Area of Concentration: Law

Learning Objectives

Students approach and reflect on the law in social, cultural and political contexts, and analyse legal arguments and procedures from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Students apply knowledge and skills acquired from other disciplines in different contexts of law and legal practice.

Law is as much an expression of as it is the condition for the civilisation process. As an instrument of control, organisation and planning, as well as a means of dispute resolution, it is characterised by cultural conditions and in turn has cultural consequences itself. The law, in its manifold forms of appearance, can only be understood in a transdisciplinary way; it is a product equally of historical evolution, of social practice and of political negotiation. As a normative system, law can be learned, but it cannot be understood and explained on its own terms.

Modern law in its conceptual, dogmatic and systematic positivity is a temporally contingent phenomenon that does not exhaust itself in mere regulatory functions. It reflects both empirical facticity and, even more so, normative objectives. It regulates the relationship between the individual, society, the market and the state. In this area of concentration, Law will
be explained in its historical, philosophical and sociological dimensions. The area of concentration approaches the law in a transdisciplinary manner in its relationship and intersection with other sciences, in particular economics, psychology and medicine.

The Bachelor programme focuses mainly on general European legal history, selected areas of private law as they pertain to legal, social and economic history, legal philosophy, the sociology of law, legal psychology, law in economic contexts including both business administration and economics, and constitutional history.

The following topics are envisioned at the Master level: forensic psychiatry, legal medicine, criminology, business criminalistics, legal psychology, the penitentiary system, and contemporary legal history. The curriculum can be supplemented further by lectures on:

• Roman legal culture
• legal sociology
• law and ethics
• law, international politics and governance law, environment and climate