LLM in International Economic Law

You must take these courses:

• WTO Law 1 (20 credits)

  The aim of the course is to provide students with an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the multilateral trading system. The course will cover the institutional and the substantive law of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which since its establishment in 1995 has played a central role in, among other things, promoting the two underlying principles of non-discrimination and trade liberalisation. After analysing theoretical and practical arguments for and against free trade and the role of institutions in international trade, the course will then focus on the institutional structure and decision-making process of the WTO, including its unique system of the settlement of trade disputes. Students will then explore the key legal disciplines relating to international trade in goods (GATT) and services (GATS), particularly the principle of non-discrimination and market-access rules. In addition, the course will address the central issue of technical barriers to trade.

• International Investment Law (20 credits)

  This course will give an introduction to the major themes and issues of international investment law. The focus of study is the rules contained in the network of more than 3000 bilateral and multilateral treaties on investment protection, as well as the growing number of decisions by arbitral tribunals in this field. Students will analyse the substantive principles of investment law, such as most-favoured nation treatment, fair and equitable treatment, and the rules relating to expropriation. They will also study mechanisms for dispute settlement in the context of investment disputes, particularly investor-state arbitration. Throughout the course, students will consider the extent to which international investment law draws an appropriate balance between investment protection on the one hand and the ability of states to regulate on key public policy issues on the other hand. Students will also look at the challenges of developing a coherent regime of investment rules.

Core courses

You must select between 20 and 40 credits from the following courses:

• International Investment Arbitration: Theory and Practice (20 credits)

  The aim of this course is to further develop students' knowledge of international investment law, and improve both their written and oral advocacy skills in investment arbitration. In so doing, students will have the opportunity to substantiate some of the most important stages of investor-state arbitration proceedings and present written and oral submissions. This practical component of the course will be accompanied by theoretical discussion and analysis of current debates surrounding the reform of investor state dispute settlement.
  The course will develop around a mock investor-state dispute, which will be argued by students, as claimants and respondents. To this end students will work in groups in and outside the classroom (this aspect is akin to a preparation for a moot court competition). Students will be expected to read primary and secondary materials and apply these to the specific facts of the mock case.

• Law and Development (20 credits)
  
  What, if anything, is development, and what role does law play in its theories and practices?
  
  To answer these questions, the course will consider the history and evolution of some of the major economic theories of development; their translation into diverse political and social policies; and the traces and legacies they have left behind in today's development thinking. It will also consider the ideas about law embedded in these theories and the way they have been put into practice. In particular, the course will explore the role of law and institutions in the creation of markets and the allocation of capital and power.
   
• WTO Law 2 (20 credits)
  This course focusses on more specialised - but highly significant - issues of WTO law such as subsidies, trade remedies and anti-dumping. It will also cover the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and the principle of special and differential treatment of developing countries. 
   
• Advanced Issues in International Economic Law (20 credits)
  This course is designed for students who seek to acquire a thorough knowledge and critical understanding of contemporary issues in international trade and investment law, and international development. Each year, the lecturers will pick a range of topics from contemporary issues that have received heightened attention in the scholarship, the practice and the agenda of policy-makers.

Optional courses

You must select between 20 and 40 credits from the following courses:

• Fundamental Issues in International Law (two-semester course, 40 credits)

  This is a course aimed at introducing students to fundamental debates about the nature of international law and the international legal order today, and its relationship to states, markets, conflict, justice and human rights. The course is historical, conceptual, theoretical and legal. It introduces students to key ideas and arguments about where the international legal order is coming from and where it is going, what its building blocks are, and how those components are changing. A theme uniting the course is the extent to which the international legal order is shifting from a classical jus inter gentes to something else: a law of global governance, a global administrative law, a law of rights and regulation, or some combination.

• Energy Transition and the International Economic Legal Order: Governance, Challenges and Innovations (20 credits)
  The global energy transition is not just a technological or social challenge; it is deeply embedded in international legal frameworks governing trade, investment, and finance. This course examines how international economic law (as well as, to an extent, international environmental law) shapes decarbonisation efforts, from treaty-making and dispute resolution to regulatory innovations in energy markets. Students will explore legal mechanisms for attracting renewable energy investment, phasing out fossil fuels, managing critical materials, and aligning international economic law rules with climate objectives¿gaining insight into the governance challenges at the heart of the energy transition.
   
• New Perspectives on International Law and the Environment (20 credits)
  International law and governance mechanisms have not managed to avert the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. This course will introduce students to diverse alternative perspectives that have been proposed to remedy some of these systemic failings, and critically reflect on their potential and limitations.
   
• International Political Economy (20 credits)
  This option introduces the main schools of thinking about International Political Economy by focusing upon the patterns of evolution in the global political economy since the Second World War. The course considers the main theoretical approaches to understanding IPE, before considering the subject areas of trade, transnational corporations, international finance, development, globalisation and regionalisation. It is designed for students with no prior experience of the subject or of economics.
   
• Rethinking International Law (20 credits)
  This courses examines international law as a historical and political project through which different arrangements of global power are advanced and contested. The course will introduce you to diverse critical and alternative perspectives that reflect on international law's role and limitations in advancing global justice.
   
• Issues in Law and Sustainable Development (20 credits)
  What, if anything, is sustainable development and what role does law play in its theories and practices?
  Building on the introductory course on Law and Development, this course turns to the way economic theories and legal ideas emerge in "sustainable development", one of the key modern battlegrounds over the nature and direction of development practice. The course will explore law and sustainable development from a range of perspectives, such as environmental sustainability, security, and the rule of law.
   
• Making International Law (20 credits)
  This course explores the complex and subtle art of international law-making, focusing on the Law of Treaties. Attention will be given to the variable actors and multilateral processes that monitor, add to and adjudicate questions of international law. You will compare approaches across different types of international law and consider how variances feed into debates about fragmentation and enforcement. The class will complement the wider range of issues covered in Fundamental Issues in International Law.
   
• The Law of International Trade (20 credits)
  This course examines the legal aspects of international trade in a broad context. The legal framework of the course is English law as well as the relevant international conventions and standard terms typically used in this field. The course examines international sale of goods which are transported by sea. It investigates the trade terms used in international sale contracts (in the context of English common law and Incoterms in particular) and analyses the resulting obligations of the parties regarding payment methods (with emphasis on letters of credit and bills of exchange), transportation of the goods (focusing on bills of lading and waybills) and marine cargo insurance in the manner in which these relate to one another.

You will have the option to take between 0 and 40 credits of the following courses from different subject areas offered by the Law School, depending on availability and with the express permission of the Programme Director.

• Advanced Comparative Constitutional Law (20 credits)
• Advanced Legal Reasoning (20 credits)
• Comparative Property Law (20 credits)
• Current Issues in the Case Law of the European Court of Human Rights (20 credits)
• Fundamentals of EU Competition Law 1 (20 credits)
• Fundamentals of EU Competition Law 2 (20 credits)
• Hardware and the Law: intellectual property, safety, sustainability and sovereignty for tech devices (20 credits)
• Human Rights and Conflict Resolution (20 credits)
• Intellectual Property and Development (20 credits)
• International Commercial Arbitration (20 credits)
• International Private Law: Jurisdiction and Enforcement of Judgments (20 credits)
• Legal Decision-Making (20 credits)
• LGBT Rights: A Legal Perspective (20 credits)
• Reasoning with Precedent (20 credits)
• Software and the Law (20 credits)

Having successfully completed 120 credit points of courses within the LLM, you will be ready to move onto a single piece of independent and in-depth research. The 10,000 word dissertation allows you to focus on a preferred topic from within the field of international economic law, normally based on a subject you have studied in one of your courses during the programme.

You will be assigned an academic dissertation supervisor who will provide you with support and guidance while you prepare and write your dissertation.

The dissertation is a challenging but rewarding endeavour, asking you to demonstrate a comprehensive grasp of the relevant literature and an ability to engage critically with a range of sources, drawing on the skills and knowledge you have developed during the course of the programme. Students are encouraged to show originality and evidence of independent thinking, whether in terms of the material used, or the manner in which it is presented.

The dissertation is written in the summer months (April to August) after the taught courses are successfully completed.

Deval joined Edinburgh Law School in 2020 as Lecturer in International Economic Law. He previously held research positions at Harvard Law School and the Graduate Institute, Geneva; and taught on international law and development at the Graduate Institute, Harvard, Manchester, SOAS, and Universidad de los Andes. Deval also has a decade of experience working for the World Bank on rule of law and governance in Nigeria, Cameroon, Sierra Leone and Uganda; as well as advising the UN on rule of law issues. Trained in history and French literature (M.A., Oxford), and law and social theory (LL.M. and S.J.D., Harvard Law School), he is a member of the Bar of England and Wales.

His current research spans law and development, expertise, (de)colonial patterns of knowledge and authority, and theories of the state in the Global South. His ongoing projects focus on the administrative structures of social welfare provision in the South; the effects of decentralization on mining governance in the South; the nature and function of legal expertise in development projects; and the politics of social scientific comparative methods as they are applied in Southern contexts.

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Agata Daszko joined the Law School as an Early Career Fellow in International Economic Law in August 2024. Prior to joining the Law School, she was a Research Fellow att the University of Göttingen, where she is also completing her PhD thesis on the environmental impact assessments in international investment law and arbitration. Her research interest lie in investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS), interlinkages between international investment law and public international law, and investment arbitration under State contracts. She has previously held visiting researcher positions at the University of Bologna (March-April 2023) and Kyoto University (March-May 2024). 

In addition to her current role, Agata also serves as the Academic Assistant at the Society of International Economic Law. She is also the Assistant General Editor of the Commentaries on World Trade Law (Brill), Editor-in-Chief of the EFILA Blog, and has previously worked as a consultant at the OECD Trade and Agriculture Directorate and an international arbitration clerk at Arnold & Porter. 

Agata holds an LL.M. in Public International Law from Leiden University and a BA in Law with German and German Law (qualifying law degree) from the University of Nottingham.

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Filippo is on sabbatical for the 2025-26 academic year

Professor Filippo Fontanelli joined the Law School in 2015. Before joining the School he lectured law at the School of Law of the University of Surrey (2012-2014), where he taught public international law, law of the World Trade Organisation, EU law I and II, international law of foreign investment protection and international law of human rights protection.

He is a member of the Centre for Judicial Cooperation of the European University Institute of Fiesole (Italy) and routinely provides training sessions to judges and practitioners on matters of EU law and human rights protection in Europe.  He is also admitted to the bar in Italy (Rome).

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Prof Andrew Lang joined the University of Edinburgh in 2017 as Chair in Public International Law and Global Governance. He was formerly Professor of Law at the London School of Economics, where he taught from 2006-2017.

His current research thematically focusses on a number of themes around global economic governance, including the relationship between law and expert knowledge, theoretical international law and economics, and sociological approaches to the study of international economic law. He is co-authoring a commentary on the WTO’s Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade, and has ongoing projects relating to the treatment of subsidies in WTO law, the WTO implications of Brexit, and the SPS agreement.

Find out more

We require a minimum 2:1 honours degree from a UK university, or its international equivalent, in law. We may also consider a UK 2:1 honours degree, or its international equivalent, in a social science subject. Entry to this programme is competitive. Meeting minimum requirements for consideration does not guarantee an offer of study.

Supporting your application

• Relevant work experience is not required but may increase your chances of acceptance.
• Relevant professional qualifications will be considered.
• Preference will be given to those with grades above the minimum requirements due to strong competition for places on this programme.

International qualifications

You can check whether your degree qualification is equivalent to the minimum standard before applying.

Check your degree

Students from China

This degree is Band A.

Find out more about our postgraduate entry requirements for students from China

Postgraduate study in the field of law requires a thorough, complex and demanding knowledge of English, so we ask that the communication skills of all students are at the same minimum standard.

You must demonstrate a level of English language competency at a level that will enable you to succeed in your studies, regardless of your nationality or country of residence.

If you have already met our English language entry requirements for your programme at the time you apply, your application may be considered more competitive in selection than applications where you still need to take an English language test. 

English language tests

We accept the following English language qualifications at the grades specified:

Two year expiry

• IELTS Academic / IELTS Academic for UKVI and IELTS Academic Online: total 7.0 (at least 7.0 in the writing component and 6.5 in each other module)
• TOEFL-iBT (including Home Edition): total 100 (at least 25 in writing and 23 in each other module)
• Trinity ISE: ISE III with a pass in all four components
• Oxford ELLT (Global and Digital): 8 overall with at least 8 in the writing component and 7 in each other component

Three and a half year expiry

• C1 Advanced, formerly known as Cambridge English: Advanced (CAE): 185 (at least 185 in writing and at least 176 in the other modules)
• C2 Proficiency, formerly known as Cambridge English: Proficiency (CPE): 185 (at least 185 in writing and at least 176 in the other modules)

Your English language qualification must be no more than two years old from the start of the month in which the programme you are applying to study begins, unless you are using CAE/CPE, in which case it must be no more than three and a half years old on the first of the month in which the degree begins.

Degrees taught and assessed in English

We also accept an undergraduate or postgraduate degree, that has been taught and assessed in English, either:

1. In a majority English speaking country, as defined by UK Visas & Immigration (UKVI).

UKVI Majority English speaking countries

or

2. On our list of approved universities in non-majority English speaking countries.

Approved universities in non-majority English speaking countries

If you are not a national of a majority English speaking country, then your degree must be no more than five years old at the start of the month in which your programme of study begins.

Full details of the University's English language requirements are available on the University's website

Visit the University's English language requirements web page to find out more

Pre-sessional English for Academic Purposes

We also accept satisfactory completion of our English for Academic Purposes programme as meeting our English language requirements. You must complete the programme no more than two years and one month before the start date of the degree you are applying to study.

Find out more about the University's Pre-sessional English for Academic Purposes

Your application may not be successful if you do not currently satisfy any of these requirements; alternatively, you may be offered a place conditional on your reaching the satisfactory standard by the time you start the degree.

English language support

The University runs a series of programmes for English Language Education, including a pre-sessional English Language Programme intended to strengthen your English Language skills before you start your programme of study.

Find out more about English language support offered by the University

Due to high demand, this programme operates a gathered field approach to admissions, with two application deadlines as noted below.

Each application round has a decision deadline, also listed below, but note that we will make as many offers as possible to the strongest candidates on an ongoing basis, in advance of the published decision deadline. We strongly recommend that you apply as early as possible, especially if you intend to apply for funding or a visa. Applications may close earlier than published deadlines if there is exceptionally high demand. If you are considering applying for our pre-sessional English Language programme, please make sure you apply in Round 1.

Please note that for an application to be reviewed, it must be a complete application by the application deadline with all supporting documentation uploaded, including your transcripts. If you already have evidence that you meet the English language entry requirements, such as via an approved English language test, please upload this evidence at the time of your application. If you have not already met your English language requirements, we will still review your application and issue a decision providing it is otherwise complete.

Selection deadlines

After Round 2, if there are still places available, applications will remain open. As this is not guaranteed, however, you are advised to apply by the application deadlines above.

Please note that the deadline for meeting the conditions of an offer is 14 August 2026.

If you receive an offer of admission, either unconditional or conditional, you will be asked to pay a tuition fee deposit of £1,500 (within 28 days of receiving your offer) to secure your place on the programme.

Find out more about tuition fee deposits

Applications are made online via the University Application Service, EUCLID.

Please follow the instructions carefully and make sure that you have included the following documentation with your application:

• You will need to submit a personal statement of around 500 words, outlining your academic history and relevant experience. 
  Guidance on writing your personal statement.
• If you have any other relevant experience, for example paid or voluntary work experience or additional qualifications not stated elsewhere, then please include this information in your personal statement, or you can add it to the “Relevant knowledge/training skills” field in the application form.
• Degree certificates showing award of degree.
• Previous academic transcripts for all past degree programmes (please upload the full transcript showing results from all years of study). If you haven’t yet graduated, you may be asked to upload an interim transcript for any degrees that you are currently studying.
• Evidence of English language proficiency, if required.

If you are currently studying for your degree or you are not in a possession of an English test result you may still apply to the programme. Please note that it is your responsibility to submit the necessary documents.

Please be aware that applications must be submitted and complete, i.e. all required documents uploaded, by the relevant application deadline in order to be considered in that round. Your application will still be considered if you have not yet met the English language requirement for the programme.

View full detailed application guidance

Students at this University must not undertake any other concurrent credit bearing studies in this (or in any other) institution, unless the College has granted permission. The College must be satisfied that any additional credit-bearing studies will not restrict the student’s ability to complete their existing programme of study. Students will not be permitted to undertake concurrent degree programmes in any circumstances.

If you are studying at this or another institution just prior to the start of your postgraduate studies you must have finished these studies before the start of the programme to which you have an offer.

After your application has been submitted you will be able to track its progress through the University's applicant hub.

Application processing times will vary, however the admissions team will endeavour to process your application within four to six weeks of submission. Please note that missing documentation will delay the application process.

You will be informed as soon as possible of the decision taken. Three outcomes are possible:

• You may be offered a place unconditionally
• You may be offered a conditional place, which means that you must fulfil certain conditions that will be specified in the offer letter. Where a conditional offer is made, it is your responsibility to inform the College Postgraduate Office when you have fulfilled the requirements set out. 
  Please note that the deadline for meeting the conditions of an offer is 14 August 2026.
• Your application may be unsuccessful. If your application has not been successful, you can request feedback from us or refer to our guidance for unsuccessful applicants, which explains some of the common reasons we why we reach this decision.
  View the University's guidance for unsuccessful applicants

Deferring your offer

We do not normally offer deferrals, however, we may be able to make a very limited number of offers for deferred entry in exceptional circumstances.

View full guidance on deferral requests

The University’s terms and conditions form part of your contract with the University, and you should read them, and our data protection policy, carefully before applying.

University of Edinburgh admissions terms and conditions