Introduction to Legal Reasoning and Research

This course is designed to assist students who do not have a law degree or similar qualification to get an initial understanding of legal principles and legal methods, and to equip them with the legal skills needed for their study in law. Lawyers are not permitted to take this course.

The legal thinking component of the course will be focused mainly on:

• The common law system and its special features 
• Legal thinking 
• The nature and role of precedent 
• Legislation 
• Nature and ambit of legislation 
• Interpretive rules 
• The Australian Constitutional order
• International law (including relevance for domestic law)

The research and other skill-based component will cover:

• Introduction to the library (electronic resources, research techniques, borrowing arrangements, librarians, etc)
• Legal writing (including style, referencing etc)
• Legal problem solving, drawing on case discussions.

• An understanding and appreciation of law language
• A comprehension of the role of law and how it achieves that role
• An ability to use these outcomes in the courses you will undertake in the law program
• Sympathy with, even if not full acceptance of, the way the law works and an ability to apply that to the problems set

Students must rely on the Approved Assessment which will be posted to the course homepage on the ANU Law website, prior to the commencement of the course.

The course will be assessed on a pass/fail basis (CRS (Course Requirements Satisfied) standard, or N fail). Where the CRS standard is not initially achieved, a degree of remedial assistance will be available to students who still wish to pursue their graduate legal studies.

26 Contact Hours (Intensive Delivery)

Click here for the 2010 timetable

The primary texts are Laying Down the Law, Cook, Creyke, Geddes, Hamer, LexisNexis, 7th ed, 2009, and Tradition and Change in Australian Law, Parkinson, Thomson, 3rd ed, 2005