Year 1, Component 03

You’ll cover the legal aspects of banking transactions, banking regulation and the bank-customer relationship. You’ll be introduced to the concept as banks as economic and social institutions and their regulation in a domestic and global context. You’ll analyse the bank-customer relationship including the important issues of contractual fairness, the banks duty of confidentiality, and the potential for transactional and advisory liability.

You’ll analyse how new information technologies influence the traditional legal approach to crime prevention and criminal prosecution. You’ll study the complexity of the challenges facing the legal profession. You’re encouraged to build on your knowledge of substantive criminal law to assess to what extent existing criminal law principles and tools can be used to solve new problems. As the challenges are not unique to the UK, where appropriate a comparative approach will be adopted with the US and Europe.

In this module you’ll gain a detailed understanding of the law governing data protection, and in particular European Union law on this subject.

This module aims to apply the comparative and case study methodologies to examine the national and global legal, philosophical, historical and socio-political contexts of business law and commercial relationships and transactions.

Ensuring effective competition and maintaining a competitive market structure are the two key elements of EU competition policy. In this module you’ll examine the legal rules of EU Competition Law, taking into account the underlying economic principles and wider policy issues. Gain an understanding of the rationale behind competition law and policy, and its importance in the regulation of a free market economy, and develop an in-depth knowledge of the general principles of EU competition law and its application.

How do you protect the environment during armed conflict? What role does the media play in conflict situations? What are the implications of asymmetric warfare? Undertake in-depth analysis of problems associated with armed conflict. Examine real-life issues that interest you, to see how different laws, institutions and competing interests combine.

How does public international law apply to peace and field operations? What about international human rights law? Or the international law of armed conflict? Understand the institutional law of the United Nations. Examine foundational legal aspects of peace operations, as well as key unresolved legal issues.

Artificial intelligence never seems to be far from the headlines. Sarah O`Connor of the Financial Times was quoted in a recent House of Lords report as stating that `if you ever write an article that has robots or artificial intelligence in the headline, you are guaranteed that it will have twice as many people clicking on it`. The advent of big data and more advanced and cheaper computational power has meant that machine learning has become much more accessible and available to a wide range of actors. AI is no longer the preserve of science fiction but is already a reality with many forms of machine learning and robotics already being used today. Within the last few years, governments and major technology companies have started to release AI strategies and major investments are being made in innovation and in understanding how AI will benefit and present risks to society. AI is already offering many opportunities for the better protection of human rights while at the same time presenting serious risks. While many actors describe these risks narrowly (focusing on the right to privacy), the threats (as well as the opportunities) affect the entire human rights spectrum. For example, AI applications may be used to document human rights violations; implement the Sustainable Development Goals; respond more effectively to the refugee `crisis`; and manage the impacts of climate change. They potentially offer innovative ways to enhance access to education; enable persons with disabilities and older persons to live more autonomously; advance the right to the highest attainable standard of health; and provide ways to tackle human trafficking and forced labour. At the same time, the use of big data and AI can present significant risks to human rights, even in contexts where they are used with the intention to advance them. They can introduce new threats and aggravate and amplify existing challenges to human rights, for example by reducing accountability for rights violations due to opaque decision-making processes, or by widening inequality. This could be due to factors such as uneven distribution of benefits, discriminatory impacts and biased datasets. Big data and AI have wide ranging effects across society and individuals` lives, including collective impact, many of which are not yet fully understood. They can put the full spectrum of human rights – civil, cultural, economic, political and social – at risk. Many actors involved in the governance and regulation of AI as well as key international, regional and national human rights institutions and NGOs are starting to work on the human rights impact of AI and to develop responses, although this remains at an embryonic stage. This module is designed to enable you to learn about the different technologies that fall under the broad and popular heading of `AI` and to understand and analyse how their use in different contexts affects human rights. The module is offered by the ESRC Human Rights, Big Data and Technology project based at the University of Essex. We are a major ESRC investment examining the risks and opportunities for human rights posed by big data and technology and developing effective policy, governance and regulatory responses. We work internationally on these issues and will integrate our ongoing research and practical experience on these issues into the module. This will enable you to engage with technological and policy developments as they happen in a rapidly changing field. As many international organisations, governments, technology companies and NGOs are starting to grapple with the impact of AI on human rights and the way in which they work, this module will provide preparation for study and employment after the LLM and MA across a range of domains and institutions.

This module is a compulsory module for all LLM in International Law students on all pathways, which aims to develop students’ academic skills as required for the postgraduate study of international law. This module has been designed to be taken alongside the module LW902 Public International Law (also compulsory for all LLM in International Law students). The LW949 Academic Skills in International Law module equips students with the technical skills required to engage in research and study of public international law, including academic referencing of scholarship, treaties, cases of international courts and tribunals. Students also develop the necessary skills to analyse international legal materials, complete both essay and problem-based questions within the field, produce high-quality independent writing at postgraduate level, and reflect upon feedback. This module will also prepare students for the foundation essay (formative essay) for the LLM in International Law. This is a formative essay, which provides an opportunity for students to engage with postgraduate level reading and writing on a topic of international law, and to submit an essay for the first time at LLM level. As a valuable learning tool, students receive feedback on their foundation essay, allowing them to reflect accordingly for future coursework with a view on how to further develop their skills throughout their postgraduate degree.