School of Law (Trinity College, Dublin)
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School of Law at Trinity College, Dublin is the oldest established law school in Ireland. It teaches law to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as conducting legal research and holding conferences.
There are approximately four hundred undergraduate students and one hundred postgraduate students in the Law School. It is also home to the Irish Centre for European Law and publishes the Dublin University Law Journal. The Law School is located in House 39 on New Square.
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[edit] Degrees
Its principal undergraduate degree is the four-year LL.B.. This is an academic law degree, after which the holder must undertake external vocational training in order to become a barrister or solicitor. In each year, there are approximately eighty students taken on to the LL.B. course. Trinity also offers degrees in Law and French (the LL.B. (ling. franc.)) and Law and German (the LL.B. (ling. germ.)). Postgraduate students, who already hold a law degree, can study for the LL.M., which is a one-year taught course, or either an M.Litt. or Ph.D., which are conducted by research. Finally, the LL.D. is an honour reserved for outstanding legal academics.
[edit] The LL.B.
In the freshman years of the LL.B., students study eight obligatory core law subjects:
- Legal systems and methods (including a module on legal reasoning, research and writing)
- Torts
- Constitutional law I
- Criminal law
- Contract law (including a mooting programme)
- Land law
- European Union law
- Constitutional law II
Freshman law students can also choose to take a language course in the university.
Sophisters choose four subjects in each of the two years from a wide range of options including commercial law, tax law, human rights law, corporate governance and criminology. They are also entitled to take a module in a different field under Trinity’s Broad Curriculum programme. The marks obtained over the two final years count equally for the final degree grade.
[edit] Coursework
Each subject has two hours of lectures per week throughout the year. There are also seminars attended by groups of ten students. Freshman subjects have six seminars of one hour in length throughout the year. For sophister subjects, the number of seminars varies.
The Law School does not operate in semesters, so the examinations are all at the end of the year, in the May-June period. The only exception is the foundation scholarship exam, which Senior Freshmen may elect to sit in order to win a scholarship. Many subjects allocate part of the grade for a major assignment submitted during the year.
[edit] International study
Junior Sophisters may study abroad for their third year on an exchange. Trinity has both Socrates or Erasmus exchanges with European universities and other reciprocal exchange agreements with universities in Canada, Finland and the USA. The Law School has exchange agreements with the following universities:
- France
- Bordeaux IV [1]
- Université de Caen
- Paris II
- University of Poitiers [2]
- Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po)
- Germany
- University of Erlangen-Nürnberg [3]
- Hamburg University
- Humboldt University, Berlin
- Mainz University
- University of Würzburg [4]
[edit] The law and language degrees
The degrees in law and French and law and German were created in 1993. They are taught in conjunction with Trinity’s French and German departments. They are modelled on the LL.B., but also include study of the relevant language and civilisation and the civil and constitutional law of the relevant jurisdiction. It is obligatory for students on these courses to spend their third year on a Socrates exchange, where they study a range of law subjects in a French or German university. The marks obtained abroad count for 35% of a law and language student’s degree grade. There are traditionally twelve places every year on each of these courses, however sixteen places were offered on the Law and German programme and thirteen places for Law and French for the academic year 2007-8. It is unclear whether this arrangement is to continue.
[edit] Staff
The staff of the Law School includes a number of well-known Irish legal academics and authors of leading textbooks. The current Head of the Law School is Professor William Binchy. A number of lecturers, including Professor Ivana Bacik, are known to the public for their involvement in political campaigns.
Past holders of the Reid Professorship in Criminal Law, currently held by Ivana Bacik, include former and current Presidents of Ireland, Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese.
[edit] Student societies
A number of TCD student societies are particularly oriented towards law students. These are the Dublin University Law Society, FLAC (Free Legal Advice Centres)[7] and the local branch of ELSA (European Law Students’ Association). The Law Society publishes student articles in the Trinity College Law Review. Many law students are active in the Hist and Phil and participate in debates and mooting competitions, such as the European Law Moot Court.
