Legal Studies

This course introduces students to the contemporary law of social security in the United Kingdom against the background of relevant policy debates, and considers the relationships between social security law, human rights law, and devolution.

This course covers the functioning and development of the European Union from a legal perspective. We examine the forces that drive European integration and explore the relationship of law to integration. The course surveys EU institutions, doctrines, laws and politics with a particular emphasis on the design of rules and contemporary events and focuses on the dynamics behind a legally driven process of regional integration.  

Thematically, we consider, confront, and discuss the institutional set up of the EU (constitutional design, legal and political integration, separation of powers and the rule of law), the main doctrines of EU law, fundamental freedoms in EU, citizenship and political rights, competition law, questions of democratic legitimacy, EU enlargement and foreign policy, capital markets integration and monetary affairs. 

This course bridges feminist theory, legal studies, and political economy to provide a multidimensional understanding of how gender structures economic and legal systems. It complements existing offerings in political theory, law, and gender studies by integrating critical perspectives on care, welfare, and neoliberalism with emerging debates on digital capitalism and global governance. Drawing on feminist, queer, and postcolonial scholarship, it explores how gender is not merely shaped by legal and economic systems but is fundamentally constitutive of them. The syllabus is designed to be intellectually rigorous yet accessible to undergraduates from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, progressively introducing theoretical frameworks and applying them to concrete economic and policy issues. Indeed, the course investigates how care and reproductive labor sustain markets and states; how institutions of property, finance, and welfare define economic citizenship; and how global processes—including colonialism, migration, and development—reproduce gendered hierarchies. The course also addresses the gendered dynamics of digital capitalism, exploring how contemporary technological infrastructures and platform economies shape labor, value, and power. Through close reading of legal and theoretical texts, class discussions, and media materials, the course connects historical and contemporary debates on work, welfare, sexuality, and governance. It interrogates the ways legal regimes define economic citizenship, moral worth, and bodily autonomy, while also considering feminist strategies for resistance, redistribution, and transformation. By linking feminist thought to law and political economy, the course equips students with conceptual and analytical tools to critically engage with law as both a site of domination and potential social change.

Forensic psychology can be thought of as an umbrella term to bring together two different streams of research in psychology and law: legal psychology is the application of psychological research and methods to the process of law, and criminological psychology is the application of psychological research and methods to the understanding of criminal behavior. This course introduces students to some of the main topics and questions in forensic psychology, so that students can appreciate the different perspectives, methods, and applications involved in the discipline. The course focuses on the application of research findings to the criminal justice system, and the understanding, treatment, and reduction of criminal behavior.

This class explores how technology is transforming banking and finance, with a focus on distributed ledger technology (DLT), blockchain, and innovations such as digital currencies, DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, and decentralized exchanges. It also examines the rise of Regulatory Technology (RegTech) and the growing role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in financial markets and services. The class reviews these developments through a legal and regulatory lens, highlighting key challenges and opportunities. No prior knowledge of FinTech or related fields is required.

The course examines contemporary developments and emerging challenges in business and commercial law. Students explore current legal issues related to contracts, corporate governance, and the legal structures used to establish and expand businesses. Through the analysis of real-world cases and legal advisory projects, the course develops students’ understanding of how legal frameworks shape business operations and decision-making. Emphasis is placed on critical thinking, legal reasoning, oral communication, and the practical application of legal principles to modern business scenarios. Topics may include recent developments in contract law, company law, business formation and growth strategies, and legal problem-solving in commercial practice.

This course introduces the concepts and methods of comparative public law to provide tools to analyze existing juridical systems and also to challenge existing definitions and classifications. Comparing different approaches to separation of powers, federalism, judicial review and rights, the course also gives an understanding on how different constitutional orders have addressed some common issues in public law and contemporary democracies and how they could face contemporary challenges.

The course examines the "general part" of criminal law and selected areas of the special part of criminal law in the context of theories of the aims and functions of criminalization. The course discusses the limits to criminalization; the conceptual framework of criminal liability (conduct, responsibility, capacity, defenses); homicide; sexual offences; non-fatal violence against the person; property offences (with particular reference to theft, fraud, robbery and burglary); secondary participation in crime; inchoate offences; and regulatory offences.

The course begins with the foundation of Law, personhood, and responsibility, considering natural law, legal positivism, and the justification of state authority. It examines the notions of autonomy, Justice, and moral disobedience, investigating whether it can be morally justified to break the law, and how the law can address human dignity, inclusion, and equality. The course concludes by looking at the connections between law and citizenship, evaluating whether law can be both morally grounded and democratically plural.

This course utilizes two methodological approaches: to understand the major legal and political-institutional issues of the European Union through a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach that draws not only on law but also on political science and history; and subjecting the law and institutions of the Union to a critical and balanced examination, while maintaining a distance from both the discourse of practitioners and that of political actors, who are (direct or indirect) stakeholders in the subject under study. Following a general overview of the history of the European Union, it includes three thematic modules: the study of the Union’s political and institutional system: an overview of the major political institutions (European Council and the institutional triangle), on the one hand; and considerations regarding the scope of the legislative and executive powers in the Union, on the other; the legal order of the Union, including, first, a presentation of the Court of Justice; second, a study of the constitutionalization of the Union (direct effect and primacy); and, finally, a summary of the relationship between the legal orders of the Member States and the legal order of the Union; and the status of the state and the citizen in the Union from a threefold perspective: the delimitation of the competences of the states and the Union; the issue of the reversibility and differentiation of integration; the European status of the individual as a citizen of the Union. The course concludes with reflections on the political form of the Union.