Requirements for passing a course

Objective: The course is propaedeutic in nature, providing student with basic knowledge, skills, and competences in the field of law, state and government.

The aim:

1. Providing student with basic knowledge regarding: various systems of government, types of legal order, and political doctrines of contemporary world, as well as their role in the modern society.
2. Acquiring skills in: using terminology of law, government and politics; recognizing and applying basic methods of legal reasoning; recognizing and comparing different systems of government, legal orders and political doctrines.
3. Gaining cultural and communicational competences making student able to participate in a public discourse concerning legal and political issues.

Acquired knowledge:

• Student understands the essence of government and its functions.
• Student understands the essence of law and its functions.
• Students knows basic concepts of political and legal science.

Acquired skills:

• Student properly uses legal language and language of political science
• Student recognizes various types of legal system, systems of government and political ideologies
• Student is able to compare and assess independently the practice of functioning of central authorities in various forms and systems of governments

Developed reflection:

• Student is able to communicate legal and political problems using professional terminology, as well as to explain these problems to laymen.
• Student realizes complex social, economic, and moral consequences of legal and political decisions.
• Student thinks and acts in a self-reliant and critical manner.

Assessment: The final grade consists of: exam ( 50% ), term papers ( 35% ), class activity ( 15% ).

Contents: 

• Introduction to the course. Objectives and content of the course. Law and government in contemporary societies.
• Basic concepts of political science

Government and its ideology:

• Ideology, political doctrine, politics, political culture and socialization Various doctrines of government

The political process: 

• political parties, interest groups and social movements. The organization of interests, communications media, elections and electoral system

Structure and forms of government: 

• Liberal democracy and welfare state, autocratic systems, totalitarianism
• Law as a complex concept. Functions of law. Notions of legal order, legal culture, and legal practice.
• Legal system. Various types of legal systems (municipal law, local law, international law, transnational law). Public and private law.
• Basic families of legal order
• Sources of law and law creating in various legal systems.
• Legal rules and principles

Interpreting statutes:

• the notion and methods of statutory interpretation.

Interpreting precedents:

• the doctrine of precedent, ratio finding, distinguishing, and overruling.
• Separation of powers – legislature, executive, judiciary. Checks and balances.
• Forms of governments: monarchy, oligarchy, theocracy, anarchy, dictatorship, democracy. Rule of law and Democratic state ruled by law. Representative democracy vs. direct democracy
• Systems of government
• Human Rights

Sources
Recommended reading: 

• The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law, Rosenfeld M., Sajo A. (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2012Introduction to Law and Legal Language, Pichlak M. (ed.), working material