LAW44815: ADVANCED ISSUES IN INTERNATIONAL LAW

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• This module aims to provide students with an understanding and knowledge of the range of legal systems and issues which make up the contemporary international legal order. The module also aims to enable students to draw together the various substantive questions concerning the history and theory of international law, international economic law, international dispute resolution, international humanitarian and human rights law and international peace and security, amongst other topics which will be covered over the rest of the programme. The module will raise the student's awareness of to the conceptual and critical aspects of the international, transnational, trans-civilisational, regional and domestic legal questions central to the contemporary global legal infrastructure.

• A selection of topics in the following indicative areas will run in each year:
• Law-Making Processes: Consent and Normativity
• The form and authority of international law: treaties, custom, judicial decisions and other sources of law
• Participants in the International Legal System: States, International Organisations, non-State actors and individuals
• Responsibility and Accountability in a decentralised legal order: contemporary challenges
• International Law and its Others: post-colonial, feminist, and Critical challenges
• Contemporary Issues at the UN/World Bank/IMF/WTO
• Historical Evolution of the Global Legal Order
• Reform of the International Legal Order
• Constitutionalisation
• Fragmentation
• Global Legal Pluralism
• Global Administrative Law

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Students will have:
• A thorough knowledge of the fundamental principles underlying the international legal order (consent, legal personality, sovereignty, responsibility and accountability, for example);
• A demonstrably in-depth knowledge of certain key aspects of the contemporary debates on international law;
• A familiarity with the interaction between the variety of legal orders and the substantive law which underpins their operation;
• An understanding of the relationship between the theory and the practice of international law.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Students should be able to:
• interpret and evaluate critically relevant documents within international law and identify the theoretical and critical approaches informing their interpretation;
• appreciate and articulate the relationship between international law and politics, and between international law and history;
• identify key themes in current debates about the nature and practice of international law;
• demonstrate the ability to compare and contrast theoretical approaches to international law;
• synthesize and critically analyse core issues associated with the international legal order.

Key Skills:

• demonstrate an ability to understand and analyse critically a wide variety of complex issues relating to international law, drawing on a variety of materials;
• develop expertise relating to international law in conducting legal research using materials from a variety of national, regional and international sources;
• describe accurately and coherently the arguments and analysis of academic commentators on international law;
• formulate ideas and arguments on international law in a clear, structured and scholarly manner;
• demonstrate an ability to explore complex issues creatively in writing on matters relating to international law.
• interpret, critically analyse, and synthesise legal materials and literature relevant to international law.

• The course will be taught through 8 two-hour seminars in the second term. Each seminar will cover a substantive topic and will be based on set reading to be prepared prior to the seminar. During each seminar students will work through a set of questions which they will have been asked to prepare in advance.
• Feedback to be provided on formative and summative assessment in accordance with Law School feedback policies.

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