ELLM: Upcoming modules

Since the end of the Second World War, judicial review has flourished around the world: in many jurisdictions, courts have been given the power to strike down or declare inapplicable laws passed by the democratic legislature, if they conclude that the law in question violates fundamental rights. What is the point of this practice, and is it justifiable? This course introduces the students to contemporary theories of human and constitutional rights and the debates about judicial review. Questions to be discussed include: What are the values on which rights are based – for example, personhood, freedom, equality, or dignity? Are rights principles, as Robert Alexy claims, which means that can they be limited when the limitation is ‘proportionate’? Or are they trumps, as Ronald Dworkin has famously argued? Are there any absolute rights, such as freedom from torture, and how can absolute rights be justified? Is the judicial enforcement of rights undemocratic, or is it consistent with or even required by democracy? Is the point of the judicial enforcement of rights the creation of a ‘culture of justification’? We will approach these questions by focussing on both cases and doctrines of human and constitutional rights law and the work of some of the leading theorists and philosophers of rights, trying to reconcile theory and practice.

Lecturer: Professor Kai Möller

Module Code: LL426E

This module covers the international law dealing with climate change with a view to assessing how risks and uncertainties caused by climate change are governed and allocated in different legal regimes. The module adopts the stance that the political and legal questions raised by climate change cannot be addressed by reference to climate change law (or indeed international environmental law) alone. Climate change gives rise to a series of profound problems touching upon a range of bodies of law (international economic law, human rights law, state responsibility, international migration law) in a complex political and ethical environment. In approaching climate change as a concrete concern relevant to these various bodies of law and practice, the module will address the normative and/or ethical bases for choosing between actions designed to prevent and/or manage climate change and its consequences, attentive to developmental imperatives and the theoretical concerns raised by the 'fragmented' nature of international law.

Lecturer: Dr Stephen Humphreys

Module Code: LL420E

International business parties can choose which legal system's rules will govern their contract disputes; taken together, English law and New York law dominate the market. Anglo-American Contract Law will acquaint students with the fundamental ideas of the common law of contracts. Students will also learn how these common-law ideas have developed differently in England and the United States. The module's main themes include: freedom of contract and its limits; the tension between documentary certainty and tacit understandings; the relevance of extracontractual notions of fairness; and the nature of the judicial role in contractual dispute resolution. We will explore these themes by working through both hypothetical and real cases. Though some historical understanding is crucial, the emphasis is on issues with contemporary practical importance. Additionally, we will focus on ideas peculiar to the common law of contracts and otherwise inaccessible to students from a civil law background. We will also pay special attention to areas where English and American law have diverged. Along the way, students will become familiar with the distinctive styles of legal reasoning on display in each country. 

Lecturer: Dr Paul MacMahon

Module Code: LL451E

Personal data is an important factor of production in data-driven economies, and the processing of personal data can generate significant economic and social benefits. Personal data processing can also have a detrimental impact on established rights and values, such as autonomy, privacy and data protection. Legal frameworks to regulate personal data processing and to negotiate these competing rights and interests have been enacted across the world, with the EU legal model used as a blueprint. 

This module provides a critical introduction to data protection and data governance. It is comprised of three parts. First, we introduce data protection legislation, equipping participants with an understanding of its scope and substance and some key controversies around its application. Second, we examine the role of data protection as AI Regulation, including its role in regulating data-derived decisions and inferences, its implications for large language models and Generative AI and its application to a concrete scenario (EdTech). Finally, we consider the regulatory design of data protection law, examining regulatory competition between States concerning international data transfers, regualtory coherence between different legal fields governing data and regulatory effectiveness through compliance and enforcement. 

Lecturer: Dr Orla Lynskey

Module Code: LL440E

In this module, we will explore the regulation of mergers, acquisitions and restructurings in Europe. We will focus on legal techniques for the combination and restructuring of business operations in Europe, with a particular focus on the legal issues arising in cross-border transactions in the EU.

There are a number of reasons for corporations wanting to restructure their operations or to make acquisitions. For instance, firms may want to acquire a strategically valuable firm or asset in order to improve the efficiency (and thus increase the value) of their business operations; they may want to implement a better governance structure, enabling them to manage their undertaking more effectively; or they may want to subject themselves to more favourable legal or tax rules – including choosing among different national corporate laws.

EU law offers a range of legal vehicles for achieving such aims, and it is these vehicles we will explore throughout the term. In particular, we will look at re-incorporations of EU companies based on the relevant Treaty provisions; takeovers of (listed) EU companies; domestic (“statutory”) mergers; de-mergers and spin-offs; cross-border mergers in the EU; and the European Company.

Content overview:

• The market for corporate control, corporate ownership structures and transaction structures for takeovers and restructurings in Europe
• European takeover regulation
• Domestic mergers
• Divisions & spin-offs
• Cross-border mergers
• Employee participation (board-level co-determination) and board structures, and their relevance for corporate transactions
• The European Company (SE)
• Brief introduction to taxation of corporate transactions and tax-related drivers and incentives for intra-group reorganisation and company migration

Lecturer: Edmund Schuster

Module Code: LL432E

Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers immense opportunities: it has the potential to transform and enhance human wellbeing, peace, and prosperity. It also is an extremely disruptive technology which will change the way we do communicate, business and interact with one another. To successfully integrate AI into society we must ensure it is designed, developed, deployed, and used, in a manner that is safe, in such a way as to be human-centric, trustworthy, and responsible.

Against the backdrop of this challenge, this course considers how AI changes the legal landscape and how lawyers, and anyone interested in how our society is regulated, will need to adapt to this new landscape. It does so by examining how AI automates regulatory processes based upon data, a process known as datafication, and how data is used to train and the algorithms at the heart of AI. From here it moves on to examine who controls the development and deployment of these algorithms and how we might control their development and deployment in AI systems by looking at the different models for regulation and compliance from ethical models to the development of legal models, particularly the EU’s AI Act. It asks how we should regulate AI and which approach is likely to be effective. From here we will examine some of the risks of AI applications including its impact on creativity and copyright and upon how AI breaks us down, profiles us and surveils us. We end by looking at some likely disruptive effects of AI on legal practice.

Although law is jurisdictional much of the challenge of regulating AI is trans-jurisdictional and as a result this course will take a global approach to the question of how to regulate AI, focussing mostly on developments in the EU, UK, China, and the US. It is highly comparative and will use materials drawn from several jurisdictions.

This course does not require an in-depth understanding of digital technology or AI systems – we are primarily interested in the implications of the use of information technology, AI and Machine Learning, and the intended and unintended consequences of regulating that use.

Lecturer: Andrew Murray

Module Code: LL449E

The course will address the following topics:

• Anatomy of the Financial Market and the Great Financial Crisis
• Building Blocks of the Regulatory World
• Rationales for its Regulation: Systemic Stability, Market Integrity, Principle-Agent Competition
• Key Elements of Financial Regulation: disclosure, resilience, risk modelling and regulation inside firm
• Global and EU Regulatory Structures
• Financial Stability – Policy Issues, Principles and Global Standard Setters
• Prudential Regulation of Banks – The Basel Accords
• The EU Banking Union
• Deposit Guarantees
• Bank Resolution and Insolvency

Lecturer: Philipp Paech

Module Code: LL406E

This course examines the international law relating to when it is permissible to use force (jus ad bellum). The aim of this course is to develop an understanding of the principles of international law that regulate the use of force in international society. It concentrates on the prohibition of resort to force in Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter and the recognized exceptions to that prohibition, namely Security Council authorization and self-defence. We will also examine in detail related concepts and doctrines, including humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect, pro-democratic intervention, the protection of nationals and the criminalization of aggression.

Lecturer: Devika Hovell

Module code: LL444E

As the past fifteen years have transformed understandings of finance and the economy, they have highlighted the economic centrality of household finance. The Covid-19 and Cost-of-Living crises laid bare how households and the wider economy have come to depend on credit markets to make ends meet and maintain economic activity. Responsibility for both the Global Financial Crisis of the late 2000s and the subsequent Great Recession can be attributed to failures of household credit markets. Consumer expenditure accounts for over 50% of GDP in most OECD economies, meaning that the financial markets and products powering this spending are of central policy importance. Key contemporary problems of economic stagnation, inequality and political instability can all in some ways be linked to problems arising in consumer financial markets, which are increasingly important sites of legal and political activity. The economic significance of SME finance is similarly clear. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) account for 99% of firms and approximately 70% of jobs in OECD countries, and questions of how these firms access finance raise perennial policy concerns. This is a particularly important time to review household and small business financial markets, given the rethinking of economic fundamentals in the aftermath of Covid-19 and the Cost-of-Living Crisis.

The significance and expansive reach of the consumer and SME dimensions of financial law are not matched by coverage in typical law school curricula – this course aims to address this imbalance by presenting a unique offering. The course begins by discussing key principles and theoretical ideas of retail financial market regulation. It considers the nature and structure of consumer and SME financial markets, examining the institutions and sources that create the ground rules of markets.  The course also asks of whom we are speaking when we talk of ‘consumers’ and ‘Small and Medium Enterprises’. The course then considers the various rationales justifying policy action in consumer and SME markets, and the various tools available to policymakers in responding to these ideas and designing market interventions.

The course applies these ideas in examining discrete consumer and SME financial product markets and related areas of law. It draws on a combination of international norms and examples from European, North American and English law. In addressing the regulation of financial contracts, it examines the bank-client relationship and fundamental assumptions regarding freedom of contract. The course considers business conduct under the common law and legislation, considering firms’ duties when negotiating, marketing, and advising in retail markets. Information disclosure regulations and ‘duties to warn’ are evaluated, before the course considers how the law requires firms to consider the affordability of loans under ‘responsible lending’ rules. Finally, the course turns its focus to financial distress and bankruptcy, considering principles for the treatment of household over-indebtedness and entrepreneurial failure in a financialised economy.

The course is academic in nature and will be of value to law students wishing to study aspects of banking and financial law that are not considered by courses focusing on business-to-business transactions. It is inter-disciplinary in nature, and so students from non-law backgrounds should also find the course accessible. The course is also designed to be valuable at a practical level to those working in legal and corporate practice advising financial services firms and/or their clients, as well as those based in government and the third sector. The course is international in scope, meaning that its content should be of interest to candidates from many jurisdictions.

Lecturer: Joe Spooner

Module Code: LL450E

This module examines the legal and administrative regulation of newsgathering and content production practices undertaken by journalists and others working in the media sector. The module is introduced with consideration of a number of themes that underpin the rest of the syllabus: the role(s) of the media in society (including conceptions of the 'public interest'); the main social, technological and regulatory influences that shape media newsgathering practise, and rights jurisprudence (in particular, the freedom of expression and freedom of the press in national and international law).

The module then examines a number of newsgathering practices that are either facilitated or proscribed by law and/or other forms of regulation. These include protection of sources (in general; vis-a vis police and security interests; payment of sources); access to information held by the state (official secrets; news management; freedom of information); access to the justice system (secret justice / physical access to courts; access to court documents; technology and the courts - text-based reporting and broadcasting; access to prisoners); media-police interaction; harassment and media intrusion, and surreptitious newsgathering practices (hacking, tapping, entrapment and subterfuge).

Lectutrer: Andrew Scott

Module Code: LL424E