030360 KU Private Law, Culture and Weltanschauung (2013W)

What is thinking ‘like a lawyer’? What is so complex with the Human condition and is Lady Iustitia actually blind? What is so important about the ‘cause’ versus ‘justification’ distinction? Who is the ‘lonely’ man residing contract law? What links ‘flower sending’ with contract law? Who sets the procedures governing transition from the ‘non-legal’ to the ‘legal’? Where does knowledge end and trust begin? What do lawyers translate? How does a ‘chicken’ contest the standard of objective reasonableness? How does tort law reflect human ambivalence? Who is the avatar of torts? What is the role of ‘naming, blaming and claiming’ in tortious liability? What is the role of values in defining ‘property’? How culture matters for intellectual property law? How does social ethos steer restitution law dynamics? How do we grasp wealth and why does this affect the legal terminology of restitution law? Does restitution law mutate our understanding of human slavery and other severe human rights abuses? This course attempts to engage with these and other questions, inviting students to think critically and culturally about law in general and private law in particular. The course targets the complex and often veiled correlations between private law, culture and worldview (Weltanschauung). The aim is to provide students with a practical appreciation of the critical interdependency between private law and culture. The course furnishes students with the theoretical background and methodological tools needed to conduct interdisciplinary legal cultural studies both on case and comparative levels. The course highlights the relevance of the cultural warehouse of meanings to a critical and ‘liberating’ study of law. The course instruction rests on Socratic discussions, engaging both in theory and examples. The language of instruction is English.