This course introduces students to the concepts of justice and the relationships between justice, law, politics, society, and judicial process, including issues of access to justice. Competing notions of justice, such as corrective, restorative, distributive, natural, and social justice, will be applied to political, social and legal issues through the lens of "great cases".

In this capstone course, students will synthesize and apply the multidisciplinary knowledge they have gained throughout the JLS major through project-based learning, namely by participating in a simulation where the legal controversy arises from the different areas of emphasis. Students will critically engage in the simulation using the skills that they have acquired (such as communication, research methods, and legal research skills), and will apply their substantive and conceptual understanding of law, legal process, and justice to their broader area of emphasis. Students will critically reflect on such questions as how law and legal processes shape and are shaped by broader social and political power dynamics, the degree to which law is "political"; and how the framing of the issue and solutions during the simulation in terms of law and justice created strategies, goals, and outcomes that may be distinct from other social and political approaches to the issue.

This is Part I of the JLS Honours Thesis. Students undertake activities, such as reviewing existing literature and identifying research gaps, to prepare them to write an Honours thesis (in Justice and Legal Studies Honours Thesis II). Students require the permission of a faculty supervisor to undertake this course.

This is Part II of the JLS Honours Thesis. Students undertake research and write an Honours thesis that makes an argument that builds upon placing the research findings into the context of the literature that they examined in Honours Thesis I. Students are required to first complete Justice and Legal Studies Honours Thesis I and receive permission of a faculty supervisor to undertake this course.