Legal Concepts
LL.M. · 12 topics in 5 units
Unit I 4 topics
- Rights: conception, definition, characteristics and kindsWhat a legal right is, the will and interest theories and their modern versions, Salmond's five elements, the correlation of rights and duties, the main classifications of rights, and rights in the wider sense, with Indian constitutional illustrations.6 min
- Hohfeld's jural relations and their critiqueThe eight fundamental legal conceptions, jural correlatives and opposites, the second-order relations of power and immunity, multital and paucital rights, and the critique by Kocourek, Radin, Williams, Stone, Dias and others, with Indian illustrations.6 min
- Temporal dimensions of rights and legal relationsHow time creates, alters and ends rights: vested, contingent and accrued rights, limitation and prescription, retrospective and prospective law, intertemporal law, duration of property and intellectual property rights, and rights of future generations.6 min
- Duty, obligation and liability, and the sources from which they ariseThe concepts that sit opposite rights: kinds of duty, obligation and its sources, the theory of liability (mens rea, negligence, strict, absolute and vicarious), the measure of liability, and legislation, precedent and custom as the sources that create rights and duties.6 min
Unit II 2 topics
- Legal personality: natural and legal persons, the unborn, the dead, animals, and the theoriesWhat it means to be a person in law, the status of the unborn, the dead and animals, idols, rivers and other juristic persons, and the fiction, concession, purpose, bracket, realist, Kelsenian and Hohfeldian theories of corporate personality, with Indian judgments.6 min
- Corporations, associations, multinational corporations and transnational juristic personalityCorporations sole and aggregate, limited and unlimited companies, registered and friendly associations, separate personality and lifting the veil, the personality of multinational corporations and international organisations, and the accountability gap from Bhopal to Vedanta and the business-and-human-rights instruments.7 min
Unit III 2 topics
- Property: meaning, justifications and kindsThe senses of property, the labour, personality, utilitarian, Marxist and bundle-of-rights theories, movable and immovable, corporeal and incorporeal property, modes of acquisition, and the constitutional right to property under Article 300A after Kolkata Municipal Corporation v. Bimal Kumar Shah.6 min
- The expanding regime of incorporeal property: intellectual property and beyondWhy immaterial things became property, and how patents, copyright, designs, trade marks, geographical indications, layout-designs of integrated circuits, plant varieties and confidential information are protected in India and under TRIPS, with the newer claims over data, personality, domain names and digital assets.6 min
Unit IV 2 topics
- Possession: the idea, Roman and English law, and the theoriesWhy possession is protected, corpus and animus, possessio in Roman law and its interdicts, possession in English law from Pollock and Wright to Harris's functional view, and the theories of Savigny, Ihering, Salmond, Holmes and Kelsen, with the kinds of possession.5 min
- Possession in Indian and British courts, and adverse possessionHow English and Indian courts decide who possesses: the finders' cases from Armory to Parker, Warner on drugs, Anil Kumar Bhunja on the polymorphous term, conscious possession under the NDPS Act, settled possession in Rame Gowda and Poona Ram, and adverse possession from Pye v. Graham to Ravinder Kaur Grewal.7 min
Unit V 2 topics
- Ownership: the idea and its analysisAustin's, Salmond's and Holland's definitions, Honore's eleven incidents of ownership, the bundle-of-rights view and its critics, ownership and possession compared, the kinds of ownership, and Turner's and the realists' scepticism about a unified concept.5 min
- Ownership in society: social engineering, burdens and benefits, liberty, power, and land to the tillerThe functions of ownership in Pound's social engineering, how ownership allocates benefits and burdens, ownership as a guarantee of liberty and as a source of private power (Renner, Berle and Means, Cohen, Reich), and Indian ownership policy from land reform and the tiller as owner to sons-of-the-soil preferences.6 min