Undergraduates who Minor in Law and Public Policy gain an appreciation of how the law shapes and constrains policymaking.
Our Minor is designed for students looking to complement their Major in another discipline with a basic familiarity with the law and government. Pursuing a Minor while completing your BA degree means that you’ll be introduced to legal reasoning and policy analysis, providing a more practical grounding to your studies that opens new career possibilities.
The Minor provides is less comprehensive than our Major in Law and Public Policy, but more flexible in allowing you to pursue specific areas or topics of interest. The only restriction is that Minors in Law and Public Policy cannot Major in Political Science, because the coursework in these programs overlaps so substantially. The Minor in Law and Public Policy also does not require any training in qualitative or quantitative research design and data gathering. Because of this, students looking to acquire these skills to enhance their career prospects, or to strengthen their applications for graduate or law school, will often start off as Minors in Law and Public Policy, before switching to the Major once they realize the advantages. Some students even decide to do a Joint Major, since this option gives them the benefits of a Law and Public Policy education, while also enabling them to fully explore their interest in another field (just as the Law and Public Policy Minor does).
If you are trying to determine whether our Minor is right for you, have a look at our year-by-year overview of the program.
Declaring
Every March, the Department of Political Science holds a declaration celebration with our students and faculty to welcome our newest members. If you don't want to wait, you can find all the information that you need to complete the declaration of a Minor in Law and Public Policy over at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. It’s as easy as completing this form and submitting it via email to the Office of the University Registrar (registrar@mun.ca) using your official @mun email account.
Program Requirements
Students who wish to graduate with a Minor in Law and Public Policy must complete 24 credit hours (or 8 courses) in Political Science over the four years of their BA degree. The curriculum follows a set sequence so that the knowledge and skills students acquire in their first and second-year classes prepare them for more sophisticated material in their third and fourth years. This sequence also allows our faculty to prepare lectures, assignments, and other course materials appropriate to each student’s learning stage.
Beginning in September 2024, all 3000 and 4000 level Political Science courses have a general 45 credit hour pre-requisite, requiring students to have completed at least 45 credits of university level classes (in any subject) before enrolling in our upper-level offerings. This is to encourage students to appropriately sequence their studies.
Declared Law and Public Policy Minors will begin their first year of studies by taking POSC 1000 (“Introduction to Politics and Government”), which is required, along with an optional class, POSC 1001 (“Critical Reading and Writing: Politics and Governance”), which helps students gain the writing and research skills to do university level work. As a bonus, POSC 1001 also counts towards the general “CRW” requirement for the BA degree.
Minors in their second year must complete LWPP 2600 (“Public Policy and Administration”), which is required. Many Minors also take 2000 level classes in Political Science, such as POSC 2800 (“Canadian Politics and Government”), or approved classes in other disciplines that provide foundational knowledge of the law, like LING 2220 (“Linguistics and the Law”) and PHIL 2370 (“Philosophy of Law”).
Declared Minors and Majors are given priority registration for all 3000 and 4000 level Law and Public Policy classes to ensure that they can complete their programs on time. What this means, in practice, is that declared students will be permitted to enroll earlier than non-declared students for all upper-year Political Science classes, so that they are sure to get a seat. There is no early access to POSC courses not cross-listed as LWPP.
Majors and Minors should also make sure that they enrol in the LWPP section of courses cross-listed with POSC to ensure these credits are correctly counted towards their program.
The third and fourth years are where Minors get the opportunity to pursue their own particular interests with more flexibility. Minors are encouraged, but not required, to complete POSC 3010 (“Empirical Methods in Political Science”), which provides basic skills in quantitative and qualitative research and evidence-based policy analysis. Fourth year classes typically assume some familiarity with research methods, and push students to evaluate legal and policy outcomes using empirical data. Minors are required to take a total of 18 credit hours (6 courses) in Law and Public Policy or approved related fields, of which at least 3 credit hours (1 course) must be at the 4000 level.
To graduate with a Minor in Law and Public Policy, a student must have an average of 60% or better in courses required for the Law and Public Policy program (excluding 1000-level courses). A student receiving 55% or less on any Political Science course at the 2000-level or higher is expected to seek advice from the Department at the start of the next semester to ensure that adequate progress is being maintained.