Admiralty Law: Principles and Liabilities DL

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

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

• 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 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 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:

• Analyse relevant legal materials, including international conventions, statutes, case law and standard form maritime contracts.
• 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.
• Critically appraise and offer solutions in existing areas of debate in U.K. and international maritime law.

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

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

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

The module is, in the first place, taught through a combination of recorded lectures or seminars, course handouts and PowerPoint presentations, in parallel with the on-campus programme. This material will guide your independent study based on reading lists of primary and secondary sources. The combination of recorded and written material will help you to develop your skills of analysis of relevant legal materials, the identification of key legal and policy questions, and the appraisal of available solutions. As an online student, your learning will be further supported through additional learning tools, which may include:

Short-answer questionnaires

Multiple choice questionnaires

Online discussion groups

Peer-to-peer group work

Question-based reading tasks

Two or three small group live sessions

Through your written work, including the formative and summative assessments, you will be able to develop the ability to communicate, with clarity and objectivity, arguments concerning the application of legal principles to real-life scenarios as well as practise your critical appraisal skills.

Resources & Reading list

General Resources

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

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

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

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).

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

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

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

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.

Essay or problem question

• Assessment Type: Formative
• Feedback: You will receive feedback in accordance with the applicable Law School Rules and via the Law School Feedback sheets, through comments written on the formative work, and orally in a class discussion of the formative work.
• Final Assessment: No
• Group Work: No

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