Course overview

BA Law (Jurisprudence)

BA Law with Law Studies in Europe

Typical intake: 8

Worcester College has a large law student community, with about 40 undergraduates and postgraduates in residence at any one time.

The College has a long and distinguished tradition as a centre for the study of law. Former tutors in law at Worcester include Professor Francis Reynolds, Professor Andrew Ashworth (Emeritus Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford), Professor Paul Craig (Professor of English Law at Oxford), Professor Jeremy Horder (Professor of Criminal Law and Head of the Law Department at the London School of Economics), and Professor Cathryn Costello (Andrew W Mellon Associate Professor of International Human Rights and Refugee Law at Oxford).

Worcester’s strong reputation for law is also reflected in the academic and professional success of its law students. Worcester is currently the only college in Oxford or Cambridge with former students who are Justices of the United Kingdom Supreme Court (Lord Wilson) and the United States Supreme Court (Associate Justice Elena Kagan, formerly Dean of Harvard Law School and the first woman to hold the office of United States Solicitor General). Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, who has recently retired from the Supreme Court, was also a student at Worcester, as was Lord Hamilton, who was Scotland’s most senior judge until his retirement in 2012, and several current and former members of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. Recent Worcester law graduates are to be found in legal practice at the Bar and in top solicitors’ firms, in legal academia, and in diverse other fields, including the civil service, finance, business, human rights advocacy, environmental NGOs, and broadcasting.

Worcester is in the fortunate position of being one of the few Oxford colleges able to offer tuition in all the core undergraduate law subjects ‘in-house’. Undergraduates have one or two tutorials per week, either on their own, or in pairs or threes. These tutorials are often supplemented by small classes, and opportunities for group work.

Worcester has a large separate Law Library, with holdings of some 7,000 volumes. The College also has a very active student-run Law Society, which organises moots (mock appeal cases), social events and careers talks, as well as a very successful annual dinner, to which all Worcester Law students, past and present, are invited. Links with the legal profession are strong, and the Law tutors are well placed to advise students who wish to pursue careers in legal practice, in academia, or in international organisations.

"We have our own big law library at Worcester and a large body of undergraduate and graduate law students, meaning that there's always someone to discuss a problem with. One of the highlights of the year is the Law Society's dinner at which you will have the opportunity to meet alumni who are at the top of the legal field."
Christina, second-year law student

Tutors

Headshot of Tsilly Dagan

Professor of Taxation Law

Professor Tsilly Dagan

Headshot of Tsilly Dagan

Professor Tsilly Dagan

Professor of Taxation Law

Professorial Fellow

Director of the MSc in Taxation

Education

LLB (Tel Aviv), LLM (NYU)

Tsilly Dagan is Professor of Taxation Law at Oxford University and a Fellow of Worcester College. Professor Dagan’s main fields of research and teaching are tax law and policy (both domestic and international) and the interaction of the state and the market. Her book International Tax Policy: Between Competition and Cooperation (Cambridge University Press) is the winner of the 2017 Frans Vanistendael Award for International Tax Law. Professor Dagan studied law at Tel Aviv University (LL.B., S.J.D.) and New York University (LL.M in Taxation) and joined Bar-Ilan University where she served as Associate Dean for Research as well as Editor-in-Chief of the law review and was appointed the Raoul Wallenberg Professor of Law. Professor Dagan has taught and researched as a scholar in residence at the University of Michigan, University of Western Ontario, and Columbia University, and was a member of the Group on Global Justice at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Jerusalem. She is the co-founder of the Oxford-Virginia Legal Dialogs and the International Tax Governance and Justice Workshop.

Fellow & Tutor in Law

Dr James Edwards

Dr James Edwards

Fellow & Tutor in Law

Associate Professor of Law

Education

BCL MSt DPhil (Oxford), MA (Cambridge)

I read law as an undergraduate at Cambridge, before moving to Oxford for postgraduate study. I was brought up just outside York, where I attended my local comprehensive school. Though I worried that the surroundings would be too alien, and the courses too difficult, my student years – in both Cambridge and Oxford – were some of the best of my life. I made great friends, learnt a tremendous amount and fell in love with my subject. I strongly believe that Oxford needs more students from a wide range of different backgrounds. If you’re intellectually curious and hard working, I urge you to apply for a place. Our Admissions Office will happily answer any questions you may have.

Headshot of Donal Nolan

Francis Reynolds and Clarendon Fellow & Tutor in Law

Professor Donal Nolan

Headshot of Donal Nolan

Professor Donal Nolan

Francis Reynolds and Clarendon Fellow & Tutor in Law

Professor of Private Law

Vice Dean (Teaching & Recruitment), Faculty of Law

Education

BCL MA (Oxford)

Donal Nolan is Professor of Private Law in the University of Oxford and Francis Reynolds and Clarendon Fellow and Tutor in Law at Worcester College, Oxford. He was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford (BA and BCL) and was previously a Lecturer in Law at King’s College London. He has taught tort, contract, international trade law, restitution and commercial law, and has been a Visiting Professor in the University of Florida, the National University of Singapore, the University of Trento and Sichuan University. He is a Senior Fellow of the University of Melbourne, a founding member of the World Tort Law Society, and an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI). He is also a member of the International Advisory Panel for the ALI’s Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property, and a member of the editorial committee of the Modern Law Review.

Headshot of Leah Trueblood

Career Development Fellow & Tutor in Public and EU Law

Dr Leah Trueblood

Headshot of Leah Trueblood

Dr Leah Trueblood

Career Development Fellow & Tutor in Public and EU Law

British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Bonavero Institute of Human Rights

Education

BA (Alberta), LLB (LSE), MSt DPhil (Oxford)

Leah is a Career Development Fellow in Public Law. She holds degrees in philosophy, law, and the philosophy of law.

She holds first-class degrees in philosophy from the University of Alberta and in law from the London School of Economics. She completed her DPhil research at Oxford in 2019. Her graduate work was funded by University College, Oxford and the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. She has been the recipient of grants from the John Fell Fund, the British Academy, and the Leverhulme Trust.

Headshot of Menelaos Markakis

College Lecturer in Law

Dr Menelaos Markakis

Headshot of Menelaos Markakis

Dr Menelaos Markakis

College Lecturer in Law

Assistant Professor, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

Education

MJur DPhil (Oxford)

College Lecturer in Law

Professor William Swadling

Professor William Swadling

College Lecturer in Law

Professor of Law

Fellow & Tutor in Law, Brasenose College

Education

MA (Oxford), LLM (London)

William Swadling is Professor of Law and the Senior Law Fellow at Brasenose College. He chairs the faculty’s teaching groups in Restitution, Trusts, and Personal Property. Before coming to Oxford, he held posts at a number of other universities, including University College London and Trinity College, Cambridge. He is the editor of a number of books, including The Quistclose Trust: Critical Essays. He is particularly interested in the intersection between trusts/property and restitution, and a number of his articles on this topic have been cited in the English courts, most notably in Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale v Islington LBC [1996] AC 669. He is a contributor to Halsbury’s Laws of England (4th ed, reissue), and wrote the section entitled ‘Property’ in Burrows (ed), English Private Law (3rd ed, 2013). He is, along with Professors Peter Birks and Francis Rose, a founding editor of the Restitution Law Review and has held visiting professorships at the University of Hamburg, Seoul National University, the National University of Singapore, University of Paris II (Panthéon-Assas), Renmin University, and the University of Leuven. He is an academic associate at One Essex Court (chambers of Lord Grabiner QC), a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne, an elected member of the American Law Institute, and an academic member of the Chancery Bar Association.

Applying

At Worcester, we regard Law as a branch of learning worthy of study for its own sake, and we therefore welcome applications from those who do not intend to enter the legal profession after graduation, as well as from those who do. Nor are we prescriptive when it comes to A-Level subjects (or their equivalents): all the normal subjects are acceptable. We pride ourselves on the diversity of our student body. Our students come from a range of different school backgrounds, and we also have a number of international students at undergraduate level.

Those applying to study Law or Law with Law Studies in Europe are required to sit the Law National Admissions Test (LNAT). For further details please refer to the LNAT website at www.lnat.ac.uk.

Applicants for Law with Law Studies in Europe should be aware that the total number of students admitted for this degree across the University is small, and thus any college is unlikely to admit more than one or two candidates a year for this course.  All applicants for Course 2 (BA (Hons) in Law with Law Studies in Europe) are, however, automatically considered for a place on Course 1 (BA (Hons) in Law), on an equal footing with Course 1 applicants.

While we welcome applications for deferred entry, an offer of a deferred place will only be made to an applicant who convinces the tutors that they are not only among the strongest candidates in the current year’s field, but that they would also be among the strongest in the following year’s field, bearing in mind that the strength of the field varies from year to year. All applicants who have expressed a preference for deferred entry will be asked at interview, if shortlisted, whether they would accept an offer of a place for the academic year immediately following. If so, they will be considered for non-deferred entry as well, and when it comes to non-deferred entry an expressed preference for a deferred place will not affect the applicant’s chances of success.

The College welcomes applications from Second BA candidates who wish to do the degree in 3 years.

Read more on the university website Faculty of Law