CONTENTS
Preface;
Acknowledgments;
Table of Cases;
Table of Statutes;
Table of Statutory Instruments;
Chapter 1: Introduction to Legal Methods: approaches to law and legal reasoning
I. What is the law?;
Chapter 2: Constitutional aspects of legal method: the rule of law and the supremacy of
Parliament;
I. The rule of law;
II. The supremacy of Parliament;
III. A note on the Constitution;
IV. The Human Rights Act 1998 and the supremacy of Parliament;
Chapter 3: Constitutional aspects of legal method: judicial review;
I. Judicial review and the rule of law;
II. Parliamentary supremacy and judicial review;
III. Defining "The state";
IV. The Human Rights Act 1998 and judicial review;
Chapter 4: Constitutional aspects of legal method: the impact of membership in the European Union;
I. The historical significance of the EU;
II. Institutional structure of the EU;
III. The EU and Parliamentary supremacy;
IV. The impact of the EU on the protection of individual rights;
Chapter 5: Statutory interpretation: introduction to legislation;
I. The relationship between legislation and common law;
II. The legislative process;
III. An introduction to interpretation;
IV. Methods of statutory interpretation;
V. The distinction between fact and law;
VI. Case study on statutory interpretation: the Race Relations Act;
Chapter 6: Statutory interpretation: the search for legislative intention;
I. The role of intention and purpose in statutory interpretation;
II. Internal aids to finding intention;
III. External aids to finding intention;
IV. Legislative intention and social change;
V. Interpretive policies and presumptions;
Chapter 7: Statutory interpretation: the impact of the law of the European Union and European human rights law;
I. Statutory interpretation in the European Court of Justice;
II. The impact of European Community law on interpretation in domestic courts;
III. The interpretation of European human rights law;
Chapter 8: Judge-made law: an introduction to common law reasoning;
I. Key concepts and terminology;
II. Finding precedents in the common law;
III. The process of common law reasoning: "thinking like a lawyer";
IV. The implications of membership in the European Union on common law reasoning;
V. Big issues relating to common law reasoning;
Chapter 9: Judge-made law: a case study on the law of negligence;
I. The development of a general duty of care;
II. The politics of common law reasoning;
III. Case law exercise;
Chapter 10: The legal professions;
I. Law as a profession;
II. Access to the legal profession;
III. The politics of the Judiciary;
Chapter 11: Dispute resolution: the courts and adjudication;
I. Adjudication in context;
II. The constitutional function of adjudication and the trial;
III. Key characteristics of the trial;
A. Adversarial and inquisitorial systems;
B. Trial by jury;
IV. Bargaining in the shadow of the law;
V. Tribunals;
VI. Modernisation and the recent reform of the court system;
C. Reform of the criminal justice system;
D. Reform of the civil justice system;
Chapter 12: Non-adjudicatory forms of dispute resolution;
I. The context for reform;
II. The characteristics of mediation;
III. Critiques of mediation;
IV. Feminist perspectives on mediation;
Chapter 13: Comparative legal methods and systems;
I. Legal systems, cultures and traditions;
II. "Carving the world's law up" into individual traditions;
III. Comparing two traditions: common and civil law;
IV. Comparative law and a globalising legal order;
V. Postcolonialism and postmodernism;
Index