Queen's Now

Viewing archives for Law and Law with Law Studies in Europe

My favourite memory of Queen’s

Early mornings on the Isis coxing the QCBC men’s VIIIs. I’ve always hated mornings (and still do), but there was such a great sense of camaraderie on the river, and a strong coffee afterwards put the world to rights!

What Queen’s means to me

I don’t think I realised at the time, but I think having a choral scholarship and being deeply involved in the musical life of the College alongside challenging studies probably kept me sane. Choir was an escape from the intensive reading and the academic rigour of the Jurisprudence course; focusing on reading the music and singing meant I had a complete break from my studies several times a week and gave me renewed energy to complete the week’s reading and essays.

My journey since leaving Queen’s

My journey has been somewhat squiggly. Too nervous at interview to get anywhere with Magic Circle firms, I took a job as an editor at a law reporting firm and stayed in Oxford for a further four and a half years before moving to London to be closer to friends, where I took a job as a PA at Westminster Abbey and helped organise outside broadcasts and other ‘special services’. Life then took me to Scotland and I worked for a couple of years as an EA at a private school before moving into an engineering consultancy, Mott MacDonald, as a programme office administrator. I then held roles as a project coordinator and assistant project manager before a mentoring opportunity with one of our commercial directors resulted in a job being created for me in commercial management. This role suited my legal knowledge and strong analytical skills, as well as reflecting what I enjoy – problem-solving for colleagues, and exploring how strategy, risk appetite and commercial nous drive profit on projects. I have since promoted twice and now look after the commercial health of our civil and defence nuclear business.

Alongside all that, I am part of a military family and have three children! It is a juggle meeting their needs whilst working full time, especially when their father is away on deployment, but I have sufficient flexibility to care for them and carve out a successful career.

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My favourite memory of Queen’s

Boar’s Head Gaudy.

What Queen’s means to me

Queen’s provided the academic and social training that prepared me for my professional life in the real world.

My journey since leaving Queen’s

Having trained and worked with various law firms as a litigator, I moved in-house as a generalist about 20 years ago advising various private and public entities on a broad range of legal, compliance and risk management issues. Now in a senior management role, I am lead the legal department and manage internal and external relationships, although the technical legal work (which I occasionally do these days) still fascinates me.

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Introduction

I grew up in an Italian-German household in Frankfurt, Germany, before studying law at King’s College London. I came to Oxford to read for the BCL at Mansfield College as the Marchand Legacy-Helena Kennedy Scholar. I then moved to Balliol College, Oxford, where I am completing my DPhil in Law, which is generously supported by the McDougall Scholarship.

Teaching

My teaching at Queen’s spans almost the entire range of private law subjects on the undergraduate syllabus. I teach the entire Land Law paper, and cover parts of Contract Law and Trusts. I also assist in the delivery of the Jurisprudence paper.

Research

My doctoral research investigates the problem of ‘concurrency’ in private law – that is, the situation in which a single set of facts gives rise to two or more, possibly conflicting, legal responses. Because this problem cuts across private law, the relevant cases have resisted systemisation. My thesis aims to remedy this deficiency and to articulate what rules do, and should, govern the interaction between concurrent legal responses. In my spare time, I also co-convene the Obligations Discussion Group at the Faculty of Law.

Publications

  • “Unfree Acceptance” (2026) Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly (forthcoming)
  • “The Consistency Equation” [with Beltrán Flores] (2026) 42(3) Professional Negligence 120-125
  • Book Reviews Review of Understanding Private Law: Essays in Honour of Stephen Smith (2025) 89(4) Conveyancer and Property Lawyer 403-405
  • “When is an Enforceable Agreement Not a Contract? Answer: When it is an Unjust Enrichment” (2025) 141 Law Quarterly Review 530-536

Introduction

I grew up in Lisbon, Portugal, and completed my undergraduate degree in Law at Kent Law School, UK. In 2022, I began my D.Phil, titled ‘In Praise of Gradience in the Law’, under the supervision of Professor Timothy Endicott. Prior to joining the teaching team at The Queen’s College, I taught Jurisprudence at St. Hilda’s College (2024-2026), Hertford College (for Visiting Students, 2024-2026) and Jesus College (2024-2025). I also have experience working in campaigns and in the tech/cybersecurity industry.

I am a founding and executive member of The Collective of Women in Legal Philosophy, a group created to promote and support women in legal philosophy and legal theory, and co-convened the Oxford Jurisprudence Discussion Group from April 2023 until April 2026.

Teaching

Within the College, I teach Constitutional Law and Jurisprudence. I also teach the introductory Legal Reasoning course for 1st year students.

Research

My research explains the role of bivalence and gradience in law in order to propose that there be more gradience in the law. My thesis questions the widely held view that liability determinations ought generally to be bivalent (e.g., criminal verdicts or holdings as to liability for a loss) and sets forth strategies for dealing with gradience in law. Could a legal system instead hold people guilty or liable to a certain degree? In answering ‘Yes’ to this, I respond to the worries the proposal I make may prompt, focusing particularly on how more gradience in the law impacts the scope of discretion, indeterminacy and arbitrariness in legal reasoning. At a practical level, I introduce and defend strategies to make use of more gradient operations in law through legal drafting and to approach the interpretation of gradient standards, whilst responding to concerns that may arise in each of these contexts. 

My wider research interests fall within legal drafting, legal interpretation, the rule of law, analytic jurisprudence, philosophy of language, and tech ethics. 

Publications

  • F. Paes, ‘Juridical Bivalence and The Rule of Law’ (2026) 23 Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy 677-697
  • F. Paes, ‘Collectivity and Cultural Heritage’ in S. Barclay, J. Hasnas, and V. Rodriguez-Blanco (eds.) Collective Agency and Legal Responsibility: Essays on Group Action, Personhood, and Moral Accountability (CUP, forthcoming 2027)

About me

I am a first-year Law student. I am originally from Istanbul, Turkey but I have been living in London for the past six years. I chose to study Law because I have always been passionate about Human Rights and wanted to learn more about the legal measures in place to ensure justice in a society. By studying Law at university, I wanted to gain a greater understanding of both domestic and international issues and where possible offer legal aid to those in need.

College experience

My favourite thing about Queen’s is the community. The community here is very friendly and welcoming that I feel like I am part of a big family.

I tend to spend a significant amount of my time in the library, getting through my reading list/ preparing for my tutorials. At first I found tutorials slightly nerve-racking but after having a couple, I started to really enjoy them – they are simply an academic discussion about a subject you are passionate about.

Oxford life

Beyond the library and tutorials, I go out to Queen’s Lane cafe with my friends for coffee, walk around Christ Church meadows, or just hang out at the JCR. Because the food at Queen’s is very nice, we don’t tend to eat out very often, but if we do, it would most likely be at Taylor’s or Ahmed’s after a night out.

Advice for applicants

Don’t be scared to apply, anyone with a passion for their subject has a chance to get in.

Introduction

I grew up in Melbourne, Victoria, and completed undergraduate degrees in law and science at the University of Melbourne. After graduating, I spent three years as a solicitor at Minter Ellison before returning to the Melbourne Law School as a research fellow and, subsequently, doctoral candidate. My thesis passed in 2012, and won the Law School’s Harold Luntz Graduate Research Thesis Prize and the university-wide Chancellor’s Prize for Excellence in the PhD Thesis. Prior to starting at Queen’s in 2023, I held posts at the University of Queensland (2009-2012), University of Oxford (2012-2015) and King’s College London (2015-2023). I am the author of Drafting Copyright Exceptions: From the Law in Books to the Law in Action, published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.

Teaching

Within the College, I teach Contract Law and Trusts at FHS Level. My Faculty teaching is in Intellectual Property law. I contribute to all four IP half options offered to students studying the BCL/MJur and the MSc in Intellectual Property Law: Comparative Copyright; Incentivising Aesthetic Progress: Intellectual Property, Art & Design (which I convene); Incentivising Innovation; and Trade Marks and Brands. I also contribute to the Oxford Diploma in Intellectual Property Law. I am available to supervise graduate work, in particular in relation to copyright and trade mark law.

Research

My research spans many areas, including intellectual property, personal property, trusts, and law as it relates to cultural institutions and the creative industries. I have a particular interest in interrogating the ‘law in action’ – that is, law as understood by everyday actors. This reflects the idea that law has multiple audiences, only some of which are legal experts (judges, lawyers and the like). How do regular folk understand and engage with the law? In exploring these questions, I have drawn from more recent iterations of law and economics, being scholarship informed by psychologists, behavioural economists and others who have challenged and built on the insights of the Chicago school and its legal offshoots. In my current work, I am drawing even more heavily from cognitive science, psychology and allied fields, in order to test the scientific basis of certain claims and concepts in intellectual property law.

Courses

  • BA Jurisprudence
  • BA Law with European Law
  • BA Law with French Law
  • BA Law with German Law
  • BA Law with Italian Law
  • BA Law with Spanish Law

Average Intake at Queen’s: 6

The Course

The College admits for both the BA in Jurisprudence (‘Course I’) and BA Law with Law Studies in Europe (‘Course II’, consisting of five variants: Law with European Law, Law with French Law, Law with German Law, Law with Italian Law and Law with Spanish Law).

Course I lasts three years, and students study twelve subjects for examination. In the first two terms of the first year, students take Constitutional Law, Criminal Law and A Roman Introduction to Private Law, and sit examinations (known as ‘Law Moderations’) in all three subjects at the end of the second term of their first year. Students must pass these examinations in order to go on to the second stage of the degree, which consists of the subjects taken for the Final Honour School (‘Finals’) at the end of the third year. Students sit nine papers for Finals, seven of which – Administrative Law, Contract, EU Law, Jurisprudence, Land Law, Trusts and Tort – are compulsory, and two of which are chosen from a list of options. Typically, students study for the compulsory papers (save for EU Law) between Moderations and the start of their third year, and for EU Law and their two options during the third year, when an extensive revision programme also takes place.

Course II lasts four years. It operates in an identical fashion to Course I save that after the second year, students depart for a year to study at a continental European university. The Law faculty has exchange arrangements with a set of European universities, and Oxford Course II students attend the university most closely associated with the course variant for which they are studying. After their year abroad, Course II students return to study for EU Law and the two option papers alongside third year Course I students, sitting the nine Finals papers with those students at the end of the academic year. In the first and second years, Course II students attend language classes specific to the country in which they will study in their third year.

Teaching

Teaching in first and second year subjects is organised by the College, and students will be taught either within the College or by tutors in other Colleges with which exchange teaching arrangements exist. Teaching in EU Law and the two final year option papers is, by contrast, organised through the Law faculty, although these papers – like those taken in the first and second years – rely heavily on tutorial teaching. In all cases, the teaching is by specialists in the subjects concerned.

Admissions

Since the undergraduate courses are intended to instill, above all else, a rigorous and critical approach to the analysis of law and legal reasoning, the purpose of the admissions interviews which take place in December is to test for the appropriate logical reasoning skills. During the interviews, candidates will be required to discuss with the tutors a problem situation about which they have been given some written details shortly beforehand. Absolutely no prior knowledge of the law is needed. The aim is not to test what candidates know, but instead to measure how well they reason and critically assess material when confronted with logic problems of the type involved in legal study at degree level.

Candidates applying for Course II will also be required, if selected for interview, to undergo a language test. Candidates who apply for Course II are sometimes offered a place on Course I given their performances in the logical reasoning and language tests.


Introduction

Dan Sarooshi is Senior Research Fellow of the Queen’s College, Oxford and Professor of Public International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. He is also co-General Editor of the Oxford Monographs in International Law Series; was appointed by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2006 to the WTO Dispute Settlement List of Panellists after joint nomination by the United Kingdom Government and the European Communities; and was elected in 2008 to membership of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law.

Teaching

Public International Law (FHS); International Economic Law (BCL/MJur); International Dispute Settlement (BCL/MJur)

Research

Professor Sarooshi’s books include International Organizations and Their Exercise of Sovereign Powers  (OUP, 2005), The UN and the Development of Collective Security (OUP, 1999), the sole edited Responsibility and Remedies for the Actions of International Organizations (Martinus Nijhoff, Hague Academy of International Law Imprint) (2015), and the co-edited State Responsibility Before International Judicial Institutions  (Hart, 2004). The first two of these books were awarded the 2000 (biennial) Guggenheim Prize by the Guggenheim Foundation in Switzerland; the 2001 American Society of International Law Book Prize; the 2006 Myres S. McDougal Prize awarded by the American Society for the Policy Sciences; and the 2006 American Society of International Law Book Prize.

He has co-authored over 50 academic pieces, including the long chapter with Judge Dame Rosalyn Higgins FBA, QC, former President of the International Court of Justice, and Dr P. Webb, entitled “Institutional Modes of Conflict Management” in National Security Law  (2015, 3rd edn) (125 pp.).

Introduction

Nicholas Bamforth is Fellow and Praelector in Jurisprudence. He studied Law at undergraduate and graduate level in Oxford, and works in the fields of Constitutional and Administrative Law, Human Rights Law, and Sexuality and Law. Within the Law faculty, he lectures on the Administrative Law and Human Rights Law courses, and teaches on the Comparative Human Rights course at BCL/MJur level. Within the College, he teaches Constitutional Law at Moderations level, Administrative Law at FHS level, and Human Rights Law for those who select that subject as a third year option.

He is the author or co-author of three books: Discrimination Law: Theory and Context (with C O’Cinneide and M Malik, Thomson/Sweet and Maxwell), Patriarchal Religion, Sexuality and Gender: A Critique of New Natural Law (with D A J Richards, Cambridge), and Sexuality, Morals and Justice (Cassell). He has also edited or co-edited the following: Sexual Orientation and Rights (Ashgate), Accountability in the Contemporary Constitution (with P Leyland, Oxford), Sex Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2002 (Oxford), and Public Law in a Multi-layered Constitution (with P Leyland, Hart).

Within the University, he has served as a Proctor and been an elected member of the University Council and of the Nominating Committee for the Vice-Chancellorship. Within the College he serves as Secretary of the Governing Body. As such, he has a keen interest in academic freedom and questions of higher education policy.