London School of Economics

Have financial crises become more frequent and more severe over time? What can early bubbles tell us about the state of different stock markets? Was fiscal policy as important as monetary policy in helping recovery in Britain and the US after the Great Depression? Exploring these topics informs our understanding of current global financial markets. During this course, students are asked to engage with these important topics and more, participating in lively discussion.

This course is an introduction to the theoretical and practical functioning of urban real estate markets using concepts from urban economics, finance, and real estate economics. A major component of the course is the case study in which students value a mixed-use commercial real estate property using the knowledge and techniques they have learned.

This course engages students with international affairs through the study of the legal frameworks which govern them, situating those frameworks within the material and cultural context of international politics. Focusing on controversial and significant issues in contemporary international politics, including recent examples of the use of force, international economic integration and the promotion and protection of human rights and the environment, students actively engage in these topics through key readings, role-plays, and question and answer sessions. Students study the structure and operation of the international legal order, having explored focused case studies including the war on terror, the international legal prohibition against torture, and the use of force in Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

Public international law is traditionally understood as the law governing the coexistence and cooperation between states. This course provides an introduction to the concepts, principles, institutions, history and argumentative structure of this distinctive, and distinctively political, legal order. The aim of the course is to lay the basis for an informed assessment of the contribution, limits and possibilities of international law as a language of, and force in, world affairs. Students begin by asking what kind of legal order we are dealing with (in the particular context of recent challenges to the whole concept of international legality itself). The course then turns to the question of how international legal norms emerge (through custom and treaty) among entities known as sovereign states, in something called an ‘international society’ (composed also of international organizations, non-governmental organizations, corporations and individuals) and we ask how those states seek to resolve disputes in that (anarchic) order and are held responsible for wrongs they commit. Later in the term, students consider the origins of the system in European colonial arrangements across the modern period and we consider the emancipatory potential of the principle of self-determination as a response to these arrangements. The term end with seminars on the problem of war in international law. International law increasingly forms part of the law practised in the UK, and an understanding of international law will be important for those interested in foreign affairs, investment arbitration, regulation of AI and other digital technologies, global supply chains, global commodities, climate change, environmental law, refugee and human rights law. The course is a prerequisite for and will be complemented by LL280 Advanced Issues in Public International Law, which will examine specialized regimes of international law.