This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
The module focuses on current issues in the law and practice of international business and trade law from critical perspectives. This includes exposing deficiencies in the regulation of international trade finance, international marketing operations, countertrade, international commercial dispute settlement mechanisms and corruption in international business. The module considers the peculiar problems that emerging business and financial jurisdictions face in their involvement in international trade. It broadly explores the inequities of global integration of international trade law and considers the influences of European Community law and those of leading developed economies and financial jurisdictions on regulation and actual practice of the field of international business transactions. Attention will be given to specialist and emerging areas of law such as international mergers and acquisition as well as philosophical aspects of international trade such as the lex mercatoria. It seeks to provide a comparative overview of emerging trends in international business regulation and aims to make students aware of ethical dimensions of international business transactions.
Contact hours: 20
Private study hours: 130
Total study hours: 150
All single and joint honours law programmes
Main assessment methods
Essay of no more than 3000 words (50%)
Examination, 2-hour (50%)
Reassessment methods
Like-for-like
John Braithwaite and Peter Drahos, Global Business Regulation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
Indira Carr, International Trade Law, 6th edition (Oxford: Routledge, 2017).
Leo D'Arcy, Carole Murray and Barbara Cleave, Schmitthoff's Export Trade: The Law and Practice of International Trade, 12th edition (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 2012).
Peter T. Muchlinski, Multinational Enterprises & the Law, 2nd Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007).
Alan Redfern and Martin Hunter, Law and Practice of International Commercial Arbitration, 5th edition (Sweet & Maxwell, 2009)
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
The intended subject specific learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module, students will be able to:
1. Demonstrate a systematic introductory knowledge and understanding of a range of critical and theoretical perspectives, of the structure
and distribution of power among states and the effects of this on international trade as well as parties in different states
2. Demonstrate a critical knowledge and understanding of the legal rules governing international trade
3. Demonstrate a detailed knowledge and understanding of international business transactions
4. Demonstrate a systematic understanding of current developments in international trade regulation
5. Identify and evaluate the legal validity of contracts governing international business transactions
6. Identify and critically evaluate the institutional structures of hegemony and identify their causal power in determining the way in which
individuals and corporate persons may respond to them within the national and international system
7. Critically evaluate the impact of a range of treaties and Statutes of England and Wales on the emergence and development of:
- Free trade
- Dispute resolution
- Anticorruption and money laundering
8. Read and evaluate legal texts and cases and understand their relevance to international trade and cross national business transactions.
The intended generic learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module, students will be able to:
1. Conduct independent research, which informs a sustained and complex argument
2. Coherently present complex arguments in writing
3. Appreciate that juridical problems can only be fully understood through interdisciplinary research methods.
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