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Is jurisprudence by far the most difficult course?

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Original post by Bea492
Ditto! I guess I'll see you next Wednesday :biggrin:


I guess you will:wink: It will blow Nottingham out of the water:hmmm:
Reply 41
Original post by Tsunami2011
I guess you will:wink: It will blow Nottingham out of the water:hmmm:


Haha I hope you're right!
Reply 42
Original post by Rascacielos
Could you tell me exactly what the point of jurisprudence is, for a law student that is? I'm sure it has a point but I haven't quite figured out how being able to say that "X judgement indicates a natural law approach to reasoning" is going to help me at all when it comes to being a lawyer.


This worries me just a little bit. You say your lecturers aren't very good and if they have failed to explain the importance of this subject than I'd have to agree.

If you want to go on to practice you need to understand law, not just be able to quote law and play word games. Understanding law isn't just playing Top Trumps with cases, if that's how you view it (and I'm not suggesting you actually do) then we can replace lawyers with flow charts. It has already started with the consoles in Smiths. You speak into them and someone at the other end, probably a recent law graduate, answers your questions by using a script/flow chart, just like any other call centre.

If you don't understand the philosophical aspects of law, what is law, what is a good law etc, then you will be operating at the lowest level, possibly next to the call centre guy.

Do you have any idea of which area you would like to work in?
Reply 43
Original post by Rascacielos
Have you studied it yet?

(I wouldn't know whether it is interesting - it might be - but I have an Israeli lecturer who can't put a sentence together in English).


Then don't rely on him, go outside the course for your info, don't let bad lecturers bugger up your chances and certainly dont let a bad lecturer put you off one of the most fascinating areas of law.

If other students feel the same then perhaps it should be mentioned to the uni, we had a similar problem with a very quietly spoken, heavily accented Chinese lecturer at OU. It's not a complaint, it's useful feedback for them and the lecturer could take some lessons.
Reply 44
Original post by ateafeline
sometimes one must listen to moving cars before touching the tongue with one's nose


:yep: That's deep, man, very deep.
Original post by GStevens
It has already started with the consoles in Smiths. You speak into them and someone at the other end, probably a recent law graduate, answers your questions by using a script/flow chart, just like any other call centre.



I hold no brief for the people in Smiths. The local franchise is one of my competitors. However, the people in the stores are essentially marketing staff. If they hold law degrees, that is purely coincidental. Their role is to sort the wheat from the chaff and pass on potential clients with viable work to the local franchise-holder. These are mostly well established, traditional but small High Street practices. A £15M television advertising campaign has been promised for many months but is yet to materialise.
Reply 46
Original post by Rascacielos
Have you studied it yet?

(I wouldn't know whether it is interesting - it might be - but I have an Israeli lecturer who can't put a sentence together in English).


I think OBD is the main reason that you don't like the subject. He just over complicates everything and refuses to actually state any points, he prefers to imply everything. The questions we get in the exam are better but he doesn't teach us contextually.

I really liked my jurisprudence module in A-Level law, it was mainly about the same theories, but in a context. You had to answer a question say on law and morality, and you'd argue whether or not they should be separate (obviously using Natural law v positivism).

I was seriously considering taking the third year module in it, but we were discussing it yesterday and I think I'll just be avoiding all the subjects he teaches and stalking Emma and Paul instead. XD

Ha and he's just sent us another four e-mails to go with the ten from earlier in the week.
(edited 12 years ago)
Reply 47
Original post by nulli tertius
I hold no brief for the people in Smiths. The local franchise is one of my competitors. However, the people in the stores are essentially marketing staff. If they hold law degrees, that is purely coincidental. Their role is to sort the wheat from the chaff and pass on potential clients with viable work to the local franchise-holder. These are mostly well established, traditional but small High Street practices. A £15M television advertising campaign has been promised for many months but is yet to materialise.


I stand corrected.
It's worse than I thought, people with no legal knowledge, except as you say coincidentally, are deciding on the merits of your case, probably with a checklist , and deciding whether to pass on the lead. I wonder how wheat and chaff are sorted.
Original post by GStevens
This worries me just a little bit. You say your lecturers aren't very good and if they have failed to explain the importance of this subject than I'd have to agree.

If you want to go on to practice you need to understand law, not just be able to quote law and play word games. Understanding law isn't just playing Top Trumps with cases, if that's how you view it (and I'm not suggesting you actually do) then we can replace lawyers with flow charts. It has already started with the consoles in Smiths. You speak into them and someone at the other end, probably a recent law graduate, answers your questions by using a script/flow chart, just like any other call centre.

If you don't understand the philosophical aspects of law, what is law, what is a good law etc, then you will be operating at the lowest level, possibly next to the call centre guy.

Do you have any idea of which area you would like to work in?


I think it's a bit early to decide yet. I'm enjoying both contract law and public law at the moment but I'd like to keep my options open for a while.

Of course I understand the basic principles of hard cases and all the problems with statutory and common law interpretation which stem from that. I appreciate the importance of understand that. But that still isn't helping me understand why I need to know that, for example, according to natural law theorists, a law isn't a law at all if it is not compatible with this natural, higher order law. :dontknow:
Original post by gethsemane342
Interestingly, in my Uni, juris is meant to be one of the more difficult papers but Criminology is meant to be easy



Which university is this? What are you taught within this module? I suspect you're only being taught rudimentary scholarship that criminology students do in their first year for a few weeks, which is more of a tribute to the development of criminology as a subject (Ferraro, Ferri, Quetelet, Bentham, Foucault?), most of which derives from the Positivist School. Either that or you learn Administrative Criminology, which is heavily reliant on Home Office publications? I wouldn't expect you to learn Chicago School, Anomie Theory or Critical Criminology as a student outside of criminology. You might learn Abolitionism though. Sometimes specific theories can be easier to relate to depending on your sociopolitical disposition and/or interests. Sometimes it makes interesting discussion in seminars when there is a conflict.

Edit: Forgive the intrusion from a non-law student. I did think about looking into jurisprudence to see if I can study it in some capacity as an MA but combined with areas from philosophy. It is a great shame that my subject largely neglects its philosophical background as I've encountered a lot of material that overlap in academic scholarship that is not reflected in lessons. I have quite a few publications from the series, Oxford Monographs on Criminal Law and Justice. :biggrin:
(edited 12 years ago)
Reply 50
Original post by nulli tertius

Restitution (because this is the cutting edge)


Your thoughts more or less jibe with what I would have said. I've certainly found unjust enrichment/restitution tough this year. Really interesting, but tough.
Original post by jjarvis
Your thoughts more or less jibe with what I would have said. I've certainly found unjust enrichment/restitution tough this year. Really interesting, but tough.


What main textbooks are you guys using for restitution?

I'm trying to teach myself it from Burrows - The Law of Restitution (3rd Edition) since there is no module on restitution/unjust enrichment at my uni and I'm very interested in it. Is the cases and materials book by Burrows worth buying as well?
Reply 52
I am going to Northumbria University this September to study law!! I am very excited! Does anyone study law there? What are the modules like?
Original post by NDGAARONDI
Which university is this? What are you taught within this module? I suspect you're only being taught rudimentary scholarship that criminology students do in their first year for a few weeks, which is more of a tribute to the development of criminology as a subject (Ferraro, Ferri, Quetelet, Bentham, Foucault?), most of which derives from the Positivist School. Either that or you learn Administrative Criminology, which is heavily reliant on Home Office publications? I wouldn't expect you to learn Chicago School, Anomie Theory or Critical Criminology as a student outside of criminology. You might learn Abolitionism though. Sometimes specific theories can be easier to relate to depending on your sociopolitical disposition and/or interests. Sometimes it makes interesting discussion in seminars when there is a conflict.

Edit: Forgive the intrusion from a non-law student. I did think about looking into jurisprudence to see if I can study it in some capacity as an MA but combined with areas from philosophy. It is a great shame that my subject largely neglects its philosophical background as I've encountered a lot of material that overlap in academic scholarship that is not reflected in lessons. I have quite a few publications from the series, Oxford Monographs on Criminal Law and Justice. :biggrin:


Cambridge - it's Criminology, Sentencing and the Penal System so it isn't as intensive as a full degree in it would be and is done with policy and law in mind (as the Politics students share the paper).

I did it last year. Let me see:

Introduction to criminology, themes and sources (including Chicago school theory, Anomie theory and Critical criminology but in outline)

Crime data, statistics, media influence, government influence, street policing and punishment

Judges and sentencing

Theories of punishment

How to sentence (substantive law, would be surprised if this came up on a full criminology course)

Neoliberalism - the move towards surveillance etc

Pathways in and out of crime.

Gender and Racism in crime systems

Youth crime

Community Punishments

Prison

I hope that answers your ... er, question? I can't tell if you're snapping at me or not. I never said *I* found it particularly easy and I do think that while getting a 2.1 on the paper (here) is very easy, it's not easy to get above a low 2.1 purely because the course requires a sociological standpoint (apparently). It also required a large amount of reading (I enjoyed the topic which set several book chapters and articles ... and a 350 page book. To be read within 2 weeks. As well as 4 other subjects. The book got skim-read by me. I suspect my friends just didn't bother)

(And the need for a different approach showed in the marks. Apparently my friend and I who got around mid 2.1s were among the upper bracket of the people who sat the paper. I reckon, if it really is that easy to get a first in it, why weren't we in the middle or low bracket?)
Original post by gethsemane342
Cambridge - it's Criminology, Sentencing and the Penal System so it isn't as intensive as a full degree in it would be and is done with policy and law in mind (as the Politics students share the paper).

I did it last year. Let me see:

Introduction to criminology, themes and sources (including Chicago school theory, Anomie theory and Critical criminology but in outline)

Crime data, statistics, media influence, government influence, street policing and punishment

Judges and sentencing

Theories of punishment

How to sentence (substantive law, would be surprised if this came up on a full criminology course)

Neoliberalism - the move towards surveillance etc

Pathways in and out of crime.

Gender and Racism in crime systems

Youth crime

Community Punishments

Prison

I hope that answers your ... er, question? I can't tell if you're snapping at me or not. I never said *I* found it particularly easy and I do think that while getting a 2.1 on the paper (here) is very easy, it's not easy to get above a low 2.1 purely because the course requires a sociological standpoint (apparently). It also required a large amount of reading (I enjoyed the topic which set several book chapters and articles ... and a 350 page book. To be read within 2 weeks. As well as 4 other subjects. The book got skim-read by me. I suspect my friends just didn't bother)

(And the need for a different approach showed in the marks. Apparently my friend and I who got around mid 2.1s were among the upper bracket of the people who sat the paper. I reckon, if it really is that easy to get a first in it, why weren't we in the middle or low bracket?)


I wasn't snapping. I was curious as to the content of criminology modules in law degrees out of interest. Full three year courses in the subject can vary a lot so I wondered how much focus on academic theories a law degree would have for criminology given that, if it is a module taught in a law degree, there will be an amount dedicated to substantive issues, such as penology. Sentencing does come up in full criminology degrees but not for all courses. This tends to be reflected on how much involvement law lecturers at the universities have with the teaching of the subject. I tended to use labelling theory and cultural criminology at my university (Durham). The latter is only really taught at Kent. I never really liked youth crime or racism as academic topics. Preferred to look at class, e.g. Sutherland, Quinney. :smile:

What's the book? I might have read it. :redface: If you liked the media influence, David Garland's "Culture of Control" is an epic text on that. I'm guessing you'd have used two books edited by Paul Mason "Captured by the Media" and "Criminal Visions", and may be one on sex crime by Chris Greer? :biggrin:
Original post by NDGAARONDI
I wasn't snapping. I was curious as to the content of criminology modules in law degrees out of interest. Full three year courses in the subject can vary a lot so I wondered how much focus on academic theories a law degree would have for criminology given that, if it is a module taught in a law degree, there will be an amount dedicated to substantive issues, such as penology. Sentencing does come up in full criminology degrees but not for all courses. This tends to be reflected on how much involvement law lecturers at the universities have with the teaching of the subject. I tended to use labelling theory and cultural criminology at my university (Durham). The latter is only really taught at Kent. I never really liked youth crime or racism as academic topics. Preferred to look at class, e.g. Sutherland, Quinney. :smile:

What's the book? I might have read it. :redface: If you liked the media influence, David Garland's "Culture of Control" is an epic text on that. I'm guessing you'd have used two books edited by Paul Mason "Captured by the Media" and "Criminal Visions", and may be one on sex crime by Chris Greer? :biggrin:


It was "Principled Sentencing: Theories and Policies".

I read Culture of Control - we had to read it for the course. I think I read the sec crime one as well. But our core texts were Easton and Piper, and the Oxford Handbook on Criminology.
Original post by gethsemane342
It was "Principled Sentencing: Theories and Policies".

I read Culture of Control - we had to read it for the course. I think I read the sec crime one as well. But our core texts were Easton and Piper, and the Oxford Handbook on Criminology.


Heh. I have Easton and Piper and von Hirsch and Ashworth's text. Some people prefer Tim Newburn's Criminology text to the Oxford Handbook but I have both, because I like to have my own library. :colonhash:
Original post by NDGAARONDI
Heh. I have Easton and Piper and von Hirsch and Ashworth's text. Some people prefer Tim Newburn's Criminology text to the Oxford Handbook but I have both, because I like to have my own library. :colonhash:


I used Newburn's Criminology as well - just used the relevant aspects from them.
Reply 58
I am at Southampton and did Legal Systems and Reasoning which was compulsory in 1st year and included a minimal amount of jurisprudence, and also chose Jurisprudence as one of my optional 3rd year modules. It is very different to all the other areas of law, it is theoretical and philosophical but I liked that. It was easy to do well in Legal Systems and Reasoning and bumped up my 1st year grade a lot, hence why I chose it in 3rd year. 90% of my class are on 1sts in Jurisprudence as the optional 3rd year module. I chose it because it was interesting and something different to reading statute books and cases over and over. And as said before, a bit of imagination, lots of waffle and you get marks for it!! (Unlike other law options where you have to state the law etc etc and if you don't get it right you get it wrong). There is no wrong answer in jurisprudence hence why I think it is a great module! And it really does help you udnerstand the reasoning behind cases etc in your other modules. It adds a good foundation :biggrin:
I've been doing it this year and quite honestly love it. Very different to everything else we've done, but that's no bad thing, I find the philosophical element to it fascinating. I've actually bought a few of the books we've discussedm namely ones by Hart, Nozick, Mill and Rawls. (Thank you Waterstones).

Each to their own, however.

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