University of Western Cape UWC Criminal Justice and Procedure Department

We play a pivotal role in the education of law students, for we teach the core courses in the Bachelor of Laws (LLB) syllabus. These are: Criminal Law, the Law of Criminal Procedure, the Law of Civil Procedure, and the Law of Evidence. The latter three are the so-called “tools of the trade”, as they include equipping the prospective lawyer with the know-how required to litigate cases in court.

We also teach all the Foundation Programme courses and skills courses, which makes us the logical host of the Legal Process Course taught through the Legal Aid Clinic in which students learn to hone their skills for future practice. Importantly, our department teaches more than a third of all the compulsory courses in the LLB degree course. We thus accompany every law student academically from first to final year. We also offer a select menu of highly sought-after elective courses, such as advanced criminal law, child justice, conveyancing, legal process, and comparative criminal justice. The latter module is run jointly with the University of Missouri during our winter vacation, and is very eagerly subscribed to  by students from both UWC and Missouri.

 At the postgraduate level we offer the Master of Laws (LLM) in Transnational Criminal Justice. This degree, which attracts students from various African and European countries, offers, in co-operation with the Humboldt University in Germany, modules on contemporary criminal law themes, namely International Criminal Law, Transitional Justice, International Anti-Corruption Law and International Anti-Money Laundering Law.  Most of the students enrolled for this degree are legal practitioners, public prosecutors, state advocates, law lecturers and judicial officers. Four members of our department also teach the LLM module Constitutional Rights and Criminal Justice.

UWC Criminal Justice and Procedure Department Contact