Law (Criminal Justice) LLM
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 be provided with a detailed and in-depth understanding of counterterrorism law in the United Kingdom and the United States. You will consider how terrorism is understood, represented, and legally defined; the range of laws and measures adopted in order to combat terrorism; and the challenges of counterterrorism for the rule of law and democracy. In this manner, the module provides a deep and broad understanding of a key 21st century legal and political development, with major implications for law, politics, and everyday life. The issues explored include:
-the history and the logic of terrorism
-the relations between terrorism, politics and the state
-the legal definition of terrorism and its representations in the media
-the criminal law framework for combating terrorism
-administrative and extra-legal measures against terrorism
-Surveillance, the Intelligence agencies, and the legal framework guiding their operations
-the UK PREVENT strategy for combating extremism
-making sense of counterterrorism law and its implications for the rule of law
-the implications of counterterrorism for democracy.
You will be encouraged to contribute your own opinions and experiences on these issues, and use them as a springboard for a deeper, more systematic and critical engagement with counterterrorism. This will mainly occur through group discussion, debate, and presentations in the module’s workshops. No prior knowledge of counterterrorism law is required. This module complements and advances, but does not require, previous engagement with Criminal Law, Human Rights, Constitutional Law, and Jurisprudence.

Youth crime and justice is an area which continuously attracts political, legal and media attention with the ‘youth problem’ dominating headlines in recent years. However, youth crime is not a new phenomenon. This module explores the nature and extent of youth crime within England and Wales as well as introducing you to approaches to youth crime on an international level. The module will examine youth justice in its historical context and how the youth justice system has adapted over time as well as providing an overview of children and young people’s rights in the context of crime and criminal justice. The youth justice system will be outlined in the context of analysing approaches to youth justice policy, where you will look at current legislation and the roles and responsibilities that statutory partners have with young offenders in the youth justice system. The sentencing systems for young offenders, and the role of the youth court, will also be considered, as well as exploring the law and practice of diversion. The module will also provide you with an insight into the relevance of restorative justice as a response to youth offending as well as exploring current concerns surrounding gender, race and disproportionality that effect some young offenders.

Course Topics Outline
1. The nature and extent of youth crime & The aetiological explanations for youth crime
2. Historical, sociological and legal conceptions of childhood
3. Rights of the Child
4. Age of Criminal Responsibility & Doli Incapax
5. Approaches to Youth Justice Policy
6. Responsibilities of Statutory Partners to Young Offenders.
7. The Law and practice of Diversion
8. Sentencing options available to the Youth Court
9. Alternative approaches to Youth Justice - Restorative Justice (Theory and practice)
10. Approaches to youth crime in comparative jurisdictions
11. Welfare of Young Offenders
12. Race, Gender and Disproportionality

This module will introduce you to theories of justice, principles of criminal law, and criminal justice theory as well as practice. It will proceed to critically examine the criminal process of England and Wales, and in particular, the institutions of criminal justice and forensic science. The module will finish with a study of social and ethical implications of the criminal process, and international trends. On completion of this module, you should be able to:
• analyse and critically discuss criminal justice processes with respect to the cultures and ethics of the criminal law;
• demonstrate knowledge and understanding of contemporary debates in theoretical and empirical literature about the relevant criminal justice and forensic institutions and their practices which form part of the forensic processes relevant to criminal justice so that they can state policies and laws with accuracy;
• have an independent ability to further their knowledge about, and research into, the issues arising from the topics and themes and to write about these issues in a structured and academic way.
Module topics outline

1. Introduction
2. Justice and principles of criminal law
3. Criminal justice theory
4. Criminal justice – institutions and the ‘system’.
a. The Police and ‘policing’
b. Prosecution and the courts
c. Reforming the CJS.
5. Forensic Science and the Criminal Justice System
a. Introduction to Forensic Process
b. What is/ are forensic science(s)? Who are forensic scientists?
c. The Forensic Science ‘marketplace’
6. The Criminal Investigation
a. Forensic Science and Criminal Investigation.
b. Forensic Identification Technologies & Processes
c. Police powers
7. DNA, Fingerprints and Identification
a. Fingerprints and DNA in the ‘Fight Against Crime’
b. Developments in DNA science & dactyloscopy
c. Resolving DNA controversies & reforming fingerprinting
8. Forensic Databases
a. Development of Forensic Identity Databases
b. Other forensic databases
9. Medical Aspects of the Forensic Process
a. Forensic Medical Examiners ('police surgeons')
b. Forensic pathologists
c. Coroners (pre and post-Shipman).
10. Criminal Appeals & Miscarriages of Justice
a. Forensic science as cause of miscarriages
b. DNA and Exonerating the Innocent
c. The Regulation of Forensic science
11. International Trends in Criminal Justice and Forensic Science
a. The international utility of forensic identification
b. International ‘standards’ & exchange
c. Trans-national forensic databases: The Future?
12. Criminal Justice and Forensic Science: Social and Ethical Issues
a. Criminalisation
b. The surveillance State
c. Forensic Science and Individual Rights
d. Ethical controversies

This module takes a cross-jurisdictional look at evidence in legal settings. It articulates the decision-making process in various criminal justice systems by exploring the respective normative framework for information management. Different models of proof in domestic (England and Wales) and international criminal justice systems (common law) will be reduced to their central tenets and principles of evidence and proof. Particular emphasis will be laid on the area of law at the intersection of evidence and proof. We will investigate the way in which the criminal process employs expert witnesses and critically analyse the various issues arising from the way legal officials, factfinders and scientists/forensic practitioners communicate with each other. On completion of this module, students should be able to:
• analyse and critically discuss principles of evidence law
• demonstrate knowledge and understanding of contemporary debates in theoretical and empirical literature about the law of evidence
• have an independent ability to further their knowledge about, and research into, the issues arising from the topics and themes and to write about these issues in a structured and academic way.

Module topics outline

1. Introduction. What is structural analysis?
2. Criminal Trial as a decision-making process
• Principles of evidence
• Truth
• Justice
3. Features of Evidence
• Relevance
• Credibility
• Probative force
4. Standard of Proof
• Defining ‘reasonable’
• The algorithm or the story?
5. Generating and presenting evidence
• Information management
• Illegally obtained evidence
6. Expert witness testimony
• The realm of law
• The realm of science
7. The problem of validity
• Opinion Rule
• What is “helpful”?
• Deference and epistemic dependence
8. Unchallenged evidence.
• Accepting expert evidence
• Departing from expert evidence
• Unchallenged expert evidence
9. DNA
• Intelligence Databases
• Population Databases
• Logical fallacies
10. Fingerprints and Identification
11. Law & Science
• Scientific findings
• Legal decisions
12. The future of Evidence and Proof
• AI & Deep learning
• AI as source of evidence

Sentencing is a routine part of the criminal process when a defendant is convicted, yet how and why we should punish offenders remain deeply contested questions. This module introduces you to the main theories of punishment, exploring retributive and consequentialist justifications for punishment, as well as theories which combine elements of both. You will consider moral responsibility and explore how debates about free will and determinism, along with recent developments in neuroscience, impact on theorising about punishment. You will also learn about the impact of technology on punishment, such as the use of algorithms in calculating risk of reoffending at the sentencing stage. You will then explore ethical issues relating to two widely used, yet controversial, forms of punishment: imprisonment and capital punishment. The latter part of the module will explore alternative approaches to punishment, such as restorative justice and welfare-based interventions. Arguments for the abolition of punishment will also be considered.

Outline of seminar topics:
1. Retributive punishment
2. Consequentialist punishment
3. Mixed theories of punishment
4. Moral responsibility and punishment: the free will debate
5. Technology and punishment
6. The ethics of imprisonment
7. The ethics of capital punishment
8. Alternative approaches (1): restorative justice
9. Alternative approaches (2): child welfare; mental health treatment.
10. Arguments for abolition