Studying in London
Two courses for five credit hours are offered during the summer in London. Classes typically run Monday through Thursday and are held at the Worrell House, which contains two seminar-size classrooms. Please note that the class schedule may vary. Course materials and reading assignments are identified ahead of time to provide an opportunity to purchase or are made available online.
Field trips are often a regular part of the class experience. Visits to sites of interest in and around London, such as the Law Courts and government buildings, are usually an important part of the courses offered in London. Visits to the Inns of Court, a walking tour of London, and trips to Oxford and Cambridge are very likely.
Summer 2026 Courses Offered (Pending Approval)
Summer 2026 courses will run from May 25 through June 19. Students will be able to arrive at Worrell House a day or two prior to classes starting and will depart within a day or two of classes ending. See below for course details.
Policing in Popular Culture (3 credit hours)
Cultural critique is essential to understanding and reimagining the institutions of policing. We’ll study how policing is constructed, represented, and contested in popular culture; narratives and images that legitimize, dramatize, or challenge police power; and how representations of policing shape legal consciousness, juror expectations, legislation, and media coverage. Throughout this course, we will develop tools for critical cultural analysis and connect them to questions of law, justice, and democracy. Our approach will be centered on British cultural artifacts with comparisons to the United States and other global contexts. Visits to key sites and exhibits such as National Police Memorial, Metropolitan Police Museum, and the British Library. Activities will also include movies/plays, crime-writing festival, and art installations. Course assessment will include class participation, reflection papers, and/or presentations.
Scientific & Expert Evidence (2 credit hours, LAWR III or LAWR IV)
Comparative approach to examine who counts as an expert, what counts as reliable, and how those shift across legal systems. Planned visits to institutions such as the Old Bailey, the Royal Courts of Justice, and Scotland Yard to observe how expert knowledge is produced and tested in court.
Past Courses Offered
Please note that courses offered change each summer. The following are examples of past courses offered:
As much fun as 1L Torts is, much of the practice of tort law involves topics not covered in the 1L class. This course will explore many of those doctrines, gaining an international perspective by comparing US treatment of the topics with that in England, France, and the EU. Specifically, we will explore: (1) pure economic loss (both in negligence and intentional torts like fraud/intentional interference with contractual relations, etc.); (2) liability for traffic accidents, specifically autonomous vehicles; (3) product liability (including artificial intelligence); (4) liability for violations of privacy; (5) liability in tort between contracting parties (the borderline between tort and contract law); (6) damages/punitive damages; (7) governmental immunity; and (8) systemic topics such as contingency fees arrangements, the payment of legal fees, public advocacy, access to justice, and the various ethical and justice concerns that arise in each country’s approach.
Students will be assigned readings each week elucidating the relevant law, and much of each class will be spent working through hypotheticals in a variety of individual, group, and adversarial settings. We will also go on outings in London that pertain to topics covered in the class.
Learning objectives include not only to help students gain an understanding of tort doctrine in these jurisdictions, but also to develop the skills necessary to apply and critique the doctrine to the facts of new cases. Special attention will be brought to critiquing American tort law from a European perspective—what are we getting right/wrong? What societal goals are we sacrificing that Europeans have embraced? Vice versa? What are the relative merits to structural differences in access to justice, procedural requirements, jury v. bench trials, extensive judicial opinions, etc.? We will also explore ethical and character issues to which each system gives rise.
The course will be evaluated on class participation, formative reflective writing assignments, and a final paper. The paper will satisfy the requirements for LAWR IV.
Immerse yourself in the English Renaissance! While learning about the history of Elizabethan courts, explore the art, poetry, sermons, manuscripts, and public speeches that intersected with Renaissance law. You’ll visit the Old Bailey, see a Shakespeare play, transcribe manuscripts, turn the pages of four-hundred-year-old books in rare book libraries, and explore the London sites where law, art, and literature intertwined. You will explore the development of the common law through historical and legal texts as well as speaking with judges and lawyers who are expert in the subject. And by reading John Donne’s “Sermon Upon the Fifth of November,” George Herbert’s “Justice” poems, Elizabeth I’s speeches, William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, and passages from Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene and John Milton’s Paradise Lost that center on law and justice, you will experience the cultural context of one of law’s most dynamic and pivotal periods. In addition to daily group learning experiences, the group will together draft an article on the development of the jury and its role as a source of restorative justice, as a democratic body, and as nullifier of unjust laws.
This course will explore the rich legal heritage of England and the United Kingdom, including the origins of the common law and the creation of the modern court system. Students will trace the roots of the common law tradition, learn about the institutional development of the English system of justice, and examine the role that English common law played in the development of colonial American law. We will take advantage of our presence in London to visit important structures and documents in the development of English common law. Field trips are being planned to the British Library (to visit an original copy of the 1215 Magna Carta), Central Criminal Court (also known as Old Bailey), the Royal Courts of Justice, and Westminster Abbey (the perfect location to discuss the relationship between ecclesiastical law and the common law). Students will be evaluated based on short writing assignments and participation. No prerequisite is required.
Non-Wake Forest students should confirm that credit for these courses is accepted in their home law school. Grades for non-Wake Forest students will be only on a Pass/Fail basis (with a “C” being the minimum grade to earn a passing grade.)