LLM/PgDip/PgCert Human Rights Law

The European Convention on Human Rights is the most influential regional human rights treaty. This module looks at interpretation and enforcement of the Convention. It examines the institutions within the Council of Europe, analyses case-law on substantive guarantees in areas such as protection of life, freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment, privacy and freedom of expression, considers thematic issues, and explores challenges facing the ECHR system.

Human rights protection is a global concern. This module examines civil and political rights along with economic, social and cultural rights, and assesses the range of international monitoring and supervision regimes. Topics covered include the major international treaties and bodies. It also looks at the challenges to human rights in transitional societies as well as the right to self-determination.

The Human Rights Act 1998 has been a major constitutional development in the UK. This module examines the on-going transformation in legal culture, the expansion in judicial power and the value of human rights litigation in achieving social change.

International migration is a global phenomenon that raises multiple complex issues. This module examines the international legal framework governing international migration. Topics include protection of migrant workers, international refugee protection, the EU asylum policy, and internal displacement.

This class will examine the relationship between business and human rights and will include an introduction to the international human rights framework; the role of business entities as global actors and the identification of the legal challenges that business presents for the international legal system.

The contemporary prominence of children’s human rights can be attributed to the near universal ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) which has been subscribed to by almost all countries to date. Centred around the CRC, its relationship to regional and national human rights frameworks for children, and the implementation of children’s rights standards and norms in applied areas, this module engages with the emerging and evolving field of children’s human rights.

A shift towards automated decision-making and algorithmic regulation generates significant concerns for the protection of human rights. At the same time, there is a pressing need to study these technologies’ beneficent effects on human rights. This module aims to assess the suitability and relevance of existing human rights law in the digital age, and to evaluate conceptual, cross-disciplinary frameworks, which analyse how digital technologies shape developments in human rights law. 

You'll engage in the cutting-edge debate on global environmental law as an approach to understanding the interactions and mutual influences between international, EU, regional, national and sub-national law (including the customary laws of indigenous peoples and local communities and law-making by other non-state actors). This module also lends itself to explore the relevance of the comparative legal method for a variety of international and transnational environmental legal scholars and practitioners, by discussing the relevance, methods and challenges of comparative environmental law in a global perspective.

This module offers students the opportunity to engage critically with the philosophy and history of international criminal justice, as well as the legal frameworks, enforcement mechanisms, and contemporary developments in the arena of the prosecution of international crimes (genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, aggression, and torture). It explores some of the major developments that have taken place in the arena of international criminal justice over the last quarter of a century, their historical antecedents and contemporary implications.

The aim of the module, which is offered on the Masters in Mediation, is for you to develop a critical awareness of the theoretical and disciplinary sources of conflict resolution.

The western world’s “penal crisis” has, over the past thirty years, posed specific challenges to the reform tradition. In this module we explore the nature, dimensions and national permutations of that crisis, putative solutions to it and likely obstacles to their realisation. We draw on theoretical developments in the study of justice and punishment and explore their potential to illuminate and inform processes of progressive penal change.

The module examines contemporary changes, international evidence and policy transfer, and technological challenges and considers reform across the globe. The module draws on insights and perspectives including law, the sociology of punishment, history and the social sciences.

Learning is conducted through a range of innovative methods such as debates and media representations. The module is supplemented by visits to key institutions' prisons, women’s justice centres, as well as conferences with key practitioners and policy makers.

Youth justice attracts interest across society, politically, socially and legally. Some issues – from the murder of two year old James Bulger in 1993 by two 10 year old children to the riots in 2011 in England – spark moral panic and demonstrate the extent to which such matters cut across disciplinary boundaries and influence legal and societal responses to children who offend. 

Youth justice generates its own philosophical approaches eg in the welfare / justice debate. It also provides a context within which to examine broader issues affecting criminal justice as a whole such as the need to balance the rights of the accused against the public interest. 

This class will provide an opportunity for you to critically examine some key aspects of youth justice law, policy and philosophy from a number of perspectives. Your learning will be supplemented by visits to custodial and innovative community settings, as well as a visit to and a simulation of Scotland’s unique system of ‘Children’s Hearings’ (a decision-making system based on the best needs of the child).