Program

The Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy Graduate School of Law programme consists of two essential elements: thesis preparation and participation in the Graduate School of Law’s lecture programme. The latter is designed to:

• support and guide students in their thesis work;
• teach students the necessary skills for successful legal scientific research;
• broaden students’ views and knowledge of law through interdisciplinary courses.

Successful completion of the programme requires students to participate in lectures worth 8 credit points in total. Each lecture is worth either 1 or 2 credit points, depending on the workload and duration. In addition to regular lectures, the Graduate School of Law also offers seminars, research workshops, a colloquium and methods courses.

There are two types of courses offered in the Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy Graduate School of Law programme: compulsory and elective courses.

The following two lectures are compulsory:

• The Colloquium offers students the possibility to present and discuss their research projects in front of their supervisors and fellow students. It functions as a forum for academic exchange of ideas and views, helps students reflect on their work as well as gather input from their colleagues.
• Legal Research and Writing for PhD Students is designed to help students obtain the necessary skills and knowledge to write their theses. Students are supported in formulating their central research questions, structuring their work, and conceptualising their research projects. Furthermore, students are taught the guidelines for research integrity and good scientific practice as well as search techniques and methods-based research.

The Graduate School of Law also offers elective courses, from which the students can choose freely.

Some lectures are offered on a recurring basis or belong to modules dealing with particular umbrella themes. These are, for example:

• The Development of Legal Subdisciplines sheds light on the historical foundations and development of the respective legal subdisciplines. This lecture is part of the Graduate School of Law’s core programme and is offered annually.
• Self- and External Description of Law discusses and analyses texts dealing with the question of how representatives of legal science regard their own discipline and how their discipline is viewed by others.

Over the past years, several other elective courses have been offered (on a one-off basis) on the following topics:

• Private Legal Society and its Ideological Foundations
• Natural Law – Positivism – Post-Positivism
• Global Constitutionalism
• Knowledge and Law
• Institutional Economics in International Law
• Legal Research in a Transnational Context
• Conflicts of Jurisdiction in EU Fundamental Rights Protection
• Legal Comparison in Scholarly Research: A Case Study
• International Law and Politics of Human Rights
• Workshop on Brexit
• Contemporary Problems of International and Transitional Justice
• Human Dignity, Protection of Personality in Digital Age
• etc.