Aqa law04 tort + concepts revision

Thanks for the essay. I have written countless model answers from textbooks also.

Which area of tort are you most confident in and would be willing to tackle in the exam? (apart from concepts of law)

You're welcome. That answer is guaranteed to get 95-100%, but it is perhaps too detailed to remember all of it.

I am most confident with Occupiers' Liability. I have actually finished my entire revision for this area so I doubt I will have to head back to it over the coming weeks. I am less confident on economic loss, psychiatric harm and vicarious liability.

Exactly the same as me, though I am confident with nuisance and Rylands V Fletcher along with Occupiers' Liability. I'm just hoping both will come up in the same scenario.

I'm sure you will find those area pretty easy to understand as soon as you start revising for them. I'm guessing you need 90% on both LAW 03 and 04 in order to secure your A* right?

Yeah, nuisance and Rylands v Fletcher seem pretty easy. I am going to devote next week to LAW04 I think (I have focused on history this week).

Yes, I need over 90%. I am retaking LAW03 too because I got 80%. Occupiers' Liability always comes up apparently so we could be in luck

I'm pretty sure that'll be possible with your high caliber Also, I thought it was all the area of tort that comes up in the exam, just that it's split up in the scenarios

I don't have a clue about the exam setup so perhaps you were a bit too kind and ambitious in saying I have a 'high caliber'

Anyway, nice talking to you. I'm gonna head into my town library to do some revision. I'll be back by 6 if you need to as me anything.

I don't have a clue about the exam setup so perhaps you were a bit too kind and ambitious in saying I have a 'high caliber'

Anyway, nice talking to you. I'm gonna head into my town library to do some revision. I'll be back by 6 if you need to as me anything.

Alright Alex, how's the revision going mate Finished the syllabus last week, don't you rekon there's less content as in law/principle to remember but more cases? Anyway, I'm also devoting the whole of next week to LAW 02/04, so I'll definitely catch you on here and exchange notes for revision

Take care and hope the history revision's going well.

Hey! My revision for LAW04 hasn't officially started yet, but I devoted a fair amount of spare time recently to occupiers' liability on my lunch breaks. I am going to try and master nuisance, psychiatric harm and vicarious liability next week; would you be interested in helping each other out on those?

As for LAW03, I am just going to revise it towards the end of May. I am still trying to master the exam technique haha

I think you're right on the legal points. I am better at remembering cases/statutes than legal points haha. I try to remember huge amounts of cases and then run out of time in the exam.

Ah, history takes the longest to revise and it's my first exam too (10th June). I have my law exams two weeks after it so I am going to lean more towards history revision than law

Hope you are well.

Yes, I'm definitely up for a cyber-revision session. How about Monday night?

Here is the law and morality essay:

The law is the “formal glue that holds fundamentally disorganised societies together”, according to Thomas Hobbes. It is the system which acts as both the guarantor of individual freedom from tyranny and oppression (as shown by the Human Rights Act 1998) and the authority which all are subject to in order for equal punishment to exist. For the system to be free from injustice and infringement, there must be an enforcing body - such as the police - and the existence of the Rule of Law; the latter was argued by Aristotle: “The Rule of Law is better than the rule of any individual”. This principle was later advocated by Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury whose outspoken advocacy influenced the creation of the Bill of Rights 1689 - a significant development in the law governing freedom of individuals. Thus, as Glanville Williams has alleged, the law is the “cement of society” as it profoundly influences the conduct of those who are bound by it.

Morality, however, is not subject to a formal and universal definition. Specific regional customs and cultures determine its interpretation; this can be seen with the example of a majority of Italians conceiving ‘morality’ to involve celibacy due to their Catholic heritage, in contrast to a majority in Northern Europe who generally reject this notion on the grounds of atheism and liberalism which are more developed in that region. Therefore, religion plays a significant role in an individual’s concept of right and wrong. Upon contemplating this, it is arguable that ‘morality’ is an optional code of rules and conditions which one voluntarily follows, whereas the law is a compulsory institution which all are required to respect and adhere to lest they should incur its wrath.

Early philosophers - most notably Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) - endeavoured to link morality with law, alleging that ‘an unjust law is not a true law’. Thus, the theory of Natural Law argues that laws are invalid if they contradict morality. This chiefly relates to religious groups who allege that there is a higher authority than mere man-made law, namely God’s Law. At his trial for high treason in 1535, Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) defended himself by stating that “no temporal man may be the head of the spirituality”, thereby rejecting the law of the Treasons Act 1534 on the grounds of religion. Therefore, Natural Law theorists believe that there ought to be a relationship of substantial proximity between law and morality so that what citizens obey is in direct accordance with a higher law (external law).

Legal positivism, on the contrary, argues that there should be an exclusion of morality from the law, thus rendering a relationship between the two void. John Austin (1790-1859) and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) argued that the law is the command of the sovereign and so should be obeyed by all, regardless of whether it is moral or immoral. Subsequently, HLA Hart (1907-1992) demonstrated this by alleging in the 1958 Harvard Law Review that law and morals are clearly separate. Moreover, he commented that the law should have a limited role in the enforcement of morality following the publication of the 1957 Wolfenden report. Culminating from this was the Hart-Devlin Debate.

Lord Devlin (1905-1992) assumed a socially conservative stance and denounced the report by alleging: “Without shared ideas on politics, morals and ethics, no society can exist”. Thus, Devlin argued in favour of a populist moral view, advocating a relationship between law and morals to ensure social cohesion. Hart, however, advocated legal positivism by criticising the law’s interference with allegedly immoral conduct, such as homosexuality. He reflected on John Stuart Mill’s (1806-1873) ‘harm principle’ and saw that homosexual activity does not put an individual in any physical danger. Nevertheless, the debate highlighted that law and morality were still linked, and would only begin to significantly separate with the decriminalisation of homosexuality under the Sexual Offences Act 1967.

Utilitarianism was most prominently argued by John Stuart Mill. He theorised that a moral’s usefulness is determined by its contribution to utility in society. Therefore, the consequence of physical harm is conclusive proof of the moral’s validity in the law according to Mill‘s ‘harm principle‘. This has been subject to profound criticism, especially from Schur who argued that there exist some crimes which have no victims, such as abortion and pornography. Therefore, this theory enables a remote relationship between law and morality.

Arguably, the relationship between law and morality has significantly declined following the Sexual Offences Act 1967. The Warnock Committee 1984 made a statement which can debatably be seen as utilitarian: “The law itself, binding on everyone in society, whatever their beliefs is the embodiment of a common moral position. It sets out a broad framework for what is morally acceptable within society”. Although claiming to be acting under what is ‘morally acceptable’, the report was controversially justifying scientific research on embryos which is an abomination to those who advocate a strong and healthy relationship between law and morality. The case of R v R (1991) further weakened the relationship between law and morality by criminalising rape in marriage, thus negating the morally religious maxim of Genesis 3:16: “Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee”. This, therefore, is conclusive proof that secularisation has substantially diminished the relationship between law and morality.

However, there are arguably some remnant moral elements in the law which negate the ‘harm principle’ proposed by Mill. It can be assumed that the decision in R v Brown (1993) was a contradiction of the maxim ‘volenti non fit injuria’ (‘to a willing person, no harm is done’). The sado-masochistic acts of the defendants caused harm which was comparable with that of ‘personal adornment’ in R v Wilson (1996), yet the latter was acquitted; this manifests the existence of at least a remote relationship between law and morality as the decision in Brown was arguably motivated by a moral belief that the defendants’ actions were wildly unconventional and unusually dangerous sexual endeavours in the eyes of most people. That fact that both parties consented thus meant that no harm was caused, so by prosecuting them the Law was seeking to impose a specific sexual morality unto individuals, as argued by Peter Tatchell: “The State has no legitimate business invading the bedrooms of consenting adults and dictating how they should have sex”.

Moreover, the Law still retains some links with morality in its attitude towards death. The legalisation of suicide in 1961 saw some degree of separation of morality from law, but the decision in Airedale NHS Trust v Bland (1993) showed that the State had retained some moral perspective as to the power of an individual over his/her life. Subsequently in Pretty (2002) it was held that assisted suicide is illegal, thereby revealing a link to morality. The official religion of England and Wales -- Christianity -- advocates the immorality of suicide as wicked and ungodly characters such as Judas performed the deed. Furthermore, it claims that individuals should not have the right to decide their fate. This enables one to infer that the Law’s decision to disallow euthanasia is influenced by morality. It also implies that HLA Hart’s influence is not wholly substantial as there is a clear limit to individualism; Lord Devlin manifestly emerged more successful in the Hart-Devlin debate in influencing the Law in its attitude towards death because the traditional viewpoint towards assisted suicide partially remains.

Conclusively, the debate concerning law and morality is of the uttermost importance in the 21st century. To those who advocate the exclusion of morality from the Law, the debate is pivotal in increasing their freedom from an increasingly unpopular and controversial State. To those who argue the contrary, the debate is profoundly influential towards their recognition of the Law’s validity, which may culminate in an increase of social conservatives forsaking the Law to follow their morality as the State further bends its inclination to the liberal cause.

This is an absolute bag of pompous **** essay. You might want to focus on answering the question more than briefly, rather than the length of the words you're using. One more thing, pull that stick out of your ass.

I printed your essay off and we laughed at it in class.. Including our teacher, a senior examiner. xfd suck it

Apart from this being very rude, I very much doubt it is actually true.

I would also be very interested to see your essay.

I think that you need to come down a few notches! get your big but off cloud nine and visit reality for a while. thankyou dearly

I was part of the same class and actually we did not laugh at your essay as such but we did look into it and we have seen that you do not answer the question very often and that you use elevated vocabulary to make the essay look more complex and it may slightly confuse examiners because in actual fact they can never really be bothered to read it thoroughly .... they prefer it to be straight to the point. its obvious that you write like that but i think you come across a little "pompus" in your writing and the only reason that people are saying things like this is because your teacher is only looking at the way you write and not you answering the question. i think thats what people are trying to say ... like you said it's about helping people out ... we are just helping you.