Study information

Try-out lecture Law and Society (MSc)

Date: Tuesday 24 March 2026
Time: 15:00 - 16:30 hour
Address: TBA

Try-out lecture Law and Society (MSc)

Are you interested in the Master’s programme Law and Society (MSc)? Would you like to experience what it is like to study this programme at Leiden University? Register for the try out lecture. A try out lecture offers a representative and in depth introduction to the way teaching is organised within the programme.

Tuesday 24 March 2026
Start time: 15.00
Location: to be announced

Try out lecture Power, Problems, and Discourses: A Socio Legal Approach to Policymaking
Lecturer: Roxane Massol de Rebetz

During this try out lecture, you will be introduced to a socio legal approach to law and policymaking. Central to the lecture is the question of why certain social issues become defined as legal and political problems, while others remain invisible or taken for granted. The lecture also addresses who determines how problems are framed in law and policy, and why this matters.

The session explores how law and policy do not merely respond to problems, but actively construct them through language, assumptions and power relations. Insights from critical theory and discourse analysis are used to examine these processes.

Through a short interactive exercise based on Carol Bacchi’s What’s the Problem Represented to be? approach, you will gain insight into how Law and Society scholars critically analyse policy. Attention is given to underlying assumptions, silences and the effects of policy framing on democracy, justice and social change.

This try out lecture provides a clear insight into the academic focus and approach of the Master’s programme Law and Society.

What makes the Master’s programme Law and Society unique?

An interdisciplinary and critical approach to law in its societal context.
Strong attention to the relationship between law, power, policy and social change.
A focus on language, framing and knowledge production in law and policymaking.
Teaching in an international and academically diverse learning environment.

Examples of themes within the programme

Law and policymaking in societal context
Power, framing and discourse in law and policy
Socio legal analysis of law in practice
Justice, human rights and social change