The HLS major is an innovative, cross-disciplinary program grounded in the conviction that law cannot be understood outside of history and society. Too often, law is taught in a conceptual vacuum. In response to this, the History, Law, and Society major provides multidimensional—historical, philosophical, political—perspectives on law, explains the intricate dynamics between social and legal institutions, and equips students with a holistic skill set essential to facing 21st-century challenges.
Graduates of the HLS program have continued their studies at prestigious institutions in France, the United Kingdom and the United States, including Sciences Po, Cambridge, LSE, Columbia U, and MIT.
The HLS program approaches law both as a profession and as a field of inquiry enmeshed with the humanities and social sciences. HLS students study law as a body of ideas and practices that are shaped by forces beyond the courtroom. In small seminars, students become lawyers, legal historians and legal philosophers, decoding and reconstructing the meaning of legal norms, their aims, their flaws, and their impact.
Whether you are considering law school or another professional path, the HLS major is the best gateway to understanding the relationship between law and morals, society, politics, and economics.
The program includes:
Skills and knowledge acquired in the program:
Our law classes encourage students to explore the most pressing issues in the arenas of social and economic justice. Enter any law class at AUP and you will engage with issues such as the evolution of abortion jurisprudence in the United States, Argentina or Germany; the role of British and French Empires in today’s violation of LGTBQ+ rights in the Global South; the racial bias in state regulations of AI and Big Data analysis; or the application of human rights frameworks to the protection of animals and the environment.
Furthermore, HLS courses are designed to nurture your understanding of how lawyers and judges think, why courts choose to protect or infringe upon the rights of women, children, and minority groups. You will tackle questions surrounding the moral foundations of law, the impact of legal doctrines on democratic resilience, and the ways in which legal institutions are designed to drive progressive or reactionary causes.
HLS graduates are eligible to apply for JD degrees in the United States as well as for legal graduate studies in France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and other countries in Europe and beyond. This means HLS students could obtain a master’s degree in law in one or two years (depending on the school) upon graduation from AUP.
The educational goals for this major are as follows:
In keeping with our University’s commitment to a liberal arts education, we support the ideal of law as a “liberal profession”, wherein free thinking, academic mastery, and intellectual rigor are encouraged through a multitude of disciplines. In small seminars you will be asked to contemplate historical and contemporary cases, engage in mock trials, and share what you learn and discover with students and professors who hail from around the world. You will also be exposed to readings that relate to the many relevant disciplines that make up the major, including History, Literature, and Sociology.
We are a club focused on helping pre-law students prepare for law school admission, connect with current lawyers or law students, discuss their legal interests, gain writing experience, and meet students with similar interests.
Our activities will include:
While we aim to support students curious about Law School, we welcome students from all departments, interested in any career field.
Contact Email: lawsocietyaup.edu
Are you interested in human rights and/or global news? Do you want to be a part of a community of individuals who are driven to bring awareness to global humanitarian issues? If so, this club is for you! The goal of GHAC is to educate and engage the university community on global humanitarian rights issues, fostering a deeper understanding of the philosophical and political contexts that shape these events. While this club is new (fall 2024), we already have fun events and weekly meeting ideas to educate students in an engaging way. Some of these events include Human Rights Awareness Week, fundraising events, Cultural Exchange nights, advocacy campaigns, collaborations with other clubs, volunteer opportunities, and more to come… The vision of this club is to create a well-informed and empathetic community that actively participates in global humanitarian efforts and advocates for human rights, promoting a world where every individual is treated with dignity and respect. We welcome anyone from any background, as every individual perspective will be treated with respect and understanding. If this sounds like something you would be interested in, please reach out to me or sign up through engage. Join us in making a difference!
Contact Email: ghacaup.edu
Hibou magazine is a student-run online magazine on politics and culture. It is designed to create vibrant, nuanced dialogue on far-ranging topics. We provide a platform and community for writers of all backgrounds to voice their experiences, investigate social issues, and pursue their artistic endeavours.
With every single one of our majors, you’ll find a carefully curated medley of core courses and electives, which will provide you with the tools you need to establish an unshakeable foundation in the principles and concepts fundamental to your growth within your disciplines of choice. Many majors also enable you to specialize further within the broader area of study.
We aim to help you develop a range of skills, capacities, and modes of inquiry that will be crucial for your future since employers and graduate schools are looking for the critical thinking and innovative problem-solving skills that are associated with a liberal arts education, including sophisticated writing abilities, willingness to pose difficult questions, and an understanding of the historical and cultural contexts surrounding a topic or decision.
With the three courses that you choose from one of the following seven disciplines, you’ll be able to take a different critical approach towards your degree, thus allowing you to uncover interdisciplinary nuances and new distinctions within both history and law.
You can choose from Comparative Literature, Computer Science, Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology and Sociology.
The History, Law & Society core courses, which you must take as part of the major requirements, will provide you with the tools you’ll need to ground your present and future studies. Your introduction to the fundamentals of History, Law & Society will help pave the way for your successful completion of other History, Law & Society courses.
This course is designed to introduce students to the historical foundations of legal thought and to cultivate literacy in legal reasoning. The course provides an essential resource for our future global citizens by exploring key legal texts, histories and cases and familiarizing students with the historical origins of key contemporary legal issues.
What role does law play in shaping society? How have courts shaped society, both domestically and internationally? What strategies have people taken to resist unjust laws? Students engage in weekly moot courts that survey gripping historical and contemporary cases, including fugitive slave laws, the death penalty and criminal justice, hate speech, transgender rights, and issues relating to immigration, including asylum and deportation. Readings come from history, literature, sociology, and legal opinions. By the end of this course, students will be able to apply critical approaches to the law to contemporary issues; perform a mock trial, from start to finish; and write persuasive and analytically rigorous papers that demonstrate interdisciplinary thinking.
The History Workshop is a course in the historian's craft that will give students an opportunity to learn about the discipline of history. Students learn how to pose researchable questions(problematiques), to gather evidence, and to present their findings before an audience of their peers in a seminar setting. May be taken twice for credit.
In this two-credit capstone course, seniors draw upon previous coursework in History, Law, and Society. They cultivate new skills to present key questions and dilemmas. Students can choose from several forms of public exhibit, including a sequence of podcasts, visual exhibit, website, collection of nonfiction pieces, or video. Students are encouraged to do interviews or oral histories to strengthen their final project. This course is structured as a workshop that allows students to receive feedback and polish their work. Students will present their project at the end of the semester to the broader AUP community. Prerequisites: Senior standing, HI/LW 2030, HI/LW 2020.