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*This module is only available to MA Human Rights students

Two key areas of knowledge and methodological understanding in human rights research are what the law says or provides for in terms of human rights and what ethical arguments can be used for adopting specific policies and aims (or for not doing so) in relation to human rights.

This module introduces students to key skills in reading legal materials and sources (such as Statutes and Case Law) and key methodological approaches to reading texts containing normative/ethical arguments. It develops students’ awareness of different types of argument and analyses (descriptive, normative, and conceptual), and different methodologies for developing and testing both legal and normative arguments. The module provides the knowledge and skills for incorporating legal analysis and normative analysis in dissertation work and in any human rights research project that requires these.

The module is designed to give students the tools to develop knowledge about what human rights law says on a specific question or dispute, developing students’ understanding of how to analyse the doctrines and jurisprudence of different areas of human rights law (domestic, regional, and international). These skills are acquired through working with real human rights statutes and cases, in the case of law, and real ethical arguments relating to human rights in the case of ethical analyses. The module also introduces advanced legal methods, relating to hard cases in the interpretation of human rights law, using the main current methodological approaches in legal analysis.

In addition to this, the module introduces students to the central methodological approaches to ethical reasoning, equipping them with the tools to analyse and critique ethical theories and views, or to construct specific interpretations of ethical concepts.

Both above parts of the module use real human rights examples and cases that students are invited to analyse from moral and legal perspectives using the methods that have been covered. If you have never read a case and do not know the difference between Obiter Dicta and Rationes Decidendi, factual and conceptual claims, or how you would establish whether a person had a given legal right in a named jurisdiction, then this module will help you acquire those skills.

In addition to this, students are introduced to Masters' level essay writing skills, with an essay guide and worked examples and these are connected with the appropriate methods for different types of essay (normative; legal; empirical). Students will also be introduced to important research concepts for scholarly, Masters-level, research work: essay writing format; structure and style; research sources and citation practices for law; literature review writing; and dissertation structure.

By the end of this module students will:

• understand the difference between normative methods and non-normative/descriptive methods;

• be aware of the main approaches to moral analysis and legal analysis, and the difference between them;

• be able to analyse normative arguments in terms of their key methodological commitments;

• know how to develop and test arguments using clear normative methodologies and techniques;

• know how to find, engage, and interpret legal sources;

• be able to analyse and evaluate legal arguments and their relationship to legal sources;

• know how to evaluate legal arguments in terms of interpretative commitments/theories of interpretation;

• be able to write clear essays making conscious essay structure choices;

• know what is expected from different essay grades for modules on the MA;

• know what the key components of a dissertation are for this MA;

• know what it means to write a clear dissertation proposal with clear components, including a methodological statement;

• know how to write a clear literature review, as opposed to literature report or literature survey, using thematic and conceptual structuring.