Bristol Institute of Legal Practice Graduate Diploma in Law
Graduate Diploma in Law
Full-time and Part-time Preliminary Study Pack
Graduate Diploma in Law
Full time 2012/ 2013
Part Time 2012 / 2014
Summer 2012
Dear Student
Graduate Diploma in Law
Welcome to the GDL course at UWE. This Preliminary Directed Study course will prepare you for the Legal Method, System and Skills induction sessions that will be held at UWE in the week beginning on 12th-14th September 2012 for Year1 Part-time students. The purpose of the preliminary reading is to introduce you to issues that are central to your legal studies. The aim is to lay the foundation for the skills you will continue to develop throughout your GDL studies and beyond, and to put the substantive law that you will study into its practical and procedural context.
In order to complete the Preliminary Directed Study, you must
1 Obtain your own copy of the prescribed book for the Preliminary Directed Study, namely:
Elliott and Quinn, English Legal System,13th edition (2012) Longman Pearson
Please do not purchase older editions of this book. The 13th edition should be in the shops and on Amazon from June 2012 onwards.
Blackwell University Bookshop (on the Frenchay Campus) can supply the book for £25.99 plus free postage and packing (catalogue price is £30.99). It should also be available on sites such as Amazon and through good academic bookshops around the country. Blackwell can be contacted by email on and by phone on 0117 965 2573. Please identify yourself as a GDL student if you contact them. You are NOT required to buy the accompanying Cases and Materials book.
2 Read the chapters specified in the different sections of this Pack and complete the tasks identified in this study pack. In addition you will find helpful banks of Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) on the website associated with the ELS book. You are strongly advised the use these MCQs to test your own understanding as you go through the reading material.
3 Be ready to sit the English Legal System assessment on the morning of Friday 12th October 2012 (Part-time Year 1 students).
We would like to emphasise that the aim of this pre-reading is not to make you proficient in procedure and practice - that should come later, at the vocational stage of training. Rather, it is to explain some references to procedure and terminology, so that when you come to read a law report, an Act of Parliament, a journal article or a legal textbook you can understand the context - and know where you can go to find an answer to queries that you may have. In addition, the course should help you to begin to develop the skills of legal argument, both oral and written, and skills necessary for the analysis of legal problems. You are not expected to understand and remember all that you read, but we hope that you will begin to appreciate the procedural backdrop of the legal principles that you will be studying on the CPE.
Some of you may already be very well versed in certain areas of law and procedure and legal method, but the majority of GDL students will have no background legal knowledge at all. Whether during induction or throughout the course, you will be able to help each other because co-operation and development through participation in small group work is very much a part of the pattern of the GDL at UWE. The object of the introductory sessions in the induction period is to set you on course for a demanding period of study, and it also has the important, but non-academic, aim of helping you to get to know your fellow students - and the teaching team - early in the course.
You will be required to sit a short English Legal System assessment early in the course. The assessment will take the form of a series of MCQs to be completed in one and a half hours. You can practise for this ELS assessment by working through the MCQs provided on the website for the ELS book.
Failure to attend an assessment is regarded as a failed attempt at that assessment unless there are properly documented, extenuating circumstances that are accepted by the GDL Examining Board.
For Part-time Year 1 students this assessment has been timetabled for the morning of Friday 12th October 2012.
It will take the form described above, marked on a pass / fail basis only. Please ensure that you are free of avoidable commitments on this day. The pass mark is 40%.
Failure to attend an assessment is regarded as a failed attempt at that assessment unless there are properly documented, extenuating circumstances that are accepted by the GDL Examining Board.
The English Legal System assessment is “open-book” in the sense that you will be permitted to take reference materials into the assessment room but please note that your tutors will not expect you to have undertaken wider preparation for the assessment than to have
· read the specified chapters in the set book,
· checked the associated website for any updates,
· read the papers included in this pack,
· read any tutor’s handouts, or lecture notes on the preliminary study topics that are provided during the Induction period.
Your “reference materials” should therefore be limited to
· the set book,
· this Preliminary Study Pack (PSP),
· any relevant tutor’s materials that you receive during Induction,
· your own preparatory answers to questions, or tasks set as part of the PSP, or to support discussion at the induction classes, and
· your own notes made during the induction classes.
For the purposes of the GDL Assessment Regulations the ELS assessment is coursework taken under controlled conditions and not an examination.
The ELS assessment is marked on a Pass / Fail basis only but it must be successfully completed as part of the overall assessment of the GDL. In common with other GDL assessments, a student is permitted three attempts to reach the pass standard, if needed. If required, the second (and third) attempts will have to be scheduled as soon as feasible after the results of the first assessment are available.
We expect your understanding of the English Legal System, and your skill at legal argument to continue to develop throughout the whole course. Please note that your GDL tutors will be looking for evidence of your legal method skills in all coursework, examination answers and contributions to group activities throughout the course.
We hope that you will find the content and style of the set book to be both stimulating and challenging. A critical and evaluative approach to the strengths and weaknesses of the English Legal System will be encouraged throughout the GDL course.
We look forward to welcoming you for the start of the GDL at UWE in September.
The GDL teaching team
June 2012
This pack comprises:
· Introduction to Legal Method
· Introduction to the Civil Justice System
· Introduction to the Criminal Justice System
· Introduction to European law
· Introduction to Equity & Trusts
· Introduction to the English Legal System (Concepts and Definitions)
CPE - Graduate Diploma in Law
Full Time 2012 / 2013
Part Time 2012 / 2014
LEGAL METHOD
______
PREPARATION FOR LEGAL METHOD
______
The aim of the introductory legal method session is to help you develop your legal reasoning skills. The starting point will be the English Legal System and the sources of law. The plenary sessions will introduce you to both the main sources of law and the fundamental skills required to apply these legal rules.
The focus of your pre-reading for Legal Method should be the Introduction and Chapters 1-5 of Elliot and Quinn’s English Legal System. You will also find it useful to read Chapters 6-9
You are also asked to prepare the Exercise (below) and to bring your answers to the induction week sessions. Please make sure that you have your own copy of the Elliott and Quinn text with you during the induction sessions. We normally programme a lecture on Legal Method for the first day of the induction session.
EXERCISE: MATERIAL FACTS AND RATIO
In each of the following cases the defendant was convicted of a drink-driving offence. The relevant statutory provision provided that upon such conviction:
"the court shall order (the defendant) to be disqualified for such period not less than 12 months as the court thinks fit, unless the court for special reasons thinks fit to order him to be disqualified for a shorter period or not to order him to be disqualified."
Please read the following extracts from a sample of cases and answer the questions stated:
1. What are the material factsin each case?
2. Formulate a ratio for each case.
3. Identify any obiter dicta.
A v B 1947
1. "Nov 12 LORD GODDARD C.J. read the following judgment. The court has already allowed this appeal and now proceeds to give their reasons.
The respondent in this case was charged before a court of summary jurisdiction for the City of Birmingham.... with driving a motor vehicle, to wit a lorry, while under the influence of drink to such an extent as to be incapable of having proper control of the vehicle contrary to s.15 of the Road Traffic Act, 1930, He pleaded guilty ...... the justices imposed a fine of £20 and ordered his driving licence to be endorsed, but in consideration of certain facts which they state in the case they refrained from ordering that he should be disqualified from holding a driving licence, and the question raised by the case is whether on the facts found by them there were any special reasons within the meaning of s.15 sub-s.2 of the Act which would justify the justices from refraining from imposing a period of disqualification..."
2. "The reasons given in the present case by the justices as the ground on which they refrained from ordering disqualification are:
a) that they had no knowledge of any previous motoring convictions against the respondent;
b) that the retention of the licence was essential for obtaining his livelihood, and further that they had imposed a substantial penalty for the offence and in assessing that penalty they took into account that they did not intend to disqualify him. It is quite clear that the two main reasons which influenced the bench were that the respondent was a first offender against the Road Traffic Acts and that he earned his living as a lorry driver, and that his employment would be jeopardised by the suspension of his licence."
3. "It is to be observed that the sections are mandatory and that Parliament has provided that a period of disqualification shall be imposed ... they have given a discretion to the court which obviously is a limited discretion to be exercised only for special reasons. The limited discretion must be exercised judicially. The reasons inducing the court to exercise it must be special, and special is the antithesis of general. The fact that a man is a first offender or that he has committed no motoring offence for many years are reasons of the most general character that can well be imagined. Every year hundreds of first offenders are brought before courts. It frequently happens that people who have driven for very many years have been doing so without offending against the provisions of the Act. That a man is a professional driver cannot, as it seems to me, by any possibility be called a special reason. The fact that drivers are professional drivers would of itself indicate that they are more likely to be habitually on the roads than people who drive themselves, so there is all the more reason for protecting the public against them. By exercising discretion in favour of an offender because he is a professional driver or merely because he drives himself for business purposes, it is obvious that the court is taking into account the fact that in such cases disqualification is likely to work greater financial hardship than in the case of a person who uses his car for social or casual purposes. There is no indication in the Act that Parliament meant to draw any distinction between drivers who earn their living by driving or who drive for purposes connected with their business and any other users of motor cars. That in many cases serious hardship will result to a lorry driver or private chauffeur from the imposition of a disqualification is no doubt true, but Parliament has chosen to impose this penalty and it is not for courts to disregard the plain provisions of an Act of Parliament merely because they think that the action that Parliament has required them to take in some cases causes some or it may be considerable hardship. Had Parliament intended that special consideration was to be shown to professional drivers or first offenders it would have so provided.”