LLM Law (International Criminal Law and Practice)
1 Year Full-Time | September Start

Studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This module is designed to support your transition to postgraduate level study in the use and practice of subject specific skills around assessments and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to further develop your abilities to read and study effectively for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your use and application of language and communications skills suitable for a postgraduate level of study.

The topics you will cover on the module include:

• Understanding postgraduate assignment briefs.
• Developing advanced academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.
• Practising advanced ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’
• Planning and structuring postgraduate level academic assignments (e.g. essays, dissertations and presentations).
• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.
• Speaking in postgraduate seminar presentations.
• Giving discipline-related postgraduate level academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.
• Postgraduate level speed reading techniques.

This module offers a critical introduction to legal research methods. It is designed to ensure that you will be able to confidently embark on legal research on your Masters programme whatever your academic background or jurisdiction. Your lectures are designed to refresh and develop your understanding of legal research techniques, referencing and evaluating sources. In your workshops you will be provided with opportunities to undertake and obtain feedback upon a series of legal research and writing tasks, thus enabling you to develop critical understanding of what it meant by effective legal research, and how you yourself can become an effective legal researcher.

In this module you will draw on your skills and knowledge acquired from the taught elements of the LLM branch specialism and will develop and refine these in the context of a self-chosen area of independent specialist study. You will develop; (1) your understanding and use of legal research techniques, (2) An ability to critically analyse and evaluate legal data, (3) the ability to handle complex legal material systematically and creatively including material at the forefront of the field of study, (4) a conceptual understanding of the research topic, (5) skill at showing a systematic understanding of knowledge and a critical awareness of current legal issues, (6) the ability to communicate legal information, arguments and conclusions within accepted academic conventions.

You will receive a substantive introduction in the area of transnational criminal law. The module specifically focuses on 4 key areas of transnational crime; transnational organised crime, human trafficking, cyber-crime and terrorism. You will also cover the mechanisms of state co-operation with respect to transnational crimes, such as mutual legal assistance and extradition and considers key questions in relation to jurisdiction such as the aut dedere aut judicare principle. You will also study the workings of bodies dedicated to the promotion of inter-state co-operation such as Eurojust, Europol and Interpol and to the suppression of transnational criminality within the European Union.
Outline of substantive topic areas:

? The concept of transnational crime
? International law enforcement cooperation
? Jurisdiction
? Extradition
? Transnational Organised Crime
? Human Trafficking
? Cyber-crime
? Terrorism
? Future trends

Taught by academic experts, this module will develop your critical understanding of the substantive law of international crimes. Our discussion will focus on the core crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression as defined in the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). You will learn different methods and techniques of comparative law and its significance to the development of international criminal law (ICL) as well as to the work of the International Criminal Tribunals, namely, the ICC, the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and other hybrid criminal courts. The module will take critical look at the elements of crimes, the attribution of individual criminal responsibility, and modes of perpetration and participation from comparative and international criminal law perspectives.


Weekly workshop schedule

1. Fundamentals of International Criminal Law (ICL)
2. Methods and techniques of comparative law and its significance to the development of ICL
3. International Criminal Prosecution: from Nuremberg to the ICC
4. Substantive law of International crimes: Genocide
5. Substantive law of International crimes: Crimes against humanity
6. Substantive law of International crimes: War crimes
7. Substantive law of International crimes: The crime of aggression
8. Transnational Crimes: The work of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in defining terrorism
9. General principles of liability: Perpetration of International Crimes (comparative perspective)
10. General principles of liability: Participation in International Crimes (comparative perspective)
11. Contemporary issues before domestic criminal tribunals dealing with international crimes
12. Contemporary issues before international criminal tribunals – prosecuting jihadists before the ICC

On completion of this module, you should be able to:

• understand the application and interpretation of substantive international criminal law by international, hybrid and domestic courts and tribunals
• explore and evaluate the elements of international crimes and its interpretation by international criminal courts and tribunals
• acquire in-depth knowledge on the most pressing issues facing the attribution of individual criminal responsibility to alleged perpetrators
• evaluate potential reforms and improvements that can be made to international criminal law

Taught by academic experts, this module will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of international criminal procedure, from the initiation of an investigation to the appeals process. The module will focus on the International Criminal Court’s legal process and will allow you to compare and contrast procedures at hybrid international tribunals such as the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts in Cambodia, as well as procedures that were in place at the two ad hoc tribunals. Adopting a doctrinal and a socio-legal focus, you will study the latest case law on the interpretation of the Rome Statute and its Rules of Procedure and Evidence and you will evaluate the wider scholarly literature on procedural challenges and complexities. You will critically analyse controversial features such as the exercise of prosecutorial discretion (including decisions not to prosecute in ‘the interests of justice’), victim participation, the preliminary examination process, and assessments of admissibility. You will also examine, from theoretical, comparative and practical perspectives, the legal process of international criminal tribunals vis-à-vis the rights and guarantees for a fair trial as enshrined in international and regional human rights instruments as well as in common law and civil law traditions. By the end of the module you will be able to appraise possible improvements and reforms to international criminal procedure.

Weekly workshop schedule

1. Introduction to the international criminal process
2. The interface of civil law and common law legal systems
3. Jurisdiction and admissibility
4. Initiation of investigations and selection of cases
5. Pre-Trial procedure
6. The trial
7. Appeals and review
8. Evidentiary rules
9. The defence
10. Assessing the role of victims in International Criminal Court proceedings
11. Assessing the practice of plea bargaining and trials in absentia
12. Consolidation and reform

On completion of this module, you should be able to:

• Describe and understand the key procedural stages of a case at the International Criminal Court
• Compare and contrast international criminal procedure across a range of international criminal tribunals
• Analyse controversial features of criminal procedure at the International Criminal Court
• Evaluate potential reforms and improvements that can be made to international criminal procedure

You will learn about the structure of modern international human rights law and practice, the origins of the international human rights law system, and its relationship to the development of international criminal law. In particular, you will gain an understanding of international human rights law as a response of the international community to serious humanitarian abuses such as genocide, torture, slavery, and enforced disappearance. Drawing on contemporary case studies, this module provides you with a unique opportunity to acquire in-depth knowledge on the most pressing issues facing international criminal justice. This will inform your understanding of modern international human rights practice and its capacity to prevent such abuses from taking place.

Outline of seminar topics:
1. The relationship between international human rights law and international criminal law: Nuremberg, Tokyo, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
2. The structure of the modern international human rights system (I): The treaty-based mechanisms
3. The structure of the modern international human rights system (II): The charter-based mechanisms
4. Human rights law as a response to genocide
5. Human rights law as a response to torture
6. Human rights law as a response to enforced disappearance
7. Human rights law as a response to modern slavery
8. Human rights during armed conflict
9. Human rights during belligerent occupation
10. Human rights and the International Criminal Court
11. Contemporary developments (I): Gender-based persecution as a crime against humanity
12. Contemporary developments (II): Mass atrocities in the age of social media

You will learn about international law as a response to armed conflict – meaning both the law governing the use of force (the jus ad bellum) and concerning the conduct of hostilities (the jus in bello or international humanitarian law (IHL)). This will inform your understanding of what is meant by a ‘war crime’, and how individual criminal responsibility can arise during armed conflict and cases of belligerent occupation. The module will also provide you with an introduction to the practice of modern international humanitarian law and its procedural elements.

Outline of seminar topics:
1. International Law and Armed Conflict: Key Themes
2. The Use of Force (I): Self-defence
3. The Use of Force (II): the Security Council
4. The Use of Force (III): Humanitarian intervention and the ‘responsibility to protect’
5. The Use of Force (IV): The crime of aggression
6. IHL and international armed conflict
7. IHL and non-international armed conflict
8. Combatant status
9. The law of belligerent occupation
10. IHL and the law of targeting
11. IHL and International Criminal Law
12. Rights and obligations of non-state actors under IHL