Contemporary History of Law FS 2023 Special Focus Peace as a Global Legal Project

Please note that the lecture from Wednesday, 15. March 2023 is rescheduled on Monday, 13. March 2023 from 14.00 to 15.45 and will take place in room HAH-E-03.

Lecture in the Master of Law programs: Course Catalogue

Please note: the lecture on Wednesday, 01. March 2023 is cancelled

Please note: the lecture on Wednesday, 17. May 2023 will take place:

- on Monday, 15.05.2023
- from 10.15 - 12.00
- in room: RAI-H-041

Monday 13.03 from 14.00 to 15.45:

-Frontiers of the Enlightenment- (PDF, 245 KB)

Prof. Dr. Francesco Di Chiara (University of Palermo)
A Historiographical Category and its Frontiers: The Legal Enlightenment

Prof. Dr. Thomas Duve (Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, Frankfurt am Main)
Enlightenment and Global Legal History

Prof. Dr. Antonio Trampus (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
The Legacy of Enlightenment: Constitutionalism and Rights of Men

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Wednesday 19.04., from 12.15 to 13.45 in RAI-H-041:
Dr. Walter Rech
Vattel’s View of International Order

On site lecture + streaming (zoom): all lectures will be recorded and available as podcasts in Olat.
 

The special focus of this semester’s course will be on the analysis of the creation of the modern idea of peace and the universal implication for the construction of a peaceful world society in a legal historical perspective. The course particularly draws attention towards the time from the 18th to the 20th century, scrutinizing the general theories of the modern state and the creation of the international law system. The complex and contradictory relations between violence and law, war and law, race and law, and finally the (in)equality of men under the law will be also addressed. The course will outline the legal consequences of these aforementioned entanglements, interactions and collisions. It will analyse how these consequences relate to the nature and construction of the social order from a legal historical perspective.

Reading of primary sources combined with a critical reconstruction of law and examining the works of jurists in their historical context will form part of the course.

After the successful completion of this course students can understand the social and cultural mechanisms of law in their historical contexts; to comprehend and critically explain the ways how law structures state systems and operates within international systems and therefore; to understand, discuss and explain how some concepts become «legal», and to analyse their fundamental influence on the social order from a historical perspective.

Sources and reading materials will be uploaded together with the slides. Please find slides, Sources, reading materials and Podcast on:

Olat