There are no pre-requisites for this module to be added

This module examines the global context for the development of legal culture across borders and over extended periods of time. You will investigate how legal families – especially the civilian and common law traditions – developed and evolved. Taking a comparative approach and building on the theory of legal transplants, you will examine how European legal traditions emerged, developed and, through empire, became globalised. You will study the intellectual development of legal thinking in Europe and how this became globalised during the period European imperial expansion and colonisation.The module is primarily oriented towards the European legal tradition, notably the Civil law, and the English Common Law. However, the module critically examines how European legal concepts and ideologies were transplanted across Asia, Africa and the Americas, creating an imperial legal diaspora. We will look at how the commercial interests of European powers fostered the evolution of law and how these interests drove the nationalisation and internationalisation of modern law and existing global legal frameworks.In examining the impact that the globalisation of European law has had, you will consider how slavery and race influenced the development of legal systems in the Americas, eventually creating a bifurcation between the European and American branches of the Common Law. You will look at how Asian countries such as Japan and Thailand embraced the transplantation of Western law both as part of a globalising and modernising agenda and also as a means of protecting national sovereignty against European and American encroachments.Throughout the module, you will study the ways in which European legal traditions shaped the current frameworks of national and international law, in both the public and private spheres, and how globalisation as currently envisioned is a product of Western legal transplantation.

Upon completion of this module you will be able to

LO1: Demonstrate detailed knowledge of key developments in the evolution and development of European law and legal families, including the English Common Law and the Civilian Law.

LO2: Recognise and critically analyse how social, political and economic factors have driven the development of law globally over extended periods of time.

LO3: Recognise and critically analyse the ways in which commerce and empire interacted with one another to drive the development of modern legal systems in a global context with particular reference to the development of mercantile law, contract law, and property law.

LO4: Understand and critically evaluate the political, social, economic and conceptual roots of the nationalisation and internationalisation of law in a global and comparative context.

LO5: Demonstrate a critical understanding of the concept of legal transplants and articulate how this concept has operated across extended periods of time.

LO6: Identify and critically analyse primary legal sources using socio-legal, comparative legal, and legal-historical methods.