LL4CC Half Unit
Commercial Remedies
This information is for the 2025/26 session.
Course Convenor
Prof Charlie Webb
Availability
This course is available on the LLM (extended part-time), LLM (full-time), MSc in Law and Finance and University of Pennsylvania Law School LLM Visiting Students. This course is freely available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. It does not require permission. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process.
How to apply: Priority will be given initially to LLM, MSc Regulation and MSc Law and Finance students on a first-come-first-served allocation.
Spaces permitting, requests from all other students will be processed on the same first-come-first-served allocation from 10am on Thursday 2 October 2025.
By submitting an application, students are confirming that they meet any pre-requisites specified. Providing an additional written statement will not aid a student's chances of being accepted onto a course, and statements are not read.
Deadline for application: Not applicable
For queries contact: Law.llm@lse.ac.uk
Students should have ideally studied Contract Law at undergraduate level.
This course has a limited number of places and demand is typically high. This may mean that you’re not able to get a place on this course.
Course content
The module will examine a range of remedial issues in a commercial context. The syllabus does not seek to provide an exhaustive account of the law governing commercial remedies but instead picks out a series of questions of both practical and theoretical significance that can arise in commercial disputes. In addressing these questions, we shall not only examine the answers English law has given to these questions but also consider the soundness of those solutions and alternative approaches which have been proposed in the literature.
Here is an indicative list of the sorts of issues to be considered on the module:
1. The aims of commercial remedies: What interests and other policies may be served by the law when remedying commercial disputes?
2. The function of contract damages: How do the courts assess damages for breaches of contract? Should the courts do more to protect the claimant’s interest in performance?
3. Punishment: Is punishment of a defendant who has committed a breach of duty ever a legitimate aim of commercial remedies? Should punitive damages have a greater role in English law?
4. Agreed remedies: To what extent are commercial parties free to fix the remedies available to them in the event of breach? Does freedom of contract extend to the parties’ secondary obligations?
5. Unjust enrichment: What is the law of unjust enrichment? What is its relationship to the law of contract? What can commercial parties recover under the law of unjust enrichment?
Teaching
20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.
This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.
Formative assessment
All students are expected to produce one 1,500 word formative essay during the course.
Indicative reading
Burrows, Remedies for Torts and Breach of Contract (4th edn OUP 2019)
Virgo and Worthingon (eds), Commercial Remedies: Resolving Controversies (CUP 2017)
Assessment
Exam (100%), duration: 150 Minutes in the Spring exam period
Key facts
Department: LSE Law School
Course Study Period: Autumn Term
Unit value: Half unit
FHEQ Level: Level 7
CEFR Level: Null
Total students 2024/25: 29
Average class size 2024/25: 29
Controlled access 2024/25: YesCourse selection videos
Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.