POLS 353 - International Law

The major educational objective of this course is to provide the students a substantive knowledge on the foundations, nature and effects of public international law. The course aims to introduce students to the law making process, developments and significant cases in contemporary international law.

The course provides students with a solid introduction to International Law (IL) as a field of study. In lecture hours, the course will focus on historical development and sources of international law, subjects of international law, and relations between these subjects as well as different legal orders. The lecture sessions include specific topics such as sovereignty and statehood; state responsibility, jurisdiction, immunities; non-states and other international entities; law-making through treaties and other means; international adjudication; the use of force; the mechanisms for the protection of human rights. At the end of each week’s lecturing, there will be a discussion session to improve the students’ communication and analysis skills. Through expressing their understandings, thoughts and conclusions about IL both verbally in debates and in well-written scholarly essays in the exams, the students will become familiar with current debates in International Law, theoretical IL-perspectives, and their relevancy to real world matters.

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Shaw, Malcolm N. 2008. International Law. Cambridge University Press, New York

Violations of scholastic honesty include, but are not limited to cheating, plagiarizing, fabricating information or citations, facilitating acts of dishonesty by others, having unauthorized possession of examinations, submitting work of another person or work previously used without informing the instructor, or tampering with the academic work of other students. Any form of scholastic dishonesty is a serious academic violation and will result in a disciplinary action.