Faculty of Law, The University of West Indies at Mona

Research

Cave Hill

Masters

Home

LA12C Legal Methods and Writing

1. General
This course will be taught in Semester I of the first year of the LL.B. degree
programme. The course is a compulsory core course.

2. Course Objective

The basic objective of this course is to intorduce students to legal reasoning and
writing, its larger focus is legal reasoning based on the case law as well as legal
reasoning based on statute law.

3. Course Content, Method of Teaching and Method of Assessment
(i) The Rules of Case Citation
(ii) An introduction to basic research techniques - How to find the law.
(iii) Legal reasoning - Logic, Syllogisms, Reasoning by analogy/the
Application of Precedent.
(iv) The declaratory theory of the common law.
(v) The doctrine of judicial precedent:
(a) The applicable rules.
(b) Its history and purposes.
(c) Ration decidenti and obiter dictum.
(d) Decision made per incuriam.
(e) Commonwealth Caribbean complications.
(vi) The Rules of Statutory Interpretation.

4. Method of Teaching
This course will be taught by lectures and tutorials. Students are encouraged to
attend at least 90% of their tutorials.

5. Method of Assessment
This course will be assessed by means of three take home assignments given at
special times during the semester. Each assignment will be assessed as one third
of the final mark.