BA Hons Law & Economics

The aims of this class are to:

• provide you with a basic knowledge of the history, structure and institutions of the Scottish legal system
• provide you with the skills required to find, interpret and analyse the law applicable in Scotland, from all their various sources
• introduce you to competing conceptions of law
• introduce you to legal reasoning

The aims of this class are to develop knowledge and critical analysis of:

• the nature of the United Kingdom constitution, including the ways in which the constitution has changed in recent decades, and key proposals for further reform
• the sources of constitutional rules, both legal and non-legal
• the central principles of the constitution, including democracy, the rule of law, the separation of powers, the sovereignty of Parliament, responsible government, and fundamental human rights
• the structure, composition, functions and powers of legislative, executive and judicial institutions in Scotland and the United Kingdom
• the impact of European Union membership on the location of power within the United Kingdom constitution, and of the relevance of European human rights law

The purpose of this class is to provide you with a balanced introduction to economics which will be at once self-contained and lay the foundation for further study in economics and more generally. The work of the class will be based on a programme of systematic directed reading, supplemented by tutorials, using group projects and in-class short answer tests as cumulative assessment.

Following on from Public Law 1, Public Law 2 aims to consolidate knowledge and understanding of constitutional and administrative law. Students taking this class will be required to have taken Public Law 1 in the first year. It'll build upon knowledge of the key concepts and institutions of the UK constitution.

As a second year class, its rationale is to give you the opportunity to progress from an understanding of the constitution to an understanding of the role of the law in the constitutional control of public power. This course encourages you to adopt an evaluative and critical stance towards ongoing constitutional developments. The course will focus on control of administrative action, both by the judiciary and by ombudsmen. The protection of individual rights will be a key feature, focusing on judicial protection but also encompassing the role of human rights institutions in the UK and Scotland. The future control of public power will be discussed, including topical debates concerning constitutional reform in this area.

Family law concerns the control which the law exerts over domestic relationships and families; it affects everyone to a greater or lesser degree.

Topics include:

• the legal status of children, parental responsibilities and rights and the upbringing of children - including issues in adoption and fostering, local authority care and the Children's Hearing system
• legal consequences of marriage/civil partnership
• divorce - including what happens to the family and its financial consequences
• unmarried domestic relations, opposite-sex and same-sex

Commercial law is a second year compulsory subject on the LLB (and LML) degree. The class provides you with an understanding of commercial law in a Scottish context. It partially meets the commercial law subject requirements and related skills outcomes of the Law Society of Scotland and the Faculty of Advocates (albeit that some of the commercial professional topics, eg sale of goods and insurance law, are dealt with by other courses).

Building on the knowledge you acquire in first year, the general academic objective of the course is to examine the basic principles and rules concerning core aspects of commercial law, including the main principles of agency, partnership and company law, the law relating to various methods of payment (including consumer credit and bills of exchange) the rules governing the ways in which creditors can ‘secure’ repayment of a debt (eg through taking personal guarantees from third parties for repayment of the debt, or by establishing rights in security over debtor property); the basic principles of diligence; the consequences of both corporate and individual debtor inability to repay debts (corporate insolvency and personal bankruptcy respectively).

While the focus of the class is on ‘a black letter’ analysis of relevant statutory and common law in the broad commercial area, in order to aid understanding of relevant principles, the class also examines the policy rationales underlying the current law and recent and projected reforms in this area.

The design of this class is primarily aimed at enhancing your ability to read cases, deal with case law and apply the techniques of case-analysis and common law development.

You'll acquire an in-depth and up-to-date knowledge and understanding, from both a legal and a social perspective, of the rules of law governing involuntary obligations, that is to say the law of delict and the law of unjustified enrichment.

You'll acquire the ability to apply the rules of law to particular fact situations in order to provide definitive answers to the problems exposed in these situations.

You'll develop critical and reasoning skills, giving you the ability to make and present personal and informed judgments on the rules of law and their application within the domestic legal system.

The general rationale of this class is to provide you with a contemporary understanding of the law of property, trusts and succession in Scotland, and to meet Law Society of Scotland requirements in this subject-area.

The EU law class focuses on the constitutional and institutional order of the EU as well as on the internal market. To this end, the class looks at the European integration process, the EU institutions, EU competences, the decision-making process within the EU, the principles underpinning the EU legal order and the principles governing the internal market.

This is the core Microeconomics class in Year 2. It aims to develop your understanding of: the concepts of consumer choice; the motives of the firm and profit maximisation; the market and its role in achieving equilibrium prices and quantities; and the implications of market power. It introduces you to mathematical techniques commonplace in Economics, giving you the ability to apply these in a wider economic context.   

The class builds upon the macroeconomic foundations established in the first year Economics class and both extends and deepens analysis. This class will develop your ability to use key macroeconomic models and will also provide an introduction to the analysis of economic data. 

The main aim of this class is to introduce you to the major theoretical ideas and values of law, and to debates about those ideas and values, thereby enhancing their understanding of law in general.

The class explores relationships between law and morality, law and society and between law and power. In doing so, the course also explores what we mean by law, morality and power. The course requires you to work on your own and make an oral presentation and trains you in concise thinking.

The aim of the class is to introduce you to the law of landlord and tenant, and to concepts of housing need and market allocation of housing resources and the different ways in which such concepts are interpreted and operated in modern Britain.  The method of teaching and assessing the class is designed to enhance learning, academic and transferable skills.

This class aims to provide you with an understanding of the problems inherent in situations involving a foreign element and the basic concepts and principles of Scots international private law. More particularly, attention will be given to the rules which establish when the Scottish court has jurisdiction in any case involving a foreign element. The class will also determine the applicable law in cases involving international elements heard before a Scottish court and the rules on recognition and enforcement of judgments in certain contexts.

The International private law rules in relation to:

• contract
• delict
• marriage
• divorce & nullity
• parent & child
• property
• insolvency & succession

Tutorials for this class take place on Saturday mornings.

This class is not recommended for Erasmus exchange students.

Most industrialised countries, and the European Union now have elaborate laws, rules and procedures for ensuring the maintenance of a competitive economy. This course looks at how the competition laws of the United Kingdom and the European Union affect how business operates in Britain.

If you're contemplating a career in business, or are simply a consumer, some knowledge of competition is useful. If you're a student of industrial economics, or of marketing, some knowledge of competition law is a wise precaution. Moreover there are considerably more job opportunities in this area, whether as an economic adviser, legal practitioner or in-house lawyer advising on effective compliance.

Although we are all equal in the law, some are treated more equally than others. This module examines the nature of discrimination and some of the reasons for it, and the history of the law which tries to prohibit it and promote equality. The class looks in depth at the Equality Act 2010 and relevant case law. It covers the protected characteristics, direct and indirect discrimination, harassment, victimisation and disability discrimination, including the duty to make reasonable adjustments. As well as individual anti-discrimination law in employment and goods and services, the class examines preventive and pro-active measures, including positive action and the public equality duty and the arguments around their nature.

Assessment consists of a group presentation on an approved topic of your choice and a piece of coursework requiring problem solving skills and analysis of law and policy.

The Ethics and Justice class aims to introduce you to the world of work by bridging the gap between theory and practice, and by providing you with the intellectual and practical tools to deal with the personal and practical dimensions of law in a competent, ethical and socially responsible manner.

The class will help to develop your legal, intellectual and practical skills, and provide you with an opportunity to reflect on the effectiveness and ethics of what you do and how this fits in with problems of access to justice. It will also enhance your understanding of the social and economic context in which legal rules operate.

This class is only open to Law Clinic students with case experience.

The extensive uptake of new digital information technologies and particularly, the internet, has resulted in expanding our legal universe, with new laws being created, the application of older laws being challenged and reconfigured and, unavoidably, new legal challenges arising due to conflicts of regulatory decisions with technological advances.

The aim of the class is to address the basic issues arising from the advent of the internet and related digital technologies and familiarise you with important legal developments that have taken place in the last 20 years.

This class encourages you to think constructively and critically about contemporary issues in the field of criminology. It also focuses on contemporary responses to crime in the fields of punishment, imprisonment and penal policy, with reference to developments in Scotland and beyond.

This class deals with the questions, what are those 'basic' or 'fundamental' rights and freedoms to which every individual is entitled in a democratic society, and how to protect them against possible violations.

The class focuses on a selection of the most prominent human rights which have resulted in considerable amounts of litigation.  You'll consider the right to life, right not to be tortured, freedom of expression, children’s rights and issues regarding terrorism.

This class aims to provide you with an understanding of employment law in a UK and EU-wide context and to introduce you to the sources, principles and main features of employment law.

You'll learn about key employment protection provisions and the major collective provisions of employment law in the UK, including the legal position of the contract of employment, the status of employee, the law and practice of unfair dismissal, discrimination law and working time regulations.

The class will focus on practical employment law involving practitioners, an Employment Judge and an Employment Tribunal visit.

This course is concerned with the legal relationship of banker and customer and the services offered by bankers in the community. It examines the financial instruments employed in financing trading and other transactions and is especially concerned with the law and practice of lending, both secured and unsecured.

Intellectual property is integral to all our daily lives, whether it is the music we listen to, the news we read, or chair we sit on, as well as providing the resources necessary to produce new medicines, and the superabundance of brand marketing to which we are routinely subjected.

The class will study the law of patents, trademarks (registered and unregistered), copyright, and moral rights, and the law of confidence (which includes trade secrets). Both the substantive law, and the underlying policy behind providing exclusive rights for this type of property will be examined.

Interested in what is going on in Syria? Concerned about what may or may not be going on in North Korea? Pondering why troops are still in Afghanistan? Then public international law might be the class for you.

The class explores the relationships between states as among themselves and with international institutions. As well as giving an overall view of the area, we'll also look at specific incidents which have arisen and which have been dominated by international law, and which in turn have made huge contributions to the area.

The syllabus looks at sources including treaties and customary law, statehood, the collective use of force, state responsibility and terrorism, the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.

This class is evening teaching only.

In Scotland, local government employs around 250,000 people. Every council has its own legal department and nearly 10% of practising solicitors in Scotland are employed by local authorities. It is essential that lawyers in private practice have knowledge of how local government works.

The course will cover a selection of the following topics:

• what local government is and what does it do
• the constitutional position of local government
• the structure of Scottish local government and its statutory framework
• elections to and membership of a local authority
• rights, duties, liabilities and restrictions of councillors
• the councillors’ Code of Conduct and registration of interests
• the powers of local government; the ultra vires rule; community planning; the power of wellbeing; publicity powers
• byelaws, management rules and private Acts of Parliament
• how councils work; the political dimension
• external controls on local government; the courts; the ombudsman, the Standards Commission, the Accounts Commission
• a brief guide to local government finance

Adam Smith's hidden hand - markets result in efficient outcomes - doesn't always work. We seek to understand why by using the tool of game theory to analyse how agents interact and discuss market power and externalities.  We then consider other issues in public economics including cost-benefit analysis, fiscal federalism, taxation and crime.  You will also learn more about how to analyse microeconomic data.

This class builds on the Macroeconomics you studied in second year by covering four topics in detail:

• models of economic growth
• the effects of macroeconomic policy in an open economy
• the interrelationships between money growth, output, unemployment and inflation
• the implications of high government debt. 

You will also learn more about how to analyse macroeconomic data. 

The dissertation is an important part of the fourth year programme. Single Honours Economics BA students are required to submit a dissertation in Economics while Joint Honours BA students may submit a dissertation in Economics or in their other Honours subject. 

Information Economics, the topic of this class, considers market failure resulting from uncertainty and information asymmetry. The course looks at two specific examples of market failures: moral hazard and adverse selection. We will discuss policy solutions to reduce the negative impacts of these market failures on society. We will also apply uncertainty to game theory and learn how to find Bayesian Nash Equilibria. Furthermore, we will examine the impact of externalities on social welfare and learn about the optimal provision of public goods.

This class aims to provide you with the required tools to understand current macroeconomic issues, such as the interactions between the banking sector and monetary policy or the policy responses to the global financial crisis.  Throughout the class, the analytical usefulness of the theoretical models taught is illustrated with real-world examples. 

This course investigates the actions that firms in an industry might take to preserve their profit in that industry, and the implications that this has for competition policy and regulation. We take an analytical approach to the issues which will be supported by examining case studies and current events. 

In third year, you will have learned about regression in both a cross-sectional data and time series data context. This class extends that knowledge to two core topics: causal inference and forecasting. Both are highly relevant topics to real-word economics. Understanding the effects of economic policies and decision-making requires careful empirical analysis and understanding of what the data can and cannot tell us. Topics on causal inference build skill in this area. Furthermore, policymakers and economist often want to know something about what to expect, for example of unemployment, given what has happened recently and in the past. Topics in forecasting build skills in this area.

In causal inference, we begin with foundations on how to think about correlation vs. causation and threats to interpreting regression model coefficients as causal effects. We then introduce two methodological approaches. These are instrumental variables and difference-in-differences. Under both we develop the intuition and key assumptions that will allow interpreting statistical results from a regression model as a causal effect from a variable or policy change of interest. We further work with example cases in labs and learn how to implement the methods with data in R, and we use tutorials to think about these methods in action and continue developing the intuition.

In forecasting, we will introduce you to basic tools needed to become a forecaster, such as understanding what a loss function and forecast horizon is. In addition, you will learn various forecasting evaluation techniques to compare competing models.

This class gives a balanced view of the role of finance in promoting long-run economic growth, but also booms and busts. The nature and role of financial intermediaries will be introduced, and, afterwards, formally addressed in a simple aggregate growth model. Empirical evidence will be examined, before turning to the specifics of micro-finance. The importance of financial globalisation will also be investigated. Finally, the rest of the class will be devoted to deciphering the causes and consequences of the current financial crisis.

Behavioural Economics offers alternative theories that merge psychological insights with economic theory and are based on experimental and other evidence, that attempt to provide a better explanation of real-world behaviour.

This class is concerned with exploring these behavioural theories with the aim of providing you with an expanded toolkit with which to approach ‘real-world Economics’ that is based on the burgeoning Behavioural Economics literature that has emerged over the past two or three decades.

After studying this, you should be able to extend much of your previously-learned knowledge in Microeconomics in various directions that take into account more realistic ways of modelling how individuals behave.

The class provides you with an introduction to Natural Resource Economics, Environmental Economics and Energy Economics, establishing connections between the economics and the policy aspects of the class topics. It focuses on the contributions of Economics to understanding environmental, energy and natural resource problems, their causes, and the design of effective public policies to counteract them.