SOAS School of Law

The SOAS School of Law has an emphasis on the legal systems of Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Notable alumni of the school of law include Foreign Secretary David Lammy MP, former President of Ghana John Atta Mills, Supreme Court justices from Nigeria and Sri Lanka, and Iranian human rights activist Ghoncheh Ghavami.

In 1975, under the leadership of Antony Nicholas Allott, the school developed a comparative undergraduate LLB which continues to the present.

[1] In 2012, the Head of the Law School, Mashood Baderin, was appointed as Special Independent Expert to Sudan by the United Nations Human Rights Council.

[2] In 2013, Paul Kohler assumed the role as Head of the SOAS School of Law following the retirement of Baderin.

All students study a significant amount of non-English law, start in the first year of the LLB course, where 'Legal Systems of Asia and Africa' is compulsory.

The school has close ties with the internationally renowned Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, which is also part of the federal University of London.