Postgraduate Course: Risk Society & Regulatory Frameworks (LAWS11288)
Course Outline
| School | School of Law |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course is a detailed exploration of risk and its regulation across a broad range of human activities, focusing on regulatory instruments and institutions ¿ legal and non-legal, domestic, regional and international ¿ which govern and shape individual and organisational conduct. It examines how regulatory instruments and institutions are shaped and/or respond to natural events and new and emerging human activities, many of them which rely on or prompt new modes of action, new technologies, new relationships, and, importantly, new risks. Specifically, it explores regulatory frameworks in different contexts, including the environment, biotechnologies, information and communication technologies, policing, and commerce, and how they interact with other frameworks. |
| Course description |
This is still being developed, but it is expected that the course will largely reflect the following:
The course will adopt the following format:
Weeks 1-5
The first half if the course will introduce students to the idea of a 'risk society' (complexity and contingency of modern society; the rise of risk discourse; the political and regulatory use of risk; role of technologies in all of this), an 'interdisciplinary' social and regulatory environment (challenges associated with interdisciplinary and collaborative activities; role of public in articulating risk and setting risk tolerances; how engagement shifts conceptions of risk and feeds governance structures), and 'regulation' and 'governance' (theory of regulation; rising practice of risk management; how this is embedded in regulation, ie, a key regulatory objective, precautionary principle).
Weeks 6-10
The remainder of the course will consist of Case Studies across a broad range of fields, with each case study addressing as many of the following questions as possible:
1. What are the perceived risks that are being governed?
2. What are the relevant regulatory onstitutions (international, regional (EU), domestic)?
3. What are the regulatory responses/rules and how they have been shaped?
4. Whose ideas of risks are shaping actions on the ground?
5. What is the efficacy of the prevailing/dominant regulatory regime?
6. What other related human activities and regulatory frameworks are implicated in this field (to what extent does it notice or interact with other fields)?
Case studies will include:
(1) Regulation, Risk & Climate Change;
(2) Regulation, Risk & the Environment & Biodiversity;
(3) Regulation, Risk & ICTs;
(4) Regulation, Risk & Policing;
(5) Regulation, Risk & Competition.
Each session will revisit the idea of regulation, getting students to examine how it is deployed in the different settings and what we might conclude from that about risk and about regulation itself as a legal undertaking within a broader governance pallet.
It is expected that each week will have between 3 and 5 readings.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
Students MUST have passed:
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2015/16, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 25 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
class participation (20%)
mid-term assessed assignment or poster (20%)
research essay (5000 words max, including footnotes) (60%) |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course students should be able to:
¿ articulate the idea of 'risk' in the regulatory context and appreciate that risk is not a purely local or subject/field-specific matter;
¿ appreciate the range of competing interests and values which shape risk articulations and thereby feed regulatory efforts;
¿ appreciate how regulatory frameworks which address risk respond to and shape our conceptions of and tolerances for risk; and
¿ formulate well-reasoned and coherent arguments relating to risk and, where appropriate, suggest reforms to regulatory responses to risk.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | risk, regulation, governance, case-studies |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Mr Shawn Harmon
Tel: (0131 6)51 4267
Email: |
Course secretary | Miss Amanda Mackenzie
Tel: (0131 6)50 6325
Email: |
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