International Law and Ethics (LAWS70369)

This subject addresses how international actors understand and take responsibility for their activities and roles within international institutions. The aim of this subject is to deepen accounts of the ethical, moral and legal understanding of holding office. Based around a series of case studies, this subject will analyse forms of ethical and legal engagement used to addressed current global problems. In particular it will consider the role and professional ethics of lawyers in UN institutions, the role of the jurist in conceptualising and creating international norms, and the configuration of ethical, moral and legal relations by international institutions, including NGOs, in new forms of regulation.

Principal topics will be drawn from the following:

• Global legal problems addressed:
  • Public trials (War Crimes) and international values
  • Public administration and international government
  • Health, poverty and international action
  • Transnational trade, negotiations and international exchanges
• Obligations of role and office in the international domain
  • Sites of ethical reflection and discourse: courts, administrative bodies, assemblies, universities, public domain, NGOs
  • Roles of the international domain the ethics of international actors
  • The importance of the cosmopolitan and global citizen
  • The roles of legal norms in generating form of international morality
• Practical reasoning in international domain
  • Practical reasoning and ethical judgement
  • Limits, distortions, criticisms of ethics and ethical discourses
  • Research and writing about the obligations of office
  • Research and writing about ethics, morality and law.