Learning outcomes

A good knowledge of French is necessary to understand the course and pass the exam.

Goals

This course aims to develop a critical perspective on legal reasoning and to grasp its distinctive features and internal logic. It teaches students to qualify legal rules in their diversity, to understand the sources and institutions that produce them, and to critically examine the relationship between law, on the one hand, and time and space, on the other.

Students will become familiar with fundamental legal concepts.

Particular attention will also be given to the concrete implementation of rights – including the main jurisdictions and the essential principles of civil and criminal proceedings – as well as to acquiring the tools that allow, as a historian or philosopher, to read, use, and study legal norms within their context.

Content

The course begins with an introduction outlining the different meanings of law and its objectives, before addressing law considered objectively: its relationship to human societies, its distinctive features compared to other modes of social regulation, its main categorizations (legal systems, private law/public law), as well as its sources and normative production. This first part concludes with a reflection on the relationship between law, time, and space, and on its purpose.

The course then turns to subjective rights: their definition, their sources, their holders (natural and legal persons), and their classification.

Finally, it addresses the implementation of law and rights, through judicial review, syllogistic reasoning, evidence, and interpretation, before concluding with a methodological section devoted to reading and studying legal norms.

Teaching methods


The course is delivered in a lecture-based format. It is primarily structured around the study of Belgian law, which will also provide the source for the many concrete illustrations given, but will incorporate, as far as possible, comparisons with other legal systems. The instructor will strive to foster, as much as possible, interaction between teacher and students.

Assessment method

Written examination with a maximum duration of two hours. The evaluation criteria are as follows: • precision of definitions, • logical structure of answers (reasoning, justifications and internal consistency), • quality of presentation (vocabulary, spelling and syntax).

Language of instruction

French
Training Block Credits Mandatory
Bachelor in Philosophy 2 3 No
Bachelor in History 2 3 Yes
Bachelor in Philosophy 3 3 No