Course Catalogue

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This course examines the role played by international law in the contemporary world order through a consideration of the various ways in which international lawyers and specialists from neighbouring disciplines typically engage with and respond to what are considered to be the main pressing problems confronting the international community (use of force, climate change, international cooperation, pandemics, economic underdevelopment, etc.). The course will introduce the students to the main paradigms of international theory and the basic critical and analytical skills needed to make use of them. Its main aspiration is to help the students gain a more critically and historically informed understanding of international law as a field of knowledge and an instrument of political change as well as to develop their reasoning and argument-construction skills.

The course will be delivered by way of twenty two-hour-seminars across both semesters (ten seminars per semester). Each seminar will be taught in-person (face to face). There will be a reading week in each semester. 

For further details of course content, see the accompanying documentation.

This course is only available to LLB students.

A pass in Public International Law (or another comparable course in the case of visiting students) is required.

If the course is oversubscribed, places, in the first instance, will be allocated according to performance in Public International Law.

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There will be two summative essay assignments, each worth 30% of the final mark. One essay will be submitted at the end of semester one, before the winter break. The other at the end of semester two. The details of each assignment will be included in the course handbook.

There will also be a written exam taken at the end of the course, worth 40% of the final mark.

At the end of the first semester, as part of formative assessment, there will also be set up a moot-like exercise (legal policy debate) in which the students, after being divided into four teams, will be invited to tackle a currently pressing international issue of the kind that would enable them to test the knowledge acquired during the semester and prepare them for the summative assignment. Each student and each team will be issued with immediate individual feedback.

Reassessments are normally available for all courses, except those which contribute to the Honours classification. Where, exceptionally, reassessment on Honours courses is required to satisfy professional/accreditation requirements, only the overall course grade achieved at the first attempt will contribute to the Honours classification. For non-Honours courses, students are offered reassessment in all or any of the components of assessment if the satisfactory (threshold) grade for the overall course is not achieved at the first attempt. This is normally grade D3 for undergraduate students and grade C3 for postgraduate students. Exceptionally it may not be possible to offer reassessment of some coursework items, in which case the mark achieved at the first attempt will be counted towards the final course grade. Any such exceptions for this course are described below. 

The principal aim of this course is to foster critical thinking about the place of international law in the world. In particular, the course aims to:

• Enhance the students' knowledge and understanding of the problem-solving capacity of international law and its place in the contemporary world order;

• Develop the students' powers of legal reasoning, problem-solving, legal writing, and critical analysis;

• Encourage in-depth and independent learning;

• Develop the students' research skills and argument-construction skills;

• Develop the students' team work skills and provide them with the experience of working in groups. 

By the end of this course students will:

1. be able to demonstrate a critically informed, interdisciplinarily grounded understanding of the basic range of problem-solving responses typically encountered in international legal practice; 

2. be able to assess critically the role of international law in international affairs and the relationship that international law as a discipline has with other disciplines (international relations, economics);

3. be able to demonstrate greater awareness of the rhetorical-discursive, epistemic, and ethical dimensions of international legal practice;

4. be better able to construct and present oral and written legal arguments;

5. be better able to work as part of a team and take responsibility for their own learning.

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.