In an era of rapid globalisation and shifting challenges in maritime law, professionals from legal and other fields require specialised tools to navigate the complexities of international maritime law while honing their expertise in policy and governance.

Despite the prominent role of maritime law in global trade, environmental regulation, and international relations, its intricate frameworks and interdisciplinary implications often remain underexplored. This programme bridges that gap by providing comprehensive insights into the legal, geopolitical, environmental, and economic dimensions of international maritime law.

Our seminars offer a dynamic platform to engage with critical issues in maritime law, fostering robust discussions through a diverse range of materials, required readings, case studies, and interactive resources – all to prepare you for a distinguished career in the field of international maritime law.

This module examines the role of law in promoting the protection of the marine environment.

Students will explore the legal framework that underpins contemporary ocean governance, placing special focus on the environmental provisions of the 1982 UN Convention on Law of the Sea, its two implementing agreements, and associated global, regional, and sectoral instruments and frameworks.

Attention will also be given to pending regulatory and enforcement challenges relating to the protection of the marine environment and the sustainable development of maritime activities.

Given the uniqueness of contracts and transactions in maritime law in regard to the traditional obligations in law due to their history, particularity of the industry and the national-regional-international interplay, as well as public/private aspects of the various frameworks they encompass, it is necessary to equip students – coming not only from the legal but also other areas – with tools required to properly respond to the main issues and masterfully employ ideas surrounding the international maritime contract and transaction law.

Maritime law contracts and transactions often remain on the sidelines of even the more detailed courses of private international law due to their particularity. This course, by providing students with the legal and political aspects of maritime contract and transactions law will fill in that niche.

Seminars will not only give students the necessary information and skills to understand the complexity surrounding the maritime contract and transactions law but also provide an open space for discussion on the wide variety of materials made available and required to read, watch and listen in preparation for the seminars.

This module explores how environmental protection is affected by the fragmentation of international law. More specifically, the module aims to:

• provide students with an understanding of the main causes and consequences of fragmentation in international law;
• provide students with an insight into how fragmentation affects the relationship between environmental regimes (e.g. the ocean and climate change regimes) and between environmental and environment-related regimes (e.g. the biodiversity and human rights regimes); and
• acquaint students with the legal techniques that can be used to promote policy coherence, mutual supportiveness, and synergies between environmental and environment-related regimes.

This class will focus on the WTO system, but will also include the IMF and the World Bank. It will trace the origins and development of the world trading system and the economic and philosophical principles underlying the international trading regime.

It will primarily focus on analysing the institutions and agreements that have shaped international trade rules, and their underlying policies, as well as identifying critical issues and challenges for the future, including the interaction of the world trading regime with issues such as ‘democracy’, ‘free trade’, ‘sovereignty’ and ‘development’. The class will also explore the interaction of WTO law with other non-economic values and norms, as well as its potential to penetrate into and shape domestic legal systems.

This is a class which seeks to provide students with an understanding of the basic principles of arbitration. The class sets arbitration within the wider context of Alternative Dispute Resolution. Content is largely led by statute analysis.

This will allow students an understanding of the law of arbitration in England by focusing on the Arbitration Act 1996 and of the law of arbitration in Scotland by focusing on the differences between the Arbitration Act 1996 and the Arbitration (Scotland) Act 2010. The class also gives students an appreciation for the law of international arbitration by focusing on the UNCITRAL Model Law of International Commercial Arbitration.

The class is not practical but instead focused on arbitration law and regulations. The class is delivered by two external lecturers, both of whom are past Presidents of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in Scotland.