Law, Power and Human Rights
LLM, PGDip, PGCert

Modules

• Law, Power and Human Rights Core

Law, Power and Human Rights (Core)

Law, Power and Human Rights is designed to provide you with a theoretical and practical understanding of international and comparative human rights law in its broader political and moral context. 

Credits: 20

• Approaches to Legal Research Core

Approaches to Legal Research (Core)

This module will explore how legal research can be approached with a variety of perspectives and orientations:

• doctrinal methods seek to engage law on a level of close reading and logic;
• contextual ‘socio-legal’ methods seek to understand the wider influences of law and legal doctrine;
• comparative methods seek to examine the relationships between different legal orders;
• theoretical methods seek to elaborate and question the conceptual structures of law’s doctrines and institutions; and
• critical methods seek to question the political and ideological underpinnings of these doctrines and institutions.

In traversing this wide variety of legal research methods, this module will persistently engage with the underlying examination of what it means to ‘do law’ in both academic and professional contexts, exposing students to the practices of professional legal research and the processes of legal knowledge-making.

Credits: 20

• Jurisprudence Core

Jurisprudence (Core)

This module will provide students with the opportunity to engage with advanced analytic legal philosophy, introducing key legal theorists who explore issues relating to law and morality, justice, structures of law, and different ways in which law may be approached by the individual citizens who live in accordance with it.

It will encourage students to think critically and originally about the purpose, role, and critiques of law and the evolution of Anglo-American legal and moral philosophy.

Credits: 20

• Rights and the Equality Act 2010: Protected Characteristics Core

Rights and the Equality Act 2010: Protected Characteristics (Core)

This module will provide students with the opportunity to engage in a close-reading and critical analytical engagement with the UK’s Equality Act 2010, and the formal legal guarantees against discrimination for its 9 protected characteristics/prohibited conducts.

Credits: 20

• Family Law Rights Optional

Family Law Rights (Optional)

This module aims to examine the rights of the family in the context of human rights, in particular the European Convention on Human Rights, the Human Rights Act 1998 and international human rights law.

The module will focus on specific rights of children and parents and how the law deals with the competing rights of parents and children in practice. The module will also look at how human rights affect relationships between couples and how women’s rights in particular are protected by domestic and international law.

Fathers’ rights will also be looked at with a focus on campaign groups representing fathers and restrictions on fathers’ access to their children.

Credits: 20

• Employment Rights Optional

Employment Rights (Optional)

The aim of this module is to examine the key and topical issues in employment law from an individual perspective.

The module will trace the operation of employment law from recruitment and selection, formation of contract, individual rights at work, through to redundancy and dismissal.

Credits: 20

• Rights and Business Organisations Optional

Rights and Business Organisations (Optional)

This module aims to develop a detailed appreciation of the legal aspects of business organisations. The Module will explore the three main different types of business medium, namely sole traders, partnerships and companies, focussing essentially on Companies.

The module will deal with the essential legal aspects of Partnerships and will focus on Company Law through areas such as formation, regulation and dissolution.

Credits: 20

• Women’s Progression to Legal Personhood and Rights Optional

Women’s Progression to Legal Personhood and Rights (Optional)

This module aims:

• To provide students with an advanced knowledge and critical analysis of women’s legal history,
• To provide a critical examination of the historical debates, theories and law concerning women and to consider how they affect the law today,
• To provide students with a critical understanding of the development of women’s legal rights to the current day,
• To provide a challenging, thoughtful and supportive environment to critically consider the law’s positioning as ‘neutral’; the law does not exist in a vacuum.
• To critically consider whether objectivity and rationality were characteristics seen as masculine traits, so therefore the law was identified as male,
• To critically evaluate the work of feminists in contesting the masculine norm of the law,
• To critically consider whether the law’s male characterisation resulted in inequality and oppression.

Credits: 20

• Gender, Law, Power and Rights Optional

Gender, Law, Power and Rights (Optional)

This module aims:

• To provide students with an in-depth understanding of the study of gender and the law
• To stimulate student critical understanding of the debates, theories and law concerning gender
• To critically examine how law does not exist in a vacuum and that although law is presented in a neutral way this is not always the case:
• Objectivity and rationality are characteristics seen as masculine traits, so therefore the law is identified as male
• This male view of the law is contested by feminists, and that this view maintains inequalities and oppression

Credits: 20

• Rights, Race, Power and Law Optional

Rights, Race, Power and Law (Optional)

This module will critically consider the effect of race and ethnicity on the principle that all people are equal before the law.

It will engage students by providing an advanced analysis of the effect of the proposition that people of all races and ethnicities should be treated without any discrimination and receive equal legal protection.

The module will introduce key concepts and theories at the beginning of the modules, building and scaffolding students to develop confidence in their knowledge and ability to critically analyse legal and jurisprudential material. Students are encouraged to think critically and originally about the law, its effect on ethnic groups, as well as to the purpose, role, and enforcement of the law.

The module will focus on the criminal justice system, but also consider other key areas of law as it responds to developing, current legal issues.

Credits: 20

• Dissertation Core

Dissertation (Core)

This is an independent study module, supported by regular supervision from a member of the programme team, in which you will research and write up a substantial piece of independent research on a topic chosen by you in consultation with members of the programme team.

The Approaches to Legal Research module will have provided you with knowledge and skills needed to enable you to research, structure and progress your work effectively on this module.

Credits: 60