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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.

Course

  • BA (Hons) Jurisprudence
  • BA (Hons) Law with European Law
  • BA (Hons) Law with French Law
  • BA (Hons) Law with German Law
  • BA (Hons) Law with Italian Law
  • BA (Hons) Law with Spanish Law

Admissions

The College normally admits about 6 students per year for the BA courses in Jurisprudence (‘Course I’) and 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). Typically, up to one student is admitted for Course II in each year.

The courses

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.

Interviews

The College participates in the Law faculty’s admissions process, as part of which candidates sit the Law National Admissions Test (‘LNAT’) in their schools, or another approved institution, in October. 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 Oxford in December is to test for the appropriate logical reasoning skills. Candidates who are selected for interview are required to attend two or more interviews of roughly twenty minutes length. 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 whilst in Oxford. 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.

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