International Business and Commercial Law LLM

The module offers you the opportunity to explore the key tenets of a complex framework governing the relationships between law, international business and society. At the heart of the module are globalization processes which have led to the internationalisation of economy and finance, the expansion of technologies and significant changes in the role of nation-states. Challenges raised by these economic and political transformations frequently converge on a question of how to reconcile and align corporate and business practices with societal well-being. This module will explore how law and social justice issues intersect in three principal domains: international economic governance (including sustainable trade and investment regimes); corporate governance and financial regulation; and law and the foundations of knowledge economy (creations, inventions, and technology).

In today’s technologically astute society, the way in which crime is conducted is evolving at an ever-increasing rate. Dark Web crime is the latest, most evolved, strain of cybercrime. It involves criminals accessing a hidden part of the internet, the Dark Web, in order to facilitate and commit a range of illegal activities including drug trafficking, the sale of firearms and personal information, terrorist financing, and money laundering. In so doing. Dark Web criminals utilise a range of privacy enhancing software (Tor, VPNs, and cryptocurrencies) with the aim of evading law enforcement detection. In this module, students will learn about the fundamental characteristics of the Dark Web, the challenges it presents to the law and law enforcement across a range of different criminal offences, and recent legal attempts to intervene in this space.

Contemporary societies, including civil and criminal judging are increasingly relying on digital technologies. The use of these technologies and gradual turn to digital justice will only increase over time. New technologies range from basic video-conferencing tools to complex big data profiling and surveillance. Implementation of technical solutions does not only improve the ability of legal systems to achieve their aims but can also lead to significant challenges in various areas of law. This module will look at how new technologies and digital justice are implemented in law and what consequences they might have. Students will benefit from deeper understanding of the cutting-edge digital technologies applied in law and learn the limits of such application.

International Law and Foreign Investment explores investment treaty law and investment arbitration practice. During the course of the module, students will be able to develop a range of fundamental and advanced legal and transferable skills, embedded in the knowledge of international legal rules on the protection of foreign business actors. The module will be delivered via weekly two-hour seminars. The module will be of interest to students wishing to specialise in international business and international economic law as well as to those who would like to deepen their knowledge of international law in general.

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are responsible for almost 70% of all deaths worldwide. Almost three quarters of all NCD deaths, and 82% of the 16 million premature deaths, occur in low- and middle-income countries. NCDs have devastating consequences for individuals, families, and communities; they threaten to overwhelm health systems; and they hinder development. The international community has acknowledged the scope of the problem and undertaken to act to reduce the availability, acceptability and affordability of tobacco products, alcoholic beverages and unhealthy food. However, state efforts to regulate the tobacco, alcohol and food industries to prevent NCDs and promote public health have given rise to expensive challenges anchored in international trade and investment law, as illustrated by recent claims challenging tobacco control legislation in Australia and Uruguay. The regulation of alcoholic beverages and unhealthy food could face similar challenges under international trade and investment law as the food and alcohol industries become more regulated. This raises important and timely questions about how international trade and investment law can affect state regulatory autonomy in designing and implementing measures for preventing NCDs

The module will explore the institutional aspects of WTO, its dispute settlement mechanism, and rules on goods, services, subsidies and dumping, intellectual property, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, safeguards, and dispute settlement. It will also examine the societal and political implications of the WTO trade regime (trade and human rights, development, environment, and sovereignty).

This module will introduce you to Intellectual Property Law and equip you with a body of essential knowledge of various intellectual property rights in a national, regional and international context. You will explore a range of important, contemporary issues affecting IP Law, such as intellectual property rights and the public interest; the emergence of patent trolls, and the protection of computer implemented inventions. Completion of the module will enable you to develop a set of intellectual tools necessary to critically engage with current debates at the intersection of law, regulation, and business. If you have previously studied any branch of intellectual property law, the module will enhance your existing knowledge, skills and understanding but the module does not presuppose any prior knowledge and is equally suited to students who are new to the subject.

Competition law is an increasingly popular and exciting area of law whose aim is to make free markets work to consumers’ benefit. As markets develop and change rapidly, the implementation of competition law raises challenging questions that are vital for the effective functioning of markets and the protection of citizen welfare. These questions include: how can competition law be implemented in fast changing technology markets without stifling innovation? How can competition and intellectual property rules coexist without reducing the effectiveness of either? Can individuals working in gig economy organise to protect their interests without triggering competition rules?
These are some of the questions we will tackle in this module. In terms of the substantive content, the module will focus on, among others, the main rules of competition in the UK and the EU legal systems, including rules against anti-competitive agreements, monopolisation/abuse of dominance, anticompetitive mergers and public and private enforcement of competition rules. The module will be taught through discursive seminars leading to an extensive understanding of the operation of competition rules. The module will be assessed by coursework.

Should insolvent companies be rescued for the benefit of stakeholders such as employees, suppliers, local industry and local livelihoods? Or in the alternative should the insolvent company be allowed to wither and die through liquidation as part of what Schumpeter has called ‘Gales of Creative Destruction” of capitalism? In short, should we prioritise creditors or community with our corporate rescue and insolvency laws?

The ‘Corporate Rescue and Insolvency’ LLM module critically examines the legal rules, policy, and theoretical underpinnings that exist to deal with insolvent companies through a lens of corporate rescue.

The corporate rescue regimes (administration, company voluntary arrangements (CVAs), moratoriums, Part26A restructuring, schemes of arrangement) that facilitate rescue of the company are critically examined in the module. The focus of the module is on rescue as opposed to terminal procedures such as liquidation and striking off.

The rescue culture is examined from a theoretical perspective. We examine the main international theories of corporate rescue and restructuring (e.g. Jackson, Warren, Korobkin, Gross) to place corporate rescue in theoretical context. There is a strong focus on bankruptcy communitarianism in the module to reflect the idea that an insolvency law should exist for the benefit of numerous stakeholders, not just creditors. This approach engenders our social justice activity as a law department.

Students will leave the module with a thorough theoretical and policy grasp of corporate rescue.

A global company is technically insolvent. The company’s registered office is in one jurisdiction, England and Wales. However, the company has subsidiaries in numerous other jurisdictions across the globe. The company also has assets and creditors in those multiple jurisdictions. How should this troubled company be dealt with by corporate insolvency law? Should each jurisdiction keep the assets in that jurisdiction and only distribute them to creditors in that jurisdiction? Or in the alternative should the assets be remitted to other jurisdictions with different and perhaps stronger creditor claims? Should judges co-operate across borders to resolve insolvency issues? In short how should we deal with the theoretical and technical difficulties thrown up by cross-border insolvency? This LLM module attempts to answer these questions in a critical manner against the backdrop of a number of approaches which have been developed over time in a number of different jurisdictions. These approaches have included common law, statutory, and international solutions to the interesting and complex area of cross-border insolvency. The module engages in the main theoretical and policy techniques for dealing with cross-border insolvency, including territorialism and universalism. Recent case law developments such as Cambridge, HIH and Rubin are critically examined together with academic comment by leading cross-border insolvency commentators such as Chan Ho, Mevorach and Fletcher.

This module provides an introduction to the mechanisms and methods of international dispute settlement. It examines the nature of international disputes and the law, techniques and institutions of dispute settlement. The module also explores comparatively the key procedural issues that have been addressed before different international courts and tribunals. In addition, the module examines the major challenges and controversies in international adjudication, stemming from the multiplication of international adjudicative bodies, the so-called fragmentation of international law, from judicial law-making, and from the impact of politics on the functioning of international courts and tribunals. Finally, as the focus is on disputes in which at least one party is a state entity, the module discusses litigation by non-state actors, especially foreign investors against states and the role of international dispute settlement in economic governance.

Financial crime is a trillion dollar industry. Its methods, like its effects, are many and varied, ranging from relatively simple frauds, to sophisticated criminal operations traversing national boundaries and taking advantage of emerging and established technologies and professionals. This module introduces students to some of the key issues in legal and regulatory fight against financial crime drawing on examples from a range of case studies, including anti-money laundering, terrorist financing, bribery and corruption and fraud. The module is internationally focused addressing the relevant law from international, European, and domestic perspectives

Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are increasingly popular technological constructs that are discussed widely in popular and traditional media due to their fundamental implications on the operation of financial markets and monetary policies. In reality, these constructs offer potential implications for the operation of the law that goes beyond the limited areas of finance and monetary policy. In turn, it is a particular challenge to effectively regulate these fluid concepts due to their abstract nature. In this module, students will learn about the fundamental characteristics of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, their relationship with the law and the most recent international attempts to regulate them.

Corporate governance remains a critical topic of public interest in the 21st Century, an era which has seen the power of institutional investors increase, governance scandals and executive remuneration dominate headlines, and debates around shareholder activism come to the fore, all whilst the global impact of corporations has grown.
However, ideas about how corporations should be governed vary widely and there is disagreement on such issues as the purpose of the corporation, the role of boards of directors, the rights of shareholders, and the proper way to measure corporate performance.
The issue of whose interests should be considered in corporate decision making is particularly contentious, with some authorities giving primacy to shareholders’ interest in maximizing their financial returns and others arguing that shareholders’ other interest, e.g. in corporate strategy, executive compensation, and environmental policies, etc and the interests of other stakeholders must be respected as well.
This module examines these contentious areas of corporate governance and directors’ duties through doctrinal and theoretical lenses. The module engages with the latest literature and thought to provide a critical discussion forum to enlighten understanding of these complex and engaging issues.

This module consists of preparing a dissertation which is researched and written during the Summer. The dissertation is on an approved topic, in the field of the relevant specialism in case of students opting for a specialised LLM (as opposed to the general LLM). The module is worth 60 credits (a third of the entire LLM programme) and is a prerequisite for the award of an LLM. The process of preparing the dissertation is supported by legal research and library training in semester 1, by a dissertation workshop in semester 2, and by individual supervision during the Summer.