Cambridge Law Students and Applicants

I agree completely with the guy who got a double first - it's what Geth advised me to do last year and she was right.

I'm absolutely desperate about Tort especially and am intending to learn the bare minimum...

So if I left out defamation and privacy that'd be ok? (Pretty much done everything else, which is a bit annoying if we don't have to).

Just got a camcors that has completely stripped me of any remaining motivation I had - I'm going to do rubbish what's the point anymore

If privacy is part of the defamation topic then yes, skip it. You honestly won't need it. You can probably drop breach of statutory duty as well. The base rule, for any exam is to look back at the last 3-5 years of exams. Can you answer 5 questions on each paper? If not, learn more topics. If yes, stop learning more topics, you're probably going to be fine.

Seriously- Camcors means nothing. I got predicted 2.2 in tort and consti and got firsts in both. Everything can change between now and exams, you can learn the whole syllabus in a surprisingly short amount of time.

Just got a camcors that has completely stripped me of any remaining motivation I had - I'm going to do rubbish what's the point anymore

Drop official secrets or drop protest and assembly for consti - what do we think? Stressing!

Drop official secrets or drop protest and assembly for consti - what do we think? Stressing!

All of it. Supervisions 8 and 9, gone. That's what I'm doing, anyway.

All of it. Supervisions 8 and 9, gone. That's what I'm doing, anyway.

Nahhh, I'm doing assembly so that I can have it as a back up 'cos there always seems to be a straightforward problem Q on it each year.

Nahhh, I'm doing assembly so that I can have it as a back up 'cos there always seems to be a straightforward problem Q on it each year.

What are you (and anyone else, you were the nearest quotable person) learning on (or learned on) what constitutes a contract of service as against a contract for services? It seems to me more an employment law/ contract law issue, not sure if I should bother learning the stuff on contractual exclusion of liability for acts of a transferred employee, the extent to which the parties' designation of the relationship affects the actual legal designation of the relationship (beyond just, it's not determinative all the time) etc... I'm thinking just Ready Mixed Concrete, Mersey Docks, Viasystems, Hawley v Luminar...

Casual delegation? Partnerships? We don't need any of that ****, right?

...

Does a Lucas Lie direction only apply when the lie is made during the trial? Or can you apply it when the lies are at the police interview (in the 2008 paper, a defendant lies in his interview. The police then tell him they've been told a certain fact and the defendant reluctantly admits the fact is true. I'm trying to work out whether this requires a Lucas direction)

The Lucas direction - originated from Lucas [1981]. It is intended to warn juries against jumping readily to the conclusion that any lies told by D can be equated with guilt. In Middleton [2001], it was stated that the court should decide whether a warning is needed on a case-by-case basis. In Burge and Pegg [1996], it was said that a Lucas direction may be appropriate in four cases:
• Where D relies upon an alibi which is shown to be false
• Where, having determined in his discretion under Makanjuola [1995], the judge considers it desirable or necessary to suggest that the jury should look for support or corroboration of one piece of evidence in the case, and amongst that other evidence draws attention to alleged lies told by D
• Where P seeks to show that something said, either in or out of the court, in relation to a separate and distinct issue was a lie, and to rely on that lie as evidence of guilt in relation to the charge(s) laid against D (e.g. In a case with facts similar to Blick [1966])
• Where, although P's strategy is not actually to rely on D's having told a lie as part of its case, the judge reasonably envisages that there is a real danger that the jury will be tempted to draw an inference unless warned not to do so

Heh, I'm just going over this now.

I have the following:



Initially, I thought that my notes (from RM's book) didn't cover this point, but after reading the part in bold I became more confident that it could be in or out of court.

I had a quick look at Blick just to make sure - in Blick, D was charged with robbery and claimed that it was a case of mistaken identity - he just happened to be coming out of the public toilets at the time. It emerged at trial that the toilets were closed that day; RM says that if P sought to rely upon this lie as evidence of D's guilt, this would require the judge to give the direction.

On that basis, I'd say that the judge has to give the direction. The fact that D later admits that the fact is true isn't relevant to the issue of whether he lied earlier, if that makes sense (since the lie could have been discovered another way - as it must've been for the police to confront D with it).

Does this make things any clearer?

Yep, thanks. I found a case called Hackett [2011] which seems to accept that the direction can be given on a lie out of court as well (it's a confusing case though, mainly because of the relationship with S.34 CJPOA 1994)