Overview: Continues Jurisprudence by deepening key legal concepts introduced earlier. Learn more about Jurisprudence – II (Legal Concepts) (K-2001)
Objectives: To analyze foundational legal notions: legal personality, rights & duties, possession, ownership, liability, and the relationship between law and morality.
Outcomes: Students will be able to differentiate ‘legal rights’ (e.g. claim, liberty, power) and duties; explain possession and ownership; and discuss how law enforces morality. For example, they might explain that “legal persons” include corporations and states, not just humans, or compare “natural persons” vs “juristic persons”. They will understand “mens rea” vs “tortious liability” as aspects of liability.
Syllabus (Topics): Per CCSU:
- Legal Personality: Nature (subject, object of rights), theories (fiction/realist). Distinguish natural vs. juristic persons (corporations, animals).
- Legal Rights & Duties: Kinds of rights (privilege, claim, power, immunity in Hohfeld’s scheme); their basis (moral, conventional, legal). Relationship between rights and duties (if A has a right, B owes a duty).
- Possession: Theories (control vs intention to possess); possession in fact vs. in law; continuing trespass vs. recovered trespass.
- Ownership: Definition, incidents (usus, fructus, abusus); how ownership conveys powers (sell, gift, will). Distinguish ownership vs. possession.
- Liability: Types (Remedial vs. Penal liability, strict, vicarious). Mens rea in civil vs. penal law (overlap with tort vs. crime).
- Law and Justice: Judicial administration (courts, fairness in procedure); Theories of Punishment (retributive, deterrence, reformative).
- Concept of State & Sovereignty: Origin of state, characteristics of sovereignty (internal vs. external), Hans Kelsen’s “order of norms”.
- Law and Morality: How law enforces morality (legal moralism vs. liberal views); examples (e.g. prohibition laws, or absence of laws on personal morality).
- Sources of Law: Custom (U.C. Saxena, influence of consuetudinary law), Precedent (binding vs persuasive), Legislation (judicial interpretation).
Recommended Texts:
- Bodenheimer, Dias, Friedman, Lloyd, Paton, Salmond (same as Juris I).
- Mahajan, Tripathi (Jurisprudence texts, listed in semester I reading).
- Case readers on jurisprudence.