The Department of Law was established in 1985, as a result of the enactment of the Law Practitioners Act in 1984, following the recommendations of the Lallah's Committee on the Review of Legal Studies.
It has since won unanimous recognition within the judiciary and the legal profession in Mauritius, as well as in the region. We regularly have students from Rodrigues Island, the Seychelles and other African countries.
Today, many of our graduates are members of the legal profession. A few of them have also joined the Department of Law as academics. Some play key roles in the judicial and legal service of the State; others work as in-house lawyers or legal advisors in public, private and parastatal organizations. A number of law graduates have proved themselves to be useful in other fields where knowledge of the law is an asset, such as in politics, human rights, diplomacy and international relations.
Our department comprises of thirteen full-time academics. Judges, magistrates, law officers and law practitioners complement the body of academics in the servicing of law modules.
The courses run by the department are the L.LB. (Hons), the BA (Hons) Law with Management, the BA (Hons) Law with Criminal Justice, the Diploma in Legal Studies and Court Administration at undergraduate and diploma levels respectively and the LLM (Corporate Law), LLM (Human Rights) and the LLM (Business and Taxation Law) at postgraduate level. We collaborate with the Department of Finance and Accounting for the running of the BSc (Hons) Finance with Law and the Department of Economics for the running of the BSc (Hons) Economics and Law. Furthermore, the law department is often called upon to service law modules such as Human Rights and Governance, Legal Aspects of Project Management, Media Law and Legal Aspects of Entrepreneurship on other undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.
The department, frequently, runs continuous legal education programmes for various professional groups such as managers, social security officers, prison officers, police officers and bank executives. The law modules and programmes offered initially reflect the mixed legal system of our country, but are also geared to equip the students meet the new challenges facing the national as well as the regional and global contexts.
In order to blend practice with theory, students are encouraged to go on work placement and mini-pupillages. On campus, they have the opportunity to participate in moot competitions and other activities organized in the region. Practitioners’ workshops are organised with a view to helping students to better develop practical legal skills and equip them for their future endeavours.
The Department prides itself for its strong collaboration with other reputed institutions and universities such as the World Trade Organisation, University of Birmingham, the University of Exeter, the University of Kent at Canterbury, the University of Aix-Marseille, the Université de la Réunion, Potsdam University, Université Paris Nanterre, and Delhi University, amongst others.
