From war, poverty and genocide to decolonisation, trade and climate change, an understanding of the fundamentals of international law is essential to anyone wishing to make sense of the biggest challenges our world is facing. This module will take you step-by-step through international law’s foundational principles, sources and institutions, as developed, demanded, violated and enforced by states and various non-state actors. The aim is to familiarise you with the distinctive logic of international law – a logic that underpins every one of its specific regimes (such as international humanitarian law, the law of the sea or international investment law) and conditions the response of states, international courts and multilateral institutions to the problems these regimes address. You’ll learn how to apply this logic, bringing international law to bear on real-world politics, economics and history. But we’ll also reverse this relationship, bringing politics, economics and history to bear on international law to contextualise and think more critically about a discipline whose benevolence often goes unquestioned. Is international law always ‘part of the solution’, or might it be implicated in the very problems it is called upon to solve?
Lecture-Seminars 16 hours , Multimedia Workshops (student-led) 8 hours, Mock Moot Court 2 hours, Assessed Collaborative In-Class Exercises 6 hours, Independent Study 118 hours Assessment Preparation 50 hours.
Written -Short writing piece -Short answer questions [18x single-sentence answers to student-devised questions (Peer-marking)] -Worth 20% of total marks for the module
Practical -Practical competency -Problem Question (1,000 words) Collaborative brainstorming Written response- Worth 40% of total marks for the module. This Assessment is Pass Compulsory.
Written -Reflection -Artefact Oriented Reflection (1,000 words Question and answers (Q and A) /collaboration Written reflection - Worth 40% of total marks for the module
Reassessment Method: Single instrument:100% written assessment (2,000 words)
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Upon your successful completion of this module, you will be able to:
1. Explain the significance of international law’s key principles and sources;
2. Select and apply relevant international legal principles and sources to real-world international disputes; and evaluate the relevance and legitimacy of conflicting interpretations using the doctrine of sources;
3. Identify international law’s most important actors and institutions; and explain and reflect critically on their role in creating, applying and enforcing international law;
4. Engage critically and comparatively with a range of scholarly perspectives on the history and theory of international law; and use these perspectives to contextualise and interrogate the role of international law in creating and perpetuating global inequalities of wealth and power;
5. Apply this contextualised, critical knowledge and understanding of fundamental international legal doctrines and institutions to make sense of new developments in the sphere of international relations and transition smoothly into more specialised international law modules.
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