The culture of research excellence within the Sussex Law School fosters the development of research projects conducted across a broad range of legal issues. In recognition of its active research culture, the Law School has been placed 16th out of 67 law schools for research excellence. This means that all of our research activity in Law is rated as being world-leading, internationally excellent or internationally recognised.
The Law School hosts a number of research groups which operate in the broad areas of constitutionalism and citizenship, governance, solidarity, security, and responsibilities and rights. These groups carry out work across many aspects of law, notably child and family law, European law, international law, criminal law and criminal justice, health care law, property law, competition law, the law of obligations and comparative law.
Within the Sussex Law School, work of faculty within the Centre for Responsibilities, Rights and the Law explores the importance and limits of human rights, and the growing allocation and content of responsibilities in domestic, European and international law.
A particular hallmark of the University of Sussex is interdisciplinarity and this too figures highly in the research agenda of the Sussex Law School . Links between Law and Anthropology are particularly strong as demonstrated by a series of workshops on Culture and Rights (1997), Minorities (2004) and Paths to International Justice (2005), and a Chair in Law and Anthropology. The Centre for the Study of Justice and Violence brings together scholars located in the Sussex Law School with various Departments including Anthropology, International Relations and Politics. Law also has a presence in the Sussex Centre for Migration Research. Interdisciplinary collaboration means that doctoral students are frequently supervised jointly across Departments.
In 2007, SLS created the Centre for Responsibilities, Rights and the Law to enhance and promote the doctrinal, theoretical, and empirical research within SLS into responsibilities, rights and the law nationally, in the European Union and internationally. The Sussex Law School has excellent links with local practitioners and City firms. Local firms support the mooting, client interviewing and negotation competitions by sponsorship, participation in the delivery of workshops and judging.