Skip to main content

Foundations in Company Law

Overview

  • Credit value: 15 credits at Level 6
  • Convenor: Professor Leslie Moran
  • Assessment: a 2500-word essay (2/3 of the total marks) and a 1500-word workbook (1/3 of the total marks)

Module description

This module is designed to provide you with the basic building blocks, the knowledge and skills, to deal confidently with company law. It is an area of law that many students expect to be dry, technical and difficult. It is certainly challenging and as a largely statute-based area of law, potentially dry. But the reality of company law is very different. The module does not slavishly follow the structure of the Companies Act 2006 - the largest piece of legislation ever produced by Parliament. That would be an impossible project and an ineffective way of studying company law.

Focusing upon underlying fundamentals, contemporary debates and transferable skills this module enables you to explore the basic principles and concepts central to company law in their social setting.

Indicative module content

  • The role of company law in the regulation of business organisations
  • Introduction to legal forms of business organisation
  • Incorporation
  • Separation of ownership and control
  • Corporate governance
  • Directors' duties
  • Remedies

Learning objectives

By the end of this module, you will have:

  • been introduced to the foundational concepts of company law
  • a knowledge of key domestic and European Union statutory materials and case law relating to corporations
  • an understanding of company law and its economic, business and social context
  • transferable skills, particularly research skills, and communication skills relating to written presentations
  • analytical, critical and rhetorical skills to reflect upon the way in which these skills have been acquired.