School of International and Public Policy-IPP

General Outline

The Public Law Program aims to promote the professional and practical understanding of public law among students, and has taken on the mission to send leaders with the ability to form legal policies to the national and local government. More precisely, we aim to send leaders and talented individuals that have the excellent ability to analyze legal policies and propose legal policies for legislation in the fields of human rights, environment, information and administration.
We also aim to foster pioneers of legal policies in this global era that have the sense of publicness for today's trend in national government and local governments that is constantly being affected by globalization.

General Outline of the Curriculum

【Courses】

The curriculum of the Public Law Program is divided into four categories including "Basic Courses", "Core Courses", "Applied Courses", and ″Case Studies ＆ Workshop" like other programs at School of International and Public Policy.
The courses in the different categories will be explained in detail in the following.

＜Basic courses＞

"Basic Courses" consist of courses that students can learn the basics of public law. Students will learn the basic theories in constitutional law, administrative law and public administration, and obtain the necessary and basic knowledge to conduct policy analysis and make policy proposals. Through these courses, students will be able to obtain ａ clearer image about what publicness and legal policies are.

＜Core courses＞

After students learn about the formation of legal policies, they will advance to more specialized courses. These courses are the "Core Courses". The knowledge obtained through the "Basic Courses" and the reinforcement of specialized knowledge will certainly be an extremely powerful tool for policy proposal and analysis.

＜Applied courses＞

After studying the "Core Courses" and obtaining basic and professional knowledge, students will be taught how to use such knowledge. To do so, it is necessary to know what kind of legal policies exist, how they are formed, and what kind of problems exist. In other words, students must know the actual situation of policy proposal and how they are evaluated. Students will know how to apply the knowledge that they have learnt. The objective of these courses is to instill the ability to apply their knowledge to real world situation.

＜Case Studies and Workshops＞

Students will analyze case studies of real life legal policies, and attempt to evaluate policies, or to make ａ policy proposal. After proposing a policy, students need to persuade others through a convincing presentation. We offer courses in this category that enable students to learn such skills, that is, how to write policy proposals and how to develop persuasive arguments.

＜Cross-program Courses, Common Courses＞

The Public Law Program offers interdisciplinary and cross-cutting courses in collaboration with other programs, because it is not enough to take courses in public law when actually proposing and evaluating legal policies in real situation. These courses are called the cross-program courses and common courses.

One of the characteristics of the global era is the diminishing lines between domestic and international issues. Issues that seem to relate to the proposal of domestic legal policies may actually relate to issues to governance at the global level. This is also true for economic issues such as finance and taxation. For example, in order to draft ａ law concerning finance, one must have knowledge on finance. Moreover, in order to propose legal policies concerning pension issues, an issue that has received much attention in recent years, one must have knowledge on social insurance.

In order to adapt to such situation, the Public Law Program offers Cross-program courses as well as Common Courses for students in the International and Administrative course.

Faculty Members