Law, Culture and Development
See this website for more information about minors.
Please note: the text below is the description of the 2024-2025 minor. An updated text will follow as soon as possible.
Description
Law is of major importance for socio-economic development. Ideally, law organizes human interaction in a way that promotes justice and legal certainty and protects vulnerable groups from exploitation and arbitrariness. The law offers the state an instrument to achieve its policy goals. At the same time the law imposes restrictions on the state’s actions towards citizens. In practice, however, in many countries – both in the global south and in the global north – all this is not self-evident and law often only partially performs the functions mentioned. This can partly be explained by the fact that law neither arises from nor functions within a vacuum, but in a particular historical, political, economic and social context, nationally as well as on a global level.
In order to indicate the values, norms and meanings associated with this context, the concept of culture is often used. This concept is very important to understand and explain the functioning of law. Law, culture and development are connected in various ways. A good analysis of these relationships is imperative for resolving major national and global issues such as building a stable rule of law and good governance in fragile states, defining freedom of expression and religion, protecting the position of women, the legal position of minority groups, and finding a balance between economic growth and environmental protection, and between individual rights and group rights.
Objective of the minor
The objective of the minor Law, Culture and Development is to teach students about the central concepts of law and the connections between law, culture and development. Students must be able to apply this knowledge within their own major studies, be able to independently collect and organize information on this subject, and be able to participate in the public debate on subjects related to law, culture and development.
Final learning objectives
After successful completion of this minor, students are able to:
Understand and describe the most important legal concepts;
Identify how law works in different cultural and regional/national contexts;
Understand and describe important characteristics of legal systems in Asia, Africa and the Middle East and the challenges these legal systems are often confronted with;
Debate the main approaches to the concept of culture;
Identify the interrelationships between law, culture and development;
Apply relevant concepts to the socio-legal analysis of contemporary global social problems related to law, culture and development.
15 ECTS
Given the structure of the program and the limited number of participants, preference is given to students who follow the full minor of 30 ECTS. In case a student can only complete a maximum of 15 ECTS of electives, the student must take the mandatory course ‘Law, Governance and Development’ (semester 1, block 1) and two of the bound electives.
These courses, once passed, will be shown as electives on your diploma.
Registration
Students from Leiden University, Erasmus University and TU Delft can register for this minor from 15 May 2025 at 13:00 hrs via EduXchange.
Other students can apply by following these 5 steps from 15 May 2025 at 13:00 hrs.
Contact details
Maximum number of students: 50
Contact person: Secretariat VVI
Email address: vollenhoven@law.leidenuniv.nl