Legal Studies

This course introduces the enterprise of comparative constitutional law as a judicial practice and as a field of academic study. It compares, across various constitutional systems, issues of constitutional structure, judicial review, separation of powers, constitutional interpretation, constitutional amendments, and individual rights. Additionally, the course considers various approaches that have been used to solve similar constitutional problems, with special attention given to equality, freedom of expression, religious freedom, and the recognition and adjudication of social and economic rights.

This course introduces students to what lawyers and jurists call legal reasoning; the ways and mechanisms through which lawyers frame their understanding of social conflicts and structure legal arguments. Not unlike other professions, lawyers tend to perceive and communicate about the world through the lenses of the typical jargon and tools of their trade, such as rights and obligations, authority, and the fundamental conflict between freedom, security, and order. The course also studies how lawyers mobilize legal and non-legal elements, including rules, morals, constitutional principles, language, and economic or sociological facts and arguments, to frame a particular situation and argue for a particular position; convince a decision maker; and achieve certain goals, whether their own, those of their client, or those of justice or policy. This course is not an introduction to law or legal theory but rather an introduction to the lawyer's toolbox to argue and win a case. Discussion includes issues and phenomena of the digital transformation like Artificial Intelligence, privacy, and the regulation of the Internet to discuss legal reasoning in the 21st century. Course materials are primarily from Anglo Saxon legal culture and, where possible, European Union law.

The Internship Workforce course provides students with an overview of working in the United Kingdom. The course looks at the changing organizational structures of work in Britain. It examines the social and economic changes that affect the workplace in the UK. Topics covered include: sociology of work, trade unions, 0ppression at work, generational changes at work, and the future of work. An internship while studying in London provides an opportunity to experience a “hands on” working situation and a different perspective on the workplace and working practises, while developing professional skills.
 

This course provides an overview of international law and its approach to several burning security issues of global scope, including terrorism, forced displacement, cyberwarfare, pandemics, and disinformation. This thematic overview imparts a basic understanding of the international legal landscape surrounding current security policy conversations, while reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of international law. In the process, the course also exposes most branches of international law, including the law regulating armed conflict and the use of force, human rights law, refugee law, and international criminal law.

This course provides an introduction to the international legal and regulatory framework for finance, especially banking. It provides both an academic, theoretical framework and a practitioner's perspective. It presents the most important bodies involved in the governance of globalized finance, e.g., IMF, BIS, Basel Committee, FATF. It offers an overview of the international regulation in place, with a focus on the implications of the Global Financial Crisis in sparking regulatory reform. The course also refers to particularly significant experiences at the regional (e.g., the European Union) or national (e.g., United States) level to provide concrete examples. Where appropriate, experts from relevant authorities may be invited to offer students a hands-on perspective.

The International Internship course develops vital business skills employers are actively seeking in job candidates. This course is comprised of two parts: an internship, and a hybrid academic seminar. Students are placed in an internship within a sector related to their professional ambitions. The hybrid academic seminar, conducted both online and in-person, analyzes and evaluates the workplace culture and the daily working environment students experience. The course is divided into eight career readiness competency modules as set out by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), which guide the course’s learning objectives. During the academic seminar, students reflect weekly on their internship experience within the context of their host culture by comparing and contrasting their experiences with their global internship placement with that of their home culture. Students reflect on their experiences in their internship, the role they have played in the evolution of their experience in their internship placement, and the experiences of their peers in their internship placements. Students develop a greater awareness of their strengths relative to the career readiness competencies, the subtleties and complexities of integrating into a cross-cultural work environment, and how to build and maintain a career search portfolio.

In this course students acquire knowledge about: Public Health law in international, European, and domestic settings; the nature of law, and broad legal principles behind the law's contribution to public health; the way that different types of procedures are used to regulate the public health (e.g. medical committees and officials, criminal law, privacy, public interest arguments, etc.); other normative considerations relating to framing public health responses; how public health responses operate. The course also trains students to: read and understand legal documents (particularly treaties and European legislation, and guidance documents and codes of practice); understand how legal and ethical arguments are constructed at different points in relation to public health, particularly how human rights decisions are made at the European Court of Human Rights; apply these insights to “live” public health issues. Students are also trained to: consider the difference between life science, medical, political, legal and ethical judgments; consider how each type of judgment is constructed; consider how different judgments are given authority and enforced in society. Finally, through this course students are able to: construct effective, logical, and evidenced arguments to influence political decision-makers; consider how far discussion can be useful in the creation of normative arguments and responses; develop effective skills in presenting arguments.