In addition to four exams, please bring to class each day some question, problem, or objection from or to the readings and be prepared to offer this as a topic for discussion.

Attendance and active participation are not optional. Silence will adversely affect one's final grade.

Variable credit: you will need to arrange a research paper. 

Course Objective: To understand, not this or that legal system, but rather the fundamental problem of the law and, therewith, both the necessity and limits of the law. (1) The fundamental problem of the law is time. The temporality of human things means that circumstances change. At least one purpose of the law is to create stability and predictability. To this end, the law must be unchanging. An unchanging law must come into conflict with changing circumstances. Law without discretion becomes unjust, but law that is simply discretionary becomes the arbitrary rule of men. (2) Montesquieu tries to solve this problem by narrowing the scope of law, by creating a sphere the law does not touch. Montesquieu creates liberal politics. In so doing, he creates a kind of politics and law that claim to be universal. But universality raises, in a new way, all the problems that belong to unchanging law.