Law with Philosophy

Law with philosophy is a combination that takes one of the most practically significant professional disciplines and grounds it in the deepest questions about justice, rights, obligation and the nature of legal authority. Law as a discipline trains you to understand legal rules, to reason from precedent and statute, to construct arguments and to advise on the obligations and entitlements that legal systems create. Philosophy asks the foundational questions that law often presupposes but rarely examines directly, about what law is, what it should do, whether there is an obligation to obey it and how legal concepts such as rights, responsibility and justice can be justified philosophically.

At the University of Essex, the LLB Law with Philosophy combines rigorous study of law with in-depth engagement in philosophy, giving you a qualification that trains you both for legal practice and for the kind of reflective analytical thinking that philosophy demands. You will study the core areas of English law, including contract, tort, constitutional, criminal and land law, alongside philosophical topics in legal and political philosophy, ethics and epistemology. The combination develops an unusually thoughtful approach to legal reasoning, attentive to both the technical requirements of legal argument and the deeper normative questions about what the law should require of people and institutions.

A typical entry tariff of 104 points makes the programme accessible to a range of students, and the three-year full-time structure gives you a thorough grounding in both law and philosophy within a standard degree duration.

Graduates pursue careers in legal practice as solicitors and barristers, as well as in the civil service, public policy, academia, journalism, human rights organisations, regulatory bodies and management consultancy. The combination of legal and philosophical training is particularly valuable in roles where ethical reasoning, policy analysis and the ability to argue from principle as well as precedent are all required. Postgraduate study in law, legal philosophy, human rights or public policy is a well-established route for those who wish to develop their expertise further.