Is European Union Law still relevant?

It's been exactly ten years since the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union.

Over six years since it formally withdrew.

And yet European Union Law remains on the curriculums of Law degrees up and down the country, often as a compulsory module. Why is this? And is it still justified?

The most direct answer to the first question is that EU Law remains a part of the Foundations of Legal Knowledge, the core subjects which are still required for prospective barristers. The Bar Standards Board has upheld this position in recent reviews, arguing that as the law of England and Wales still contains much law that originated from the EU and that transnational transactions remain key, it should continue to be taught. The Bar Qualification Manual states this as follows:

EU Law in Context

The UK has now left the European Union, but EU Law still has significant relevance to the laws of England and Wales and therefore practise as a barrister. Knowledge of current and developing EU Law may be used to assist in the interpretation and evolution of retained EU Law and as a result, for the purposes of the academic component of Bar training, the Law of the European Union will continue to be a required academic element of a barrister’s training.

However, legal education in England & Wales has been shaken up in recent years by the shift in the solicitors' route away from requiring a qualifying law degree with the Foundations and towards learning functioning legal knowledge to pass the Solicitors Qualification Examination. Significantly the Solicitors Regulation Authority has reduced the amount of EU Law required for the SQE to a portion within Public Law.

This effect can be seen on the three routes the Open University offers on its Bachelor of Laws degree. Those taking the barristers' route have to take the full seven Foundations of Legal Knowledge, including the European Union Law module. But for those taking the SQE route, only the other six are covered in full in the compulsory modules. This is shown by the way that students on the Graduate Entry route who want to get a qualifying law degree with the full seven Foundations have to take the three SQE modules to cover six of them and then EU Law as a standalone module. This module is also available as an option for students on the solicitors' route. For those taking the academic route EU Law is one of several options (as is Land Law).

(EU Law is also still compulsory for prospective barristers and solicitors in Northern Ireland. The Scottish legal system is very different and the core curriculum is described differently on regulators' websites but there's still an element of EU Law there. However, whilst an OU LLB with the right modules meets the requirements for the academic stage of qualification in Northern Ireland, it does not do so in Scotland.)

So EU Law at the OU remains compulsory only for those taking either of the barrister routes of the law degree. The position in other universities is mixed and it would take a lot more research than is usual for a single blog post to see just how many make it compulsory for all students and how many now have it as an option, though such a decision probably owes more to the debate as to how much all law students should take the full Foundations than a more specific one about EU Law.

Will this change in the future? This depends primarily upon the amount of law remaining in the system that ultimately came from the EU. The last decade has seen a number of developments surrounding the Brexit process and its aftermath with effects upon the state of the law here with changes in the relationship with the EU under different governments.

Any decision about whether it should continue to be compulsory for any route in legal education should be taken on the basis of what are the most important components of the law that a prospective legal practitioner should learn. It should not be a proxy for one's opinion on whether or not Brexit should have happened or if the United Kingdom should seek to rejoin the European Union in the near future.

So do I think it still deserves a place on the curriculum? Well I'll try to answer that when I've completed the module.

(Image created with Microsoft 365 Copilot.)