The new LLM has been designed with consideration for the responses to the pandemic - to help healthcare professionals navigate the law.
0Kent Law School, is launching a new Master’s programme in Law and Health for September 2020. The Kent LLM (Master’s in Law) is designed both for those with a background in law as well as healthcare professionals across the sector, including those with training in medicine, nursing, midwifery and allied disciplines. The course will consider issues raised at the intersection of health and law, understood in its social and political contexts. This year, a sustained focus on the issues raised by responding to COVID-19 will offer a jumping off point for broader study.
The Kent LLM (and associated Diploma and Certificate programmes) will allow students to broaden and deepen their knowledge and understanding of law by specialising in one or more different areas. Available full-time (one year) or part-time (15 months), the campus-based course will have its second start date in January 2021.
The Kent Law and Health LLM pathway offers an innovative exploration of issues at the heart of health law, informed by world-leading research to enable students to understand the broad legal and ethical and principles at play. Political, social and institutional contexts impact the regulation of health, creating complex interrelationships between health, law and regulation. As the example of Covid-19 shows all too clearly, social inequalities impact on health, with complex issues of social justice raised in our responses to it.
Kent Law School pioneered a critical, contextual approach to the study of law. Over five decades, it has advanced consideration of law in its broader social, political and international contexts, with a focus on local and global inequalities.
This pathway is equally suitable for people with a background in law, medicine and allied disciplines, or an alternative discipline but with a strong interest in understanding the role and scope of health law in contemporary domestic and global society. The pathway offers an opportunity for further career development for those already working in these fields, or preparation for those interested in pursuing a career in law, health, the public and voluntary sectors, or government.
Professor Sally Sheldon, pathway convenor and a specialist in health care law and ethics, said of the programme: ‘Covid-19 has affected all of us in multiple ways and, as a society we are struggling with the acute legal issues it raises. How far is right to curtailing individual liberties to protect public health? How far should legal standards and regulatory controls be relaxed in light of the pandemic? What is the pandemic revealing about social inequalities in health and how law can address them? The Kent LLM offers a space for studying these issues in light of the broad principles of health law.’