Department of Law

Page contents > MPhil/PhD Law Visiting Research Students | Taught programmes | About the Department | Opportunities for research

Taught programmes

• LLM

We also take part in a number of interdisciplinary programmes including:

• MSc Criminal Justice Policy
• MSc Human Rights
• MSc Law and Accounting
• MSc Law, Anthropology and Society
• MSc Regulation
• MSc Sociology of Crime, Control and Globalisation

About the Department

As a Department, we are committed to the view that an understanding of law can be achieved only by examining it in its social, economic and policy context. This approach builds upon our distinctive strength of being situated in a school of social sciences with an international reputation.

These qualities are reflected in the Research Assessment Exercise 2008 in which the Department did exceptionally well, with 75 per cent of its research rated either world-class or of international renown. It is rated the best law department in the UK, both on grade point average and on proportion of 4* research.

The Law Department at the School is the second largest department with 20 professors and over 35 other full-time academic staff. In addition, a large number of emeritus and visiting professors and other teachers drawn from legal practice participate in teaching and research.

Students come from all over the world. Demand greatly exceeds the number of places available and we have to be very selective.

Staff and their academic interests

• Professor Robert Baldwin: Regulation; public law; harmonisation in Europe.
• Anne Barron: Legal theory, intellectual property law and aspects of public law.
• Dr Joanna Benjamin: Internet and financial markets; computerisation and substantive financial law; cross-border securities collateral; legal risk in financial markets.
• Dr Chaloka Beyani: Public international law and human rights; legitimacy of states; human rights; constitutional reform; refugees; African legal systems.
• Professor Julia Black: Regulation, financial services, public law and company law.
• Dr Jacco Bomhoff: Conflict of laws, comparative constitutional law, and 20th century history of legal thought.
• David Bradley: Comparative Family Law in developed countries; family law – institutional, cultural and political perspectives.
• Dr Jo Braithwaite: Diversity theory, particularly in the context of the legal profession, socio-legal insights into financial law and lawyering.
• Professor Michael Bridge: Domestic and international sale of goods; international trade law; personal property; contract; commercial credit and security; banking law; insolvency; comparative private law.
• Professor Damian Chalmers: Free movement of goods and services within the EU; EU external trade law; EU law and the environment.
• Professor Christine Chinkin: Public international law; UN matters; international rights of women; international dispute resolution.
• Professor Hugh Collins: Individual employment law; law of contract; legal theory; social and political theory.
• Professor Neil Duxbury: Jurisprudence, Legal History, and Law and Economics.
• Professor Vanessa Finch: Company law, especially company directors and corporate governance; corporate insolvency law; personal insolvency law.
• Dr Tatiana Flessas: Legal theory, in particular heritage law.
• Dr Julian Fulbrook: Personal injury litigation; health and safety at work; industrial diseases; social security law.
• Dr Dev Gangjee: Intellectual property law, in particular trademarks.
• Professor Conor Gearty: Human rights; civil liberties; terrorism.
• Dr Veerle Heyvaert: Environmental law and regulation and European Community law.
• Dr Florian Hoffmann: The relationship between human security and human rights, rights-based approaches to development in the domestic and international sphere, collective knowledge and international normativity, postnational global governance, and new theoretical foundations of international law.
• Professor Emily Jackson: Medical Law, reproduction and medical ethics.
• Dr David Kershaw: Corporate law and accounting regulation.
• Dr Claire Kilpatrick: Labour law, in particular the relationship between labour law and social security; EU law and in particular EU employment policy.
• Dr Jan Kleinheisterkamp: international contracts, with special emphasis on arbitration and conflict of laws; comparative law in the field of international contracts; the legal problems of the international dimension of trade.
• Professor Nicola Lacey: Criminal law and criminal justice; legal and social theory, with a particular interest in feminist issues.
• Dr Andrew Lang: Sociological and constructivist approaches to the study of international organisations (focussing on the WTO); the design of global governance institutions in conditions of pervasive uncertainty; the interaction between international trade law and other sub-fields of international law (particularly human rights law); the General Agreement on Trade in Services; and the impact of WTO legal obligations on domestic regulatory decision making processes.
• Professor Martin Loughlin: Public law; administrative law; environmental, planning and local government; methodologies of public law.
• Dr Manolis Melissaris: Theories of legal discourse and legal reasoning; legal pluralism; law and time; philosophy of criminal law.
• Dr Eva Micheler: Comparative law; company law; securities regulation as well as private international law.
• Professor Niamh Moloney: EC's regulation of financial markets and services from institutional, substantive, and contextual perspectives; the EC's harmonisation of company law.
• Giorgio Monti: Competition law; torts; comparative law.
• Dr Jo Murkens: German and British constitutional law, theory and history; recurrent patterns of legal (and quasi-legal) argument, and the relevance for the European and international context.
• Professor Tim Murphy: Law and social theory; legal history; property law; computers and law.
• Andrew Murray: Information technology, particularly legal and regulatory structures of the internet.
• Professor Jill Peay: Mental health review tribunals; disordered offenders; prosecution and sentencing.
• Dr Thomas Poole: Conceptual foundations of constitutionalism; legitimacy of judicial review; new jurisprudence of rights.
• Alain Pottage: Property law; evidence; theories of property; psychoanalytical theory and law; feminist theory and law.
• Dr Peter Ramsay: Criminal law and criminal justice; legal and social theory.
• Professor Mike Redmayne: Evidence; criminal procedure; criminal justice.
• Professor Robert Reiner: Policing; criminology; criminal justice.
• Anthea Roberts: The adjudication of international law before international courts and tribunals; comparative approaches to international law before domestic courts; re-theorising the doctrine of sources of international law, particularly with respect to the role of custom and general principles and the challenges posed by the work of international organisations; and extraterritorial and universal jurisdiction.
• Dr Ian Roxan: International taxation; trusts.
• Dr Margot Salomon: Human rights in relation to global poverty; the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples; and the protection of human rights in Africa.
• Dr Andrew Scott: Media law and regulation; constitutional law and competition law.
• Dr Fauzia Shariff: Legal pluralism within the nation state; rights of minorities and importance of power relations in access to justice issues; rights of indigenous and ethnic tribal peoples; governance aspects of development; forced marriage.
• Robert Simpson: Trade unions and law; industrial disputes; freedom of association; collective bargaining.
• Dr Umberto-Igor Stramignoni: Private law, particularly UK, France and Italy; theoretical foundations of comparative method.
• Dr Siva Thambisetty: Intellectual property law, particularly biotechnology law and related issues.
• Dr Stephen Watterson: Banking / financial law; commercial law; unjust enrichment.
• Dr Charlie Webb: Contract law; restitution; trusts and private law theory.
• Dr Michael Wilkinson: European constitutionalism and the theoretical dimensions of constitutionalism beyond the state; legal and political theory.
• Professor Sarah Worthington: Personal property law/securities; company law; restitution; equity; insolvency law.

Opportunities for research

We are keen to encourage the development of research in socio-legal studies and invite applications for research in areas of staff interest and expertise. The PhD has always been of high quality and many outstanding PhD theses have been published.

The normal entry requirement for the MPhil/PhD programme is an average of 68 per cent on the LLM or equivalent qualification. The requirement will be applied flexibly, in particular to candidates who have performed exceptionally well in a dissertation or who have an outstanding undergraduate qualification. The number of students we accept is limited. With your application you should give the title of a broad general area in which you wish to undertake research, and a detailed outline (three or four pages) of a specific topic within that field indicating the ways in which you consider that extended scholarly research and analysis in the field will make a significant and original contribution to knowledge. You should also give some indication of the materials you expect to use, where you expect to find them and the methods of analysis you propose to use. If the proposal takes the form of a theoretical hypothesis, you should indicate how you propose to test it.

You will have research training through LSE's research methods courses run by the Methodology Institute, and at departmental level, through the Law Department research seminar. This consists of presentations concentrating on the methodological problems of legal and socio-legal research, by members of staff, visiting speakers and research students. You are expected to attend the seminar and give presentations on your work. Some students are given the opportunity to teach undergraduates. Doctoral students are also invited to staff seminars and seminars given by other PhD students.

Registration as a visiting research student is for those who do not wish to proceed to a higher degree, but want to pursue their own research with a supervisor who can act as a sounding board and make some of the necessary contacts for empirical research. Applicants wishing to undertake some aspect of their research in the UK must be doctoral students currently registered for the PhD degree at another university. Some seminars and classes can be attended, subject to the advice and approval of the supervisor and teachers concerned. No degree or diploma is awarded, but an appropriate certificate of attendance can be provided on request.

The main resources for research students are the LSE Library, the Library of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, other University of London college libraries and the University Library.

Computer facilities are provided for doctoral students on the sixth floor of the New Academic Building.

The application deadline for the MPhil/PhD in Law is 15 March 2010.