Admiralty Law: Principles and Liabilities

Learning Outcomes

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Distinguish relevant from irrelevant materials.
• Think critically, develop coherent arguments in writing.
• Display clarity and objectivity in written discussion demonstrating an awareness of issue of academic integrity.
• Identify and analyse key issues.

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• The existing areas of debate, such as the principled practices and doctrine of General Average, within Admiralty law both in its statutory and common law form and its application in the U.K. and internationally.
• The most frequently occurring and important terms of liabilities covering incidents at sea, including collisions; salvage and towage; piracy, pollution, wreck and port liabilities.
• The main principles of admiralty law and the commercial and public policies which underpin it, deriving from a variety of legal instruments, including international conventions, statutes, case law and standard form maritime contracts.

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Identify key legal and policy issues in their maritime commercial context and apply admiralty principles, with appropriate legal authorities, in the solution of complex practical problems involving multiple regimes of liability and draft legal advice based upon such problems.
• Analyse relevant legal materials, including international conventions, statutes, case law and standard form maritime contracts.
• Critically appraise and offer solutions in existing areas of debate in U.K. and international maritime law.

The main topics to be covered in the module are:

* the nature and development of Admiralty Law

* Collisions, including towage elements

* Salvage, including towage elements

* General average

* Piracy

* Port liabilities and removal of wrecks

* Marine pollution liabilities

Teaching and learning methods

This module is taught by lectures (8x2hours) and seminars (3x2hours). Lectures will introduce the principles and structure of the subject. You are expected to provide the main input to the seminars where the principles introduced in the lectures are applied to hypothetical scenarios.

The most important part of learning is your own independent study. This will, however, be closely guided, and firmly tied into the lectures, seminars and assessment. In the seminars you will have the opportunity to present arguments orally to a group of peers and defend your position under challenge.

Resources & Reading list

General Resources

Rainey, The Law of Tug and Tow and Offshore Contracts (4th ed. 2017).

Gaskell and Forrest, The Law of Wreck (Informa, 2020).

Marsden & Gault, Collisions at Sea (14th ed. 2016).

The Southampton Volumes of Admiralty Law Materials. Students are issued with electronic copies of the module’s materials which contain the primary legal instruments required for their study.

Brice, Maritime Law of Salvage (5th edition, 2012).

Kennedy & Rose, The Law of Salvage (9th ed. 2017).

Rose, General Average – Law and Practice (3rd ed. 2018).

Mandaraka-Sheppard, Modern Maritime Law and Risk Management Vols I and II (3rd end, Informa, 2013)..

Textbooks

D. Attard, et al., (2016). The IMLI Manual on International Maritime Law, Volume II: Shipping Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

S. Baughen (2019). Shipping Law. Routledge.

Formative

This is how we’ll give you feedback as you are learning. It is not a formal test or exam.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External