This module offers final year students a unique opportunity to work together in an interdisciplinary team on a real-world project for a local partner organisation. It enables you to use the knowledge and skills you’ve acquired during your degree to address a real-world challenge, while sharing and developing your creative, organisational and practical abilities. By doing so, this module will prepare you for entering the graduate labour market or going on to post-graduate study.

This module will allow third year students to do their final year project in an innovative and interdisciplinary way. The module seeks to give students the possibility to better understand their community, the issues it confronts and how to address them. Through the five step training of Citizens UK (1. Organise 2. Listen 3. Plan 4. Act 5. Negotiate) the students will learn the basics of community building and organising, which they will be able to practice and experience for themselves. Students will learn to build power and negotiate with local government on issues of local concern such as hate crime, transport, mental health and housing.

Forensic Linguistics explores the ways in which linguistics intersects with public life. Topics include how linguistic knowledge is used in legal settings, such as analysing courtroom discourse, determining authenticity, or using linguistic analysis to determine a person's country of origin, a person's identity, or the authorship of a text. This module may also cover how linguistic discrimination effects individuals, and the legal rights granted to specific languages and language users, and how important information is communicated to minority language users.

This module builds on Foundations of Public Law. The research-led teaching for this module provides insights into several areas of public law that are not always available in standard texts and are designed to enable detailed consideration of issues that are of current importance and the subject of research within the School of Law.

What legal issues are raised by the use of animals in science? Or animals who are used as a food source? How does the law protect endangered species? Understand the legislation and case law relating to different categories of animal. Consider the philosophical underpinnings of such laws.

What role do political institutions play in protecting human rights? How do judicial and political institutions interact on this? What reforms are needed? Examine the Human Rights Act 1998, focusing closely on particular sections. Apply your knowledge to substantive legal problems and critically evaluate existing law on human rights.

Jurisprudence is a module that enables you to think in depth about how law works and the impact it has on the society around us. For example: How is law different to other rules and principles? Should law reflect moral opinion, and if so, how do we decide what is moral? Can judges really be objective when they make decisions? How do we judge if law is making society fairer? The module covers many key theoretical approaches to understanding what law is and how it functions. In doing so, we will look at the relationship (and conflicts) between law, on the one hand, and politics, markets, and social justice on the other. You will be asked to think for yourself about these issues, and reflect on which perspectives provide us with the most accurate, and the most useful, ways of thinking about law.

Can previous criminal convictions of the defendant or a witness be presented to the court? How are vulnerable witnesses (like rape complainants or children) protected by the court system? Can an illegally obtained confession be used in court? Study the process and procedure involved in presenting evidence at trials.

How important is the presumption of innocence until proven guilty? And how important is a defendant’s right to a fair trial? Study the law, policy and practice of the criminal justice system. Examine recent trends in criminal justice policy and specific aspects of the criminal process, from pre- to post-trial.

Want practical experience of providing legal advice? Work within the Essex Law Clinic, receiving supervision and training to provide assistance on topics like employment, housing, benefits and consumer matters. Develop your abilities in interviewing, client care, networking and teamwork, as well as general office skills.

Research is imperative to governing rationally and effectively. You study the differences between various common legal research methods and their relative merits, which is put in to context by studying topics drawn from public law, criminal law and public law. This module also introduces the role of research in influencing policy; the methods used to present research findings and their suitability and effective strategies for structuring academic writing.