’.
Michael Grodin observes that “I think that physicians have some characteristics that lend themselves to perhaps getting involved in atrocities”. Might the same be said of lawyers?
Critically assess the present international criminal framework for corporate responsibility. What lessons have been learned since the IG Farben trial?
Week 8
Harvard & Oxford.
Questions:
Should US Supreme Court Justice nominees discuss their ‘legal philosophies’ with the Senate Judiciary Committee? Should English judges do more to declare their legal philosophies?
How helpful was Wacks’ chapter 3 to your understanding of Ronald Dworkin’s legal philosophy? How might the chapter have been improved?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of Oxford’s tutorial system of teaching? Would you like to be taught in this way?
How close is York’s LLB programme to the ‘case method’ approach?
What is the Harvard ‘case method’ approach to teaching law? Would you like to be taught through this method? Should we abandon textbooks at Kent Law School?
Week 9
Legal Education: A Critical Approach.
Questions:
What is ‘critical legal theory’? What is ‘critical legal education’?
How helpful was Wacks’ chapter 6 to your understanding of critical legal theory? How might the chapter have been improved?
To what extent does (your) legal education seem to be ‘training for hierarchy’?
In what ways does the law programme at Kent differ from that on offer elsewhere?
Looking back at lectures and seminars in LW313 so far, to what extent has the module promoted a critical approach to law? How successful has it been in its attempt to do this?
Right now, which of the following law programmes seems most attractive to you: Harvard, Oxford, York or Kent? Why?