Transfer of commercial law to the Faculty of Law decided

“We’ve been working for this to happen for a long time, but there have been many negotiations, risk and impact assessments and union negotiations along the way,” says Magnus Ödman, Deputy Administrative Director at the Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences and senior faculty administrator for the Faculty of Law.

The Faculty of Law offers a wide range of subject areas and has many employees. The hope is that these courses and study programmes will also be easier to change if necessary. Magnus Ödman hopes that both teachers and students will benefit from the move.

“We’ve encountered some worried teaching staff who have been concerned about what would happen. But now we hope that everyone will feel at home. In addition, it’s very positive that as two faculties within our disciplinary domain we can agree on something so complex,” says Magnus.

“As the responsibility for all courses and study programmes under the main field of study will be moving to the Faculty of Law and the Department of Law, students will now have access to an even greater breadth of legal expertise,” says Fredrik Andersson, senior faculty administrator at the Office for Humanities and Social Sciences.

Commissioned study programmes

The overall decision was made by the Faculty Board of Social Sciences on 28 January 2025 and this includes the proposal to continue using the prefix filosofie in Swedish for a degree with commercial law as its main field of study. It has also been decided to pause admissions for the academic year 2025/2026 to the Master’s Programme in International and European Law and Business (60 credits) and all the freestanding courses in commercial law.

“The Faculty of Social Sciences will commission the Faculty of Law to organise compulsory courses in several of their programmes. The establishment of new freestanding courses or other forms of cooperation will come later. First of all, it’s important to get the programme courses rolling,” says Magnus Ödman.

The Faculty Board of Social Sciences has also asked the Vice-Chancellor to assume responsibility for the quality of the commercial law main field of study, including all courses in the main field of study that will be transferred to the Faculty of Law. The Vice-Chancellor decided to grant this request on 4 March.

“In practice, this means that the Department of Law organises courses and study programmes, manages course evaluations and that our Education Committee conducts annual follow-ups and processes course reports, just as they do with all our courses,” says Magnus Ödman.

Doctoral education continues as before

The Faculty of Social Sciences will continue to pay for current doctoral student projects as previously agreed until 2026. One of the reasons why commercial law is changing faculty is in fact that it is not a doctoral education subject, according to Magnus Ödman.

“The doctoral students have been admitted to the Departments of Business Studies and Law, respectively. Commercial law will not be established as a doctoral education subject in the future either. This agreement has been struck mainly to better link research to education. In addition, after a move to the Department of Law, the teaching staff will also have better career paths open to them,” he concludes.

Johan Ahlenius