International and National Legal Orders Specialization

International and National Legal Orders specialization offers the broadest spectrum of options available for students with an international career or research orientation in comparative law. It allows students to handpick courses from a wealth of topics of European (EU) or international relevance, enabling students to create an educational programme tailored to their personal interests and career needs. This flexibility is balanced out by the presence of a solid basis in the form of carefully selected mandatory courses on national and international legal systems and their interplay.

Ghent University Law School has a wide array of English language courses on a great variety of European and international law issues. This LLM programme provides students with an opportunity to design their own curricula in accordance with their career priorities. It enables them to gain expertise on many contemporary topical issues of European and international comparative law.

For students seeking to broadly develop their skills and knowledge for a career with an international dimension, this programme offers the best possible personal preparation. While enabling students to focus on particular subjects of interest, it also fully accommodates the needs of those students who seek a general European and international law education. With its combination of academic and practical skills modules, the programme prepares students for the international professional life that is increasingly the reality of law professionals all over the world.

 


Director

Inge Govaere

INGE GOVAERE is Professor of EU Law, Director of the Ghent European Law Institute (G.E.L.I.) and Director of the LLMs at Ghent University. She is also the Director of the European Legal Studies Department at the College of Europe in Bruges. 

She obtained her PhD at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence (Italy). Inge Govaere was  Fulbright Scholar in Residence at Cornell University (Ithaca NY, USA) and has been a visiting professor or given conferences and guest lectures at many universities worldwide, inter alia Columbia University (N.Y., USA), Yale University (C.T., USA),  Curtin University (Perth, Australia), University of Sao Paolo (Brazil),  Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II, France), Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition (Munich, Germany), the European University Institute (EUI) (Firenze, Italy), and Cambridge University (UK). 

Her academic interests vary from EU external relations law to Internal Market and EU intellectual property rights. Her latest (co-edited) books are “The Division of Competences between the European Union and its Member States: Reflections on the Past, Present and Future”, Hart Publishing (2017, paperback 2020); “The EU Better Regulation Agenda”, Hart Publishing (2018, paperback 2020); “The Interface Between EU and International Law: Contemporary Reflections”, Hart Publishing (2019); “Critical Reflections on Constitutional Democracy in the European Union”, Hart Publishing (2019); “EU External Relations Post-Lisbon: The Law and Practice of Facultative Mixity”, Brill (2020); “Internal Market 2.0”, Hart Publishing (2020, forthcoming).

Inge Govaere is a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (KVAB).

 


Courses

General Courses (10 Credits)

  1. The EU and the US Constitutional Orders Compared (4 Credits) 
    Stanislas Adam
  2. LLM Lecture Series (3 Credits)
    Inge Govaere
  3. Seminar: Foreign Chair (3 Credits)
    Inge Govaere                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Mandatory courses related to the main subject (15 Credits)

  1. Comparative Law: Function and Method (3 Credits)
    Marc Kruithof  
  2. Legal Systems of the World  (3 Credits)
    Marc Kruithof
  3. International and EU Procedural Law (4 Credits)
    Wannes Vandenbussche
  4. International Private Law (5 Credits)
    Inge Govaere  

 

Elective Courses (20 Credits)

Students may subscribe to 20 credit units from the following list. Subject to approval by the faculty

  1. International and European Environmental Law (6 Credits)
    An Cliquet
  2. Advanced Course on Human Rights (6 Credits)
    Eva Brems
  3. European Criminal Policy (6 Credits)
    Gert Vermeulen
  4. Advanced EU Competition Law (6 Credits)
    Stanislas Adam
  5. Advanced EU External Relations Law (6 Credits)
    Inge Govaere
  6. Advanced EU Institutional Law (6 Credits)
    Erwoan Lannon
  7. Advanced EU Internal Market Law (6 Credits)
    Inge Govaere
  8. The Autonomous EU Legal Order (6 Credits)
    Peter Van Elsuwege
  9. Air and Space Law (4 Credits)
    Frank Maes
  10. Contemporary Issues of IP Law (3 Credits)
    Simon Geiregat
  11. Peaceful Settlement of Disputes in International Law (4 Credits)
    Tom Ruys
  12. EU Enlargement and Proximity Relations (4 Credits)
    Erwoan Lannon
  13. EU and the Wider World: Americas, Africa and Asia (4 Credits)
    Erwoan Lannon
  14. European Banking and Capital Market Law (4 Credits)
    Michel Tison
  15. European and Comparative Company Law and Corporate Governance (4 Credits)
    Hans De Wulf
  16. Constitutional Aspects of EU Integration (4 Credits)
    Erwoan Lannon
  17. Selected Issues: European and International Migration Law and Policy (6 Credits)
    Ellen Desmet 
  18. European Labour and Employment Law (4 Credits) 
    Filip Van Overmeiren
  19. European Media Law (4 Credits)
    Eva Lievens
  20. EU Social Law and International Employment (4 Credits)
    Yves Jorens
  21. EU Trade Policy (4 Credits)
    Guillaume Van der Loo 
  22. International Commercial Arbitration (4 Credits)
    Maud Piers
  23. International Business Transactions (4 Credits)
    Inge Govaere
  24. International Economic Law (4 Credits)
    Diederik Bruloot
  25. International and European Biodiversity Law (4 Credits)
    An Cliquet
  26. Law of the Sea (4 Credits)
    Klaas Willaert
  27. Laws of Armed Conflict (4 Credits)
    Tom Ruys
  28. Selected Issues: Organised Crime (4 Credits)
    Jelle Janssens
  29. Mergers and Acquisitions (4 Credits)
    Hans De Wulf
  30. Transport Insurance Law (3 Credits)
    Kristiaan Bernauw
  31. Maritime Transport Law (4 Credits)
    Kristiaan Bernauw
  32. European Private Law (ius commune) (4 Credits)
    Maud Piers
  33. European Law and ICT (4 Credits)
    Eva Lievens
  34. Human Rights in Developing countries (5 Credits)
    Yves Haeck
  35. Human Rights in the Americas (4 Credits)
    Clara Burbano Herrera
  36. Human Rights and Migration Law Clinic (8 Credits)
    Eva Brems
  37. Moot Court: International Commercial Arbitration (12 Credits) 
    Maud Piers
  38. Moot Court: European Law (12 Credits)
    Inge Govaere
  39. Moot Court: Public International Law (12 Credits)
    Frank Maes
  40. Moot court law of armed conflicts (6 Credits)
    Tom Ruys
  41. Pax Moot Court (6 Credits)
    Jinske Verhellen
  42. Data Ethics (4 Credits)
    Mahsa Shabani
  43. Healthcare, Innovation and Law (4 Credits)
    Mahsa Shabani

 

Master Dissertation (15 Credits)

 

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