Introduction to the study of law : S.M. waddams :carswell

Introduction to the study of law : S.M. waddams :carswell

·         What  Is law

Ø  Aristotle saidthat the human person is a political animal.

Ø  The modern commentator said the human being is not purely a social animal, mor a solitery animal, he is a social and solitary animal at the same time.

Ø  The law manifests the common values of a society, and at the same time, supplies a system for resolving its conflict.

Ø  The law is not the same thing as justice, when two worlds are mentioned in the same sentence, it is  by way of contrast.

Ø  Professor joh williams society’s dream of a life governed by reason.

Ø  The study is not the learning of rules.

Ø  Most lawyers spend their time in execuiting routine transaction, and avoiding like the plegue any problem of complexiting or theorical interest.

Ø  Until quite recently most canadian lawyers thought that a party complaining of breach ao contract was not entitled to demagesfor mental distress, dissapointment, anger or frustation.

Ø  American judge said that the uncertainty of the law, an uncertainty inseparable from the nature of the science, is evil at the best, and we would aggravate it terribly if we could be blown about every wind of doctrine, holding for true today what we repudiate as false tomorrow.

Ø  Dickson J, giving the majority judgement said:

This judge, even when he is free, is still not wolly free. He is not to innovate at pleasure. He is not a knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of geodness. He is to draw his inspiration from consecrated principles.

Ø   Judge often say that they purpoe to ignore policy considerations and simply to apply the law.

Ø  The public policy of a community is of course determined in many other forums besides the courts.

·         Legal education

Ø  Professor john willis  said that your criminal law teacher spent to much time talking about the limits of the criminal sanction and never got arround to doing anything on how to quash an information for duplicaty.

Ø  Most university law teacher would share this philosophy. There is a pleasing paradox in the thought that they give their students the best practical training by refusing to be too practical

Ø  One of the caracteristic of american legal education that was adopted by the canadian law schools is the case metode instruction.

·         The language of the law.

Ø  Some suppose that the lawyer’s job is to learn as many long words as possible, preferably in latin and law franch, so as to make him sekf incompresible.

·         Analyzing legal problems

Ø  The most important advice to any lawyer in giving an opinion or to any law student in analyzing a legal problem at law school, is to write clearly.

Ø  The task of the student of law is not to learn rules, but to understand them, and understanding requires critical analysis.

Ø  In is the task of the law student first to understand the reasoning of the decided cases on an issue on an issue of this sort, and secondly to subject it to critical analysis.

Ø  In analyzing a legal problem do not jump to a conclution in your first sentence

Ø  Use of decided cases.

Ø  Sometime the point of question is not glaringly apparent on its face, many students will jump to the conclution that this is a question on the validity of disclaimer clauses and they will consider that a display of knowladge of the cases on disclaimer clauses satisfactorily answer the problem.

Ø  If you like what the courts have been doing, you do not call it “technically” you call it stability, predictability, certainty, and the rule of law.

Ø  Legal research is not something that can be thaught in the abstract, all law students learn  at an early stage how to find their way around a law library or electronic tools.

·         Public law

1.       Criminal law

v  The criminal law is generally sharply distinguished from civil or private law.

v  Criminal proceedings are called prosecuation, and smith will be called the accused

v  In a criminal case the victim of an assault is not a party to the proceedings and has no “right” to a conviction of the assailant.

v  Criminal proceedings are not at present adapted to this purpose, and if they were so adapted, they would be considerably lengthened.

2.       Administrative law

v  An administrative decision in highly regulated state can have a much greater effect on a individual than a criminal disposition.

3.       Constitutional law

v  To an american lawyer’s, constitutional law consists largely of the bill of rights, the americans having generally setteld the primacy of congress.

v  American constitutional law is by and large part of the balance of interests between the individual and the state.

4.       International law

v  International law that “as understood by traditionalists it appears to be obsolete, and as understood by modernists it appears to be premature

v  international law are commonly invoked to justify the conduct of states.

·         Private law

The substantive private law are contracts, torts, restitution, and property.

Ø  The studyof property law is devided into real and personal propertyas professor karl lleiwellyn wrote : procedural regulation are the door, and the only door, to make real what is laid down by substantive law.

·         Common law

Ø  One common meaning of the expression is a system of law based primarily on judicial decisions as contrasted with a system based on roman law.

Ø  Professor lon fuller of harfard university gave a modern example of the use of legal fictions that evokes somewhat more sympathy for the practice.

Ø  Rule is so undermined by exeptions that it has become an empthy shell.

·         Equity

·         Statutes

·         The structure of the courts

·         The legal proffesion