Essential Law for the Living Environment

This course provides students without legal background with the essential legal concepts that allow them to understand the role of law in our living environment. The course lays the foundation for students to follow more advanced law courses.

Students will be provided with a basic understanding of the constitutive elements of the legal system and the law itself, enabling them to distinguish social practices from legal rules and principles. It will also introduce key institutions, such as legislative bodies, regulatory agencies, and courts. The course will approach these topics from a multi-level governance perspective, focussing on the national, European Union, and international level. Finally, students will be taught legal theories and how to apply law in order to resolve legal disputes.

After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:

• Identify the constitutive elements of a law: sources of law, types of law, and areas of law
• Recognize the difference between social practices, legal rules, and principles
• Identify key institutions involved in legislation, implementation and law enforcement
• Compare how national, European, and international laws are used as instruments of societal changes
• Apply legal theories
• Apply relevant sources of law to solve legal disputes