Module manager: Dr. Zoe Tongue
Email: Z.Tongue@leeds.ac.uk
Taught: Semester 1 (Sep to Jan) View Timetable
Year running 2026/27
For ISA students an equivalent module to LAW1076 An Introduction to Law: What is Law? is required as a pre-requisite.
| LAW1076 | Introduction to Law |
| HECS2008 | Healthcare Ethics and Law |
This module is not approved as a discovery module
This module takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the legal regulation of health care services and decision-making – including consent, mental capacity, and specific areas of health care law. On this module, students will consider a range of contemporary issues where health care and the law intersect, and how this affects both patients and health care professionals. The interdisciplinary and comparative approach that the module takes provides students with opportunities to engage with and analyse multiple perspectives on these issues, promoting a critical and reflective approach to the role of law in this socio-legal context. This critical reflection is a key aspect of the assessment task: a critical review of an academic journal article covering one of the module’s topics.
The purpose of this module is to provide students with a critical perspective of legal regulation in the UK health care context. The module focuses on key problems and debates within different areas of health care law, allowing students to develop a socio-legal perspective on the relationship between law and health care, and how this affects patients and health care professionals.
The learning activities of this module are designed to get students to work collaboratively to evaluate and critically analyse the law in this social context. These activities will teach students to adopt critical and interdisciplinary perspectives in relation to health care law, which is reflected in their assessment task.
On successful completion of the module students will have demonstrated the following learning outcomes relevant to the subject:
1. Critically analyse and synthesise legal concepts, values, principles, and rules to assess their effectiveness across different areas of health care law;
2. Critically reflect on the role of law within contemporary cultural and societal debates on issues relating to health care, suggesting improvements or alternatives;
3. Apply legal concepts, authorities, and scholarship to solve complex actual or hypothetical problems relating to the law in different areas of health care, with well-supported arguments;
4. Conduct advanced, self-directed legal research using a range of methods, demonstrating intellectual independence and critical engagement.
On successful completion of the module students will have demonstrated the following skills learning outcomes:
Demonstrate critical and creative thinking skills in analysing complex legal and ethical issues, proposing solutions;
Employ advanced research methodologies to tackle complex legal questions, integrating diverse sources of information to support reasoned conclusions.
| Delivery type | Number | Length hours | Student hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lecture | 11 | 1 | 11 |
| Seminar | 5 | 1.5 | 7.5 |
| Private study hours | 181.5 | ||
| Total Contact hours | 18.5 | ||
| Total hours (100hr per 10 credits) | 200 | ||
181.5
A formal formative assessment opportunity will be provided for each summative assessment task, which is specifically pedagogically aligned to that task. As part of this, each student will receive feedback designed to support the development of knowledge and skills that will be later assessed in the summative task.
| Assessment type | Notes | % of formal assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Coursework | Coursework | 100 |
| Total percentage (Assessment Coursework) | 100 | |
Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated
Check the module area in Minerva for your reading list
Last updated: 30/04/2026
Errors, omissions, failed links etc should be notified to the Catalogue Team