Homemade go-kart laws?

Which courses require reading  Plato's Laws and Aristotle's Politics and Constitution of  Athens ? Which classes tackle question of constructing societies (from Mosaic Laws to Aristotle's surveys and Plato constructing an ideal state).

• I am interested in finding out if anyone has run into any courses which encourage students to go over the laws (from ancient to present) their essence (the rationale behind creating those laws) and then encourages the students to come up with laws for their own ideal nation state? These could be classes in any university (worldwide). What courses go over such laws (their significance, their essence, the reason why they were created, what problem they were attempting to solve, what was the outcome, what were the side effects, what were the positive and negative foreseen and unforeseen repercussions?) One is interested in courses which study the laws of the lawmakers and how to improve upon them or critique them? For example : what are the laws from beginning of time to present regarding panhandling or theft? what approaches were tried in England (for example) at different times and what approaches were tried elsewhere etc. Most importantly are there teachers/ books/ classes which go over the hidden reasons or "superstitions" or "fears" that motivated the laws (not merely go over the laws for a laugh as an instance of an "odd law" but the reasoning behind the odd laws). For example : the ancient Law of a certain religion (will go unnamed) not only demanded death for those who engaged in bestiality but oddly enough it demanded the execution of the helpless animal as well. It may seem odd (why execute the helpless animal who was clearly a victim) until you come across ancient mythology and belief that intercourse with animals led to man-animal hybrids (the Minotaur, the god Pan,  the stories related to intercourse between horses and donkeys resulting in the birth of mules which aggravated the hostility to the Trojan war etc.). Which courses or schools deal with all these laws and their significance  in an enlightened, progressive, loving setting (not in a reverential, fearful, hasty (harried, hurried) setting which attempts to make apologies for barbaric or draconian laws)?

• Answer:

  That sounds like a very unusual but excellent course.  Off the top of my head, I'd say that you want to look at a Philosophy of Law course, or a History of Law course - but this particular angle on the origins of law is going to be unusual in those courses. Depends on the professor involved as to what gets taught... If you're already in university, you might ask folks in those departments if they've thought of offering a course like that (they might take you up on it.)  Or, you could do some research: I'm sure you've done some reading on the topic, so look at who you read, find out where the got their information from, hopefully it will lead you to an academic you can contact, see if they offer such a course.