Course Description
An exploration of the elaboration and implementation of laws concerning basic rights in regions of the world where French, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish are spoken. Taught in English.
Athena Title
Global Rights and Punishments
Semester Course Offered
Not offered on a regular basis.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
- By the end of this course, students will understand the elaboration and implementation of varied laws affecting human rights.
- By the end of this course, students will be asked to distinguish between questions of convenience and expediency, and questions of justice.
Topical Outline
- Course will consider foundational texts used to describe prohibitions imposed on the members of society, and the rights accorded to them.
- Course examine the circumstances under which violations of prohibitions are punished, and others under which rights are forfeited, who enjoys those rights, and whether those rights are inalienable.
- The role of fictions (e.g., the state of nature, the painlessness of death, the possibility of life after death) in the elaboration of laws will be studied, as well as the justice of individual laws and the fairness of their implementation.
- Contemporary accounts of the loss of rights and the implementation of punishment—real and fictitious—will be studied.
