Reading the Law 1

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 4 
• Module convenor: Victoria Ridler 
• Assessment: take-home exam (100%) 

At the core of a legal education is learning how to engage with legal texts and materials, such as case reports and statutes, in order to identify and understand legal principles and rules. In Reading the Law 1 and 2, you will learn about key cases and principles in criminal law, the law of evidence, constitutional law, and private law. You will learn about the law in an applied way by analysing cases and statutes and then applying this knowledge to problem-solving exercises.

Indicative syllabus 

• Introduction to case law: you will learn how to understand the layout and format of a judgment.
• Parliamentary sovereignty one: we explore the principle of parliament as the supreme source of law and consider two cases, Ellen St and Jackson, which show the courts wrestling with the problem of how to understand and apply the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy.
• Parliamentary sovereignty two: continuing with the cases of Ellen St and Jackson, you will focus on how the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy depends on its recognition by the courts and how political legitimacy is granted to parliament through democratic elections.
• Constraining governmental power one: the case of Fire Brigades introduces the idea of judicial interpretation of statutory law and its constitutional significance in upholding the separation of powers.
• Constraining governmental power two: the case of M vs Home Office highlights the development of the doctrine of judicial review by the courts over ministerial power.
• Origins of property one: we switch to private law, specifically, the idea of private property in the common law and its links to the philosophical theories of John Locke. We shall consider justifications for ownership in theory and in fact and then introduce the theme of colonial land appropriation.
• Origins of property two: building on the themes of the previous week, we analyse the reasoning in the landmark Australian case Mabo v Queensland to see how the common law justifies not only private property, but its own authority and ability to make and remake the law.
• Origins of property three: concluding the theme of ownership and property and developing the reading of Mabo v Australia, we will look at how the Native Title regime in Australia has been implemented and has developed in the past twenty-five years.
• The criminal trial one: we introduce the theme of criminal justice by examining the 'golden thread' of British trials and the criminal standard of proof, as laid out in the case of Woolmington v DPP.
• The criminal trial two: developing the theme of criminal trials and fairness, we will look at the judgment in R v Davies, a modern exposition of the key elements of a common law trial. 

On successful completion of this module, you will be expected to be able to:  

• locate, read, and understand case law and statutory law 
• identify the legal principles deriving from case law 
• develop and understand the skills for interpreting statutes  
• apply legal principles from case law and statutory law to problem scenarios 
• critically engage with legal principles and issues.