| Introduction to Law and Politics

This course seeks to introduce students to different normative and institutional dimensions of the problems of modern politics through engagements with scholarship predominantly from the field of political theory. The first part of the course will include scrutiny of some core themes in the study of politics, such as modernity, coloniality, liberalism, secularism and popular democracy.  The readings for these themes are grounded in different methodological orientations for the study of politics. The second part of the course will focus on a close and critical reading of the conservative German political theorist and jurist Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political. This will enable engagement with a core text that has been influential in debates on liberal and radical politics and legality, and help them evaluate its valence in different political contexts. The overall aim of the course is to sharpen the facility with which students can read and respond independently to ideas contained in different kinds of texts about politics.