Professor Susan Marks

This course is available on the LLM (extended part-time), LLM (full-time) and University of Pennsylvania Law School LLM Visiting Students. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course is part of the following LLM specialism: Public International Law.

This course has a limited number of places and we cannot guarantee all students will get a place.

There are no formal prerequisites. 

This course is primarily designed for students who have already had some exposure to public international law and wish to deepen their understanding of the international legal dimensions of contemporary problems. Each week the relation will be explored between international law and a different global issue or theme, such as war, poverty, terrorism, humanity, and territory. Course readings will encompass both legal scholarship and relevant writing by scholars from other disciplines (geography, anthropology, philosophy, literary studies, etc.).

This course will comprise one two-hour seminar each week in Autumn Term, except in Week 6, which is Reading Week.

Students are expected to have done the set reading prior to each seminar and be willing to participate take active part in class discussion.

Class exercises (which do not count towards the final assessment) will be set.

Reading lists will be provided for each seminar on Moodle. Relevant readings are likely to include: David Kennedy, Of War and Law; Sundhya Pahuja, Decolonising International Law: Development, Economic Growth and the Politics of Universality; and Balakrishnan Rajagopal, International Law from Below: Development, Social Movements and Third World Resistance.

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours, reading time: 15 minutes) in the spring exam period.