Law and Ethics

Why study Law and Ethics?

The Law and Ethics program is designed to expand students’ understanding of both law and ethics. Ethics, the study of the nature of morality and how we ought to live, includes moral and political questions about structuring interpersonal, institutional, and governmental relationships.  Furthermore, students will also be encouraged to explore overlaps between moral and political theorizing and other areas of philosophy–raising issues of human nature, knowledge of ourselves and others, testimony, evidence, and expertise–as well as being informed by empirical data from other disciplines.

Ethics, understood in this broad sense, is an important starting point for developing a critical understanding of the law and legal institutions. It informs our assessment of the values expressed in different areas of law, such as criminal law, constitutional law, common law, and international justice. Students in this program will learn to evaluate the ethical and philosophical foundations of law in these different areas, to recognize and evaluate the values expressed in legal institutions, and to assess the function of law in creating (or undermining) a just society.

Hands-on learning

Students in this program will gain a firm grounding in the philosophical skills of writing, critical thinking, argumentation, and proficiency working with historical and contemporary texts–expertise that will serve them well, whether they choose to pursue a career in law or other professions in government, the nonprofit sector, health care, technology, or business.

Sample courses offered

• Law and Politics: An examination of the practical and theoretical connections between law and politics. The course will concentrate on contemporary public law issues and constitutional reform in liberal democracies.
• Right & Wrong: Examine theories of right and wrong. Some of the questions students will discuss include: do the ends justify the means? Is right and wrong relative to a culture? Can we justify a particular set of moral rules? Is deception always morally wrong? When, if ever, is killing morally permissible?
• Ethics and Criminal Law: Study topics related to the criminal justice system, including settler and Indigenous definitions of crime, police, courts, and prisons. Ethical questions about these legal topics, considering both defences and critiques of the Canadian system, exploring alternative systems, and attempting to discover what true justice looks like are raised.
• Philosophy of Law: Topics covered often include natural law theory, legal positivism, the separability thesis, relations between law and morality, legal interpretation, the economic analysis of the law, and legal skepticism.