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Transnational Criminal Law is the area of international law that deals with obligations
on states to prosecute certain behaviour domestically, and it?s areas where international law has
developed to the extent which it has decided that cooperation is required between states
to repress certain conduct. So, for example, transnational crimes include piracy, they
include drug trafficking, they include people trafficking, they include the crime of torture;
and so in this course we look at these various different crimes and the treaty mechanisms
that have been created to suppress such behaviour. In addition what we look at is the means of
cooperation between states in preventing and prosecuting such crimes, such as for example
law relating to extradition or mutual legal assistance. Then we complete the course by
looking at one of the main international bodies that deals with transnational crimes and that?s
the international police cooperation body, Interpol.
This module, I think, is particularly important in the modern day when we have, quite literally,
wars being fought in relation to drug trafficking, and money laundering is a huge industry with
literally billions and billions of dollars a day being transferred illicitly around the
world. Furthermore, transnational crimes like piracy, that some people might think evoke
the era of Jack Sparrow and the like, in fact are hugely important in modern day life so
there?s a huge amount of piracy for example in the South China Sea. Billions of dollars
have gone into the counter-piracy efforts in Somalia and also piracy is a huge issue,
for example, in the Malacca Straits and elsewhere around South-East Asia.
The course is taught on a seminar basis. So what happens is, readings are given from a
textbook which covers all of the areas very nicely in my view and also academic literature
which relates to transnational crime more generally. And people are asked to read that
beforehand and obviously I give a reading guide so people know what they should and
shouldn?t read before the seminar and then what we do is we come to the seminar and we
discuss those readings and we discuss them particularly for the point of view of analysing
whether we agree with them or not and whether in fact they fulfil the aims of transnational
criminal law but also [are they] coherent with human rights obligations that states
have.