Law students tend to classify their Seminars and courses as falling between two poles: Law Seminars or Seminars about the Law (Sociology of Law, Law and Politics etc.). The Total Law? approach sets out to debunk this distinction. We believe that law can only be fully understood and properly and effectively practiced in its context. Our aim is to make students better, much better, lawyers by explaining how the economic and or the political context shape the legal problem and impacts the thinking about the legal solution. We also want to equip the students to understand the economic and political consequences of different legal outcomes. The discipline is Law. The focus is Law. But the premise is that law cannot be understood, nor practiced professionally and competently without understanding its broader contexts.
Students are also expected to contribute to this total approach. Total Law^TM requires Pro-active learning. Most teaching will be interactive, 'Socratic' and diaological. This requires a lot from both Professors and students. This is why Professors were chosen taking into account the need to provide this type of teaching and the students' engagement is indispensable. Also, this Master requires full and regular attendance. It requires scrupulous preparation ahead of the class of the reading assignments. We cannot accept spectators and free riders. Students cannot go to Theatre School and then, when asked to recite, claim they suffer from Stage Fright. Students cannot come to the study of law, an eminently communicative discipline, and then sit quietly in the back, passively taking notes. Not, at least, in this programme. As a consequence, this programme will be highly demanding but the rewards will be commensurate.