Course Description

The Jurisprudence-II course builds on earlier courses in the B.A.LL.B. (Hons.) programme, namely Legal Methods and Jurisprudence-I. The 2025 Curriculum Review of the B.A.LL.B. (Hons.) programme recommended that the Jurisprudence-II course should be redesigned to equip students to think theoretically across the various fields of law such as criminal law, contract law and family law. This course responds to these recommendations by moving away from an exclusive focus on interpretation, to restructure the Jurisprudence-II course into two parts – the first part focusing on interpretation, and the second focusing on the conceptual foundations of law – as set out below:

I.          Interpretation [Weeks 1 to 5]

II.       Conceptual foundations of law [Weeks 6 to 10]

1.         Responsibility [Week 6]

2.         Causation [Week 7]

3.         Intention [Week 8]

4.         Rights [Week 9]

5.         Ownership and Possession [Week 10]

While the first half of the course will examine various approaches to legal interpretation, the second half will investigate whether and how interpretive choices determine the concrete meanings given to foundational legal concepts across various domains of law.