Department of Public and Comparative Law

Department of Public and Comparative Law

The Department of Public and Comparative Law oversees the teaching of the following subjects clustered under Public and Comparative law studies. The focus of the Department of Public and Comparative Law is on subjects, course units and initiatives in the areas of Public Law and Comparative law such as Criminal law, Constitutional law, Administrative law, International law, Criminal Procedure, International and Regional Human Rights, Human Rights in Domestic Perspectives, Clinical Legal Education, International Humanitarian Law, Health Law, Oil and Gas law, and Competition law and policy. Lecturers in the department may also teach and supervise these courses at the postgraduate level.

The ethos of the department is to achieve the optimal standards of excellence in legal education and training law students, using law for the pursuit of societal needs and justice. The department aims to provide students with the knowledge and skills they need to undertake research in areas of public and comparative law.  The main aim of teaching the above subjects is to enable students to follow and engage actively not only on key legal issues gaining currency at the domestic level but also to enable learners to serve as agents of law reform processes and to be able to appreciate, partake and promote the understanding of international legal issues and other issues of public importance in other jurisdictions. The relevance of these courses cannot be overemphasized especially for students intending to specialize in the international arena, and such students aspiring to build a career principally in the domestic legal system. Comparative law courses enable students to appreciate ways in which others think about law, which potentially enriches the student’s understanding of what may or may not be universal in the existing domestic legal systems and helps shape the understanding of the relationship between law and society.