This is a course on the collapse of socialist law in Eastern Europe and on the progress and problems of law reform following in its wake. We will begin with a short survey of the state of socialist legality prior to 1989, trace the first stirrings of law reform in Eastern Europe in the 1980s, and then examine the uneven attempts to establish the rule of law in post-socialist countries currently in the midst of rapid economic, political and social change. The course covers a wide range of topics such as constitutional law, privatization, judicial organization, criminal law reform, corruption, and the use of law to come to terms with a totalitarian past. Instead of a final exam, students will present group reports on the state of law reform in specific East European countries. Xeroxed materials.
No final exam; students instead, in groups of 2-4 students, will write papers (on either on a particular country's progress towards the rule of law or on a cross-country comparison of a specific legal issue) and present them in class.
Markovits, Inga