Undergraduate Course: The Practice of Legal Argument (LAWS10179)
Course Outline
| School | School of Law |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type | Standard |
Availability | Available to all students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Credits | 20 |
| Home subject area | Law |
Other subject area | None |
| Course website |
None |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | This course offers an in-depth analysis of legal argumentation as applied in actual legal practice. It concentrates on the analysis of judicial cases and other paradigmatic instances (e.g. motions) of legal reasoning in action. Students will acquire skills of argument-reconstruction and assessment, and learn to critically discern appropriate and inappropriate uses of argumentative patterns and techniques. The kind of issues to be addressed include the internal and external justification of conclusions of law; the use (and misuse) of deduction; the use (and misuse) of coherence-based arguments; arguments based on precedent; some fallacies common in legal reasoning; the place of consequentialist arguments in legal reasoning. (Not all topics will necessarily be addressed every year, and the emphasis placed on different topics may vary from year to year.) Students who take the course will thus (a) develop their ability to engage critically with legal reasoning in general, and judicial reasoning in particular; (b) develop their ability to articulate sound legal arguments of their own; (c) develop an understanding of the moral and political dimensions of legal reasoning. |
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| Displayed in Visiting Students Prospectus? | No |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Delivery period: 2014/15 Semester 2, Available to all students (SV1)
|
Learn enabled: No |
Quota: 25 |
|
Web Timetable |
Web Timetable |
| Course Start Date |
12/01/2015 |
| Breakdown of Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Please contact the School directly for a breakdown of Learning and Teaching Activities |
| Additional Notes |
|
| Breakdown of Assessment Methods (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
50 %,
Practical Exam
50 %
|
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
1. Knowledge and Sources of Law:
This courses primary aim is to develop and hone the students critical ability to reconstruct, analyse, and produce legal arguments. These are skills of general application in legal practice; they are not related to any specific set of legal sources. Therefore the course will not introduce new sources, nor will it be based upon any set of sources grouped by subject-area or branch of law. Rather, it will draw on multiple materials from diverse bodies of legal sources, relying on the students basic knowledge (acquired at ordinary level) of those sources.
2. Subject-specific Skills:
The reconstruction, use, and critical analysis of legal arguments.
3. General Transferable Intellectual Skills:
The ability to think clearly and to produce and assess sound arguments: this course focuses on 'know how' rather than 'know that' skills. As legal reasoning shares many of its basic structures with general (non-legal) reasoning, the course will also be of use to students at the broader level of general reasoning and decision-making.
4. Key Personal Skills:
The ability to engage critically but charitably with other peoples views and arguments, including normative views and arguments, irrespective of topic.
5. Subject-specific Legal and Ethical Values:
The course will foster reflection on the moral and political implications of legal argumentation.
|
Assessment Information
| This course will be assessed by (a) a written critical analysis (up to 750 words) of a previously distributed complex text or set of texts excerpted from actual judicial decisions (or similar sources) (50%); and (b) by an oral discussion of this analysis (50%). Students will be required to submit these written analyses 72 hours before the oral discussion. |
Special Arrangements
| None |
Additional Information
| Academic description |
Not entered |
| Syllabus |
Indicative teaching programme
The analysis of legal argumentation envisaged in this course will cover topics of the following kind:
- The internal and external justification of conclusions of law
- The use (and misuse) of deduction
- The use (and misuse) of coherence-based arguments
- Arguments based on precedent
- Common fallacies in legal reasoning
- Consequentialist arguments
- Rhetorical analysis of legal reasoning
Not all topics will necessarily be addressed every year, and the emphasis placed on different topics (eg number of seminars dedicated to each topic) will likely vary from year to year.
|
| Transferable skills |
Not entered |
| Reading list |
Not entered |
| Study Abroad |
Not entered |
| Study Pattern |
One 2 hour seminar per week |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Claudio Michelon
Tel:
Email: c.michelon@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Sara-Louise Tait
Tel: (0131 6)51 4550
Email: Sara-Louise.Tait@ed.ac.uk |
|
© Copyright 2014 The University of Edinburgh - 29 August 2014 4:15 am
|
University Homepage