Teaching

Members of the Faculty of Law can access full course details and documentation via Moodle.

For information about undertaking doctoral research in family law, go to the opportunities page.

All members of the Centre are heavily involved in delivering the wide range of family law related courses offered by the Faculty of Law to undergraduate and postgraduate students: 

Family Law: undergraduate

Family Law is an optional course available to both second and third year undergraduate students, taught by a conventional series of lectures with corresponding supervisions throughout the year. The course aims to provide an overview of several core adult and child related family law topics; to encourage an enquiring and critical approach to family law; and to consider broader policy issues and the possibilities of law reform in the area. The John Hall prize is awarded to the top student or students in the summer examination.

Family in Society: undergraduate dissertation option

Family in Society is a final year undergraduate dissertation option in which students elect to write a 12,000 word thesis on a topic of their choosing that falls within the broad remit of the course. In addition to meeting with the supervisor to discuss their progress, students gain the opportunity to develop their presentation skills, by being required to lead a one-hour seminar on their topic with their fellow students during the year. Past issues addressed by students have included “hot topics” of the time (such as pre-nuptial agreements, financial remedies for cohabitants, opposite-sex civil partnership, the status of unmarried fathers in law), and a range of issues which either fall outside the scope of the undergraduate Family Law paper or which can only be treated briefly in that context (such as the problem of Jewish divorce, the ethics of creating “saviour siblings”, and dilemmas in international surrogacy). Students are encouraged where appropriate to extend their research beyond domestic doctrinal materials to include qualitative and quantitative social research and statistical data, governmental and policy documents, and comparative material.

Law of Succession: undergraduate half-paper

Several Centre members teach on this half-paper, which allows students to explore the law and policy surrounding the fate of a person’s property on death. Topics including the law of wills, claims by family members and dependants on estates and the law of inheritance tax.