Legal Studies

This course considers key issues of new technology, constitutional rights, and economic issues in the 21st century, with a specific focus on how new technology and constitutional rights interact. Many examples come from the US context, but focus is global, not exclusively American. Some topics include New York Times v. Sullivan, freedom of the press; Wikileaks, privacy, and government classified information; copyright and "fair use" doctrine; Net neutrality; intellectual property law background; Napster, Grokster, and ABC v. Aereo; and the future and the past, technology versus traditional values. Readings include relevant US Supreme Court cases, international law treaties, and leading scholars' articles.

This course discusses the history of Spanish law from the arrival of Roman law to the Iberian Peninsula through the Constitution of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931.

This course examines how law frames the human relationship to the environment and non-human world, including issues of democracy, environmental justice, the treatment of animals and global inequality. It will draw on case studies in Australian, comparative and international law. It will invite students to explore the way that various areas of law are implicated in environmental problems and injustice, and to consider how law can be reformed to perform a protective function. 

This course offers a study of victimology as a necessary subject within the field of criminology to examine the person and their role as victim. It discusses the role of the victim today and identifies perceptions and reciprocal attitudes about offenders and victims. Lastly, this course explores the idea of knowledge of the victim as a means to prevent crime.

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.

This course introduces students to EU competition law. It examines agreements which may restrict competition such as cooperation agreements between competitors, vertical agreements, and cartels. It also examines abuses of dominant position and merger control regulations. Through each of these issues, the course provides an understanding of how EU competition law views the market and competitors. It also emphasize the central role of concepts such as market power, efficiency, and market entry. Finally, the course introduces students to the Digital Market Act.

This course focuses on the study of justice systems from a comparative perspective. It introduces students to different justice systems, with a special focus on common law and civil law jurisdictions. The course explores concepts of substantive and procedural criminal law, from the elements of crime and forms of participation to different systems of trial. Globalization and its role and influence on justice systems around the world is explored. The role of supranational and international judicial institutions (European Court of Justice, International Criminal Court) in bringing different legal traditions together is also examined. The course discusses topics including sources of law in different legal systems, aspects of various criminal justice systems, concepts of substantive and procedural criminal law in a comparative perspective, and international criminal justice.