ILJ/Private Law

Introducing Law and Justice (1052)

Introducing Law & Justice (ILJ) provides great insight into the study of law, how the law came about and its social implications. Whilst the first half of this course may be more of a journey focused on the history of law and its evolution to today, it allows you to think about what the law was, what the law currently is and what the law should be. It is a well-known fact that the workload and the pressures of class participation may seem intimidating, but at the law school, there are many areas of support such as your lecturers and peer mentors who are more than happy to help. Just remember that the purpose of ILJ, is to teach you these fundamental legal skills and techniques, not to perfect them! In fact, you get marks for just sharing your thoughts in CP! You are here to learn and develop these skills and the confidence in using them. In addition, you also have legal research tutorials, and these are just equally as important! Whilst they may seem mundane as you learn the various and often perplexing techniques in finding cases and other legal sources, it is considered one of the most valuable assets that you will need as a law student and future legal practitioner. Ultimately, ILJ provides you with a great crash course into law school, allowing you the opportunity to make friends, participate in extra-curricular activities and most of all, enjoy the intellectual study of law and life at law school!

Lucas Yang (Commerce/Law 3rd Year)

Public law is quite a content heavy course, as opposed to the traditional ‘black letter’ law courses. In order to do well in this course, it is imperative that the readings as well as the focus questions are completed weekly. Whilst completing readings, it will be useful to create an organised set of notes per topic, which outlines an explanation of the public law area explored, the different arguments presented by judges in case law and positions of judges and the arguments made by each academic article provided in the readings. To succeed in this course as a whole, it is important that you are able to explain the pros and cons of each system explored as well as other possible options, this can be done by understanding historical developments, looking at modern day examples and linking each concepts to previous ones and using those theories to develop an argument.

In preparing for your mid-term test, you should develop your views on the topics; legal and political constitutionalism, rule of law, parliamentary sovereignty, indigenous sovereignty, representative and responsible government, separation of powers, judicial review, federalism and constitutional conventions. Preparing paragraphs on these ideas, attempting to find links between the concepts where possible and completing all focus questions will allow you to be well-placed in the mid-term.

Amal Naser (Criminology/Criminal Justice 3rd Year)

Public Law (1141)