Your time at university is often made out to be the best three years of your life; in a way I can see why people would think that because it's your chance to finally decide how you should live your life and be free from the restrictions of your parents, not to mention the fact that you get more lie-ins. But even with all these new found freedoms, is this time really something you'll treasure for the rest of your life?
I certainly don't regret going to university because I've now got a degree that will allow me to access more potential job opportunities and it gave me the chance to learn Arabic from a native speaker. I've already experienced the advantage of the former to a certain extent as I've done an internship with a law firm, I'm currently doing another internship involving translations of legal German and I've also had the opportunity to observe proceedings at the UN.
The other advantage of university is that it helps you to grow up. I certainly feel that being at university has not only helped my career path but that it has also taught me a lot of valuable life lessons as you have to learn to: balance domestic chores with your studies, cook for yourself, learn to live within a budget and learn how to pick the right house and housemates. Of course you can learn these lessons without the aid of a degree but I feel that university helped this process along as it can sometimes be hard to cope with these responsibilities, so it was useful to go home in the holidays and work out how you could better manage these demands, particularly as your parents can usually impart some useful wisdom on these matters.
Nevertheless, despite these advantages, I don't feel that these 3 years have been the best years of my life. Some of my problems relate to the degree as I felt at times that we weren't made to write enough essays even though law degrees are assessed on the basis of essays. I also disliked the fact that the degree content was sometimes diluted to the point where I wasn't learning a lot of useful knowledge.
Other problems related to the fact that while university helps you to grow up, it can take you a while to adapt to these new found responsibilities to the point where a lot of the new found freedoms aren't as exciting as they seem when you're in sixth form.
However, the remainder of my problems relate to the social side of university. I can't claim that everyone there was bad as I met my current boyfriend there and I've certainly enjoyed my relationship with him. But aside from my boyfriend, I haven't made any deep friendships that I plan to maintain now that university's over. Time and time again, I found that the people I met were either immature, selfish, arrogant, petty, two-faced or just didn't share my interests. So my boyfriend was the only person there, with whom I could really be open and honest.
You may wonder if the title accurately describes the content of this blog post given that I've so far only spoken of my experiences but my close friends and others, who I've met, have also experienced the same problems at university. I know that for some their time at university is one of the best times of their life but there are many people for whom this isn't the case.
Sunday 29 June 2014
Saturday 29 June 2013
My first relationship
It's quite clear to see that this is my first blog post in a year. I never thought I'd go quite so long without blogging because it's been an important place for expressing my feelings since I started but I nevertheless got sidetracked by settling in at university, exams and an increased workload in second year. I've also had less time to blog because I'm now in a relationship.
It's amazing to have a boyfriend but it's nothing like what I thought it would be. I mean that in a good way but when I look back at my thoughts on relationships before I started going out with my boyfriend, I realise how ignorant I was about the dimensions of relationships.
One of the mistakes I made was to think that you could draw up a list of features you wanted in a boyfriend. In a way, I was right because there are some features that a man has to embody in order for me to be attracted to him e.g. academic, intelligence and a nice personality. Nevertheless, there were other features, that I now realise, are not as important as I thought they'd be such as brown hair, a love of languages, being of an older age than me, etc. Ultimately what makes me love my boyfriend is that he exposes me to new ideas and thus gives me a new perspective on life, he makes me laugh and I can share everything with him. There can be simple features that you desire in a boyfriend but you won't necessarily be able to predict the qualities of the person to whom you are best suited. Although I knew that a prospective boyfriend's personality was always more important than their looks, I only fully understood the truth of that when I started going out with my boyfriend because my attraction to him was and is still purely emotional. Nevertheless, now that I've got to know his physical side I have become more attracted to his physical features.
I also did not realise just how much time relationships can take up in your life. I used to think you could divide up your time with your partner as you could your time with everyone else but in the first few months of our relationship, as is often the case, we always wanted to be with each other, so I'd take a while to reply to messages and do other chores when we were around each other and when we weren't together we'd often spend a lot of time texting each other or talking to each other on Facebook. It even got to the point where I felt like I was behind on everything because we'd been spending so much time together. Now that we've been together for more than a year, we have more time for other things but our relationship still takes up a fair amount of time as we naturally want to spend time with each other. Thus, I now realise that it would be a bad idea to go out with someone, who you only half-heartedly love, because the relationship has to be worth your time if it's going to take up a lot of your time.
My other misconception was to think that you should wait for certain periods of time before reaching the different stages in a relationship. I used to think that you should know a person for two months before going out with them and that you should not start having sex until you've been together for at least 4 months. However, my expectations were soon challenged when I met my boyfriend because we got on really well the minute we started to get to know each other to the point where we knew a fair amount about each other after 3 weeks, so that was the point when we got together. It also didn't take long for us to start having sex because after we'd mastered the art of kissing, we felt a big urge to do it one day when we were kissing in the shower, so we ended up having sex 2 months into our relationship. I guess I'd still say that you should have spent enough time getting to know the person before getting together with them but you can't specify the times when the events should take place because different arrangements work for different people, so it's hard to generalise.
People can often spend their time overcomplicating the ideal arrangements for relationships when they've not been in a relationship but it's often a waste of time to do so.
Thursday 29 March 2012
The difference between Tort Law and Contract Law
I remember writing in one of my previous blog posts that there was quite a lot of overlap between Contract Law and Tort Law. Any lawyer would agree with me on that point. One good example of this is in the world of misrepresentation, one could sue the party in question in contract under misrepresentation or sue in tort under negligent misstatement.
Nevertheless, over the past term I've started to become aware of the difference between Contract Law and Tort Law. They differentiate from each other by the way in which they change. Tort is affected by the developments in science and technology, so the cases you use go out of date more quickly than the cases used in contract. In Contract Law, there are quite a few cases used that were decided in the 19th century, although the majority of cases used were decided in the 20th century or 21st century. It is true to say that there are some cases used in tort that were decided in the 19th century but it's more common to find that this is the case in contract law.
When you study negligence, you learn about the reasonable man test. This test is done to decide whether a negligence claim should succeed. So for example: if someone has an accident, the courts ask whether the reasonable man could have done anything to prevent it. This test is also used in relation to the claimant, eg. whether the claimant could have done anything more to stop themself from suffering an injury. Admittedly, this is a somewhat simplified version of what happens in tortious claims, because of course the courts have to take other factors into account such as the impact of such a decision as a precedent. But as our knowledge of the brain grows, the reasonable man test will change because the courts will have a different idea of what the reasonable man could have done to prevent something happening. This will also, no doubt have an effect on criminal law and the sentencing process. It is clear to see that negligence has already been effected by the growth in scientific knowledge, when you consider the world of psychiatric injury because this is becoming a wider area within tort law, as our knowledge of psychiatric illnesses grows.
Tort is also affected by the growth of technologies such as the internet. For example, my tort tutor was telling us the other day that social networks such as Facebook and Twitter could affect the world of defamation, if people start suing one another for posting an allegedly defamatory statement about them in a status, tweet, etc. The growth of technology has already affected the world of liability because it affects what the reasonable man can do to prevent an accident/problem occurring. No doubt this must have affected the possible extent of a driver's liability for an accident as cars have been built with more safety mechanisms, although liability in general must have been affected by the developments in technology.
Because Tort Law changes quite quickly your lecturers and tutors will stress the importance of having an up to date text book for the subject. You should always make sure that you have up to date text books in any sort of law but it's particularly important in the world of tort.
Nevertheless, over the past term I've started to become aware of the difference between Contract Law and Tort Law. They differentiate from each other by the way in which they change. Tort is affected by the developments in science and technology, so the cases you use go out of date more quickly than the cases used in contract. In Contract Law, there are quite a few cases used that were decided in the 19th century, although the majority of cases used were decided in the 20th century or 21st century. It is true to say that there are some cases used in tort that were decided in the 19th century but it's more common to find that this is the case in contract law.
When you study negligence, you learn about the reasonable man test. This test is done to decide whether a negligence claim should succeed. So for example: if someone has an accident, the courts ask whether the reasonable man could have done anything to prevent it. This test is also used in relation to the claimant, eg. whether the claimant could have done anything more to stop themself from suffering an injury. Admittedly, this is a somewhat simplified version of what happens in tortious claims, because of course the courts have to take other factors into account such as the impact of such a decision as a precedent. But as our knowledge of the brain grows, the reasonable man test will change because the courts will have a different idea of what the reasonable man could have done to prevent something happening. This will also, no doubt have an effect on criminal law and the sentencing process. It is clear to see that negligence has already been effected by the growth in scientific knowledge, when you consider the world of psychiatric injury because this is becoming a wider area within tort law, as our knowledge of psychiatric illnesses grows.
Tort is also affected by the growth of technologies such as the internet. For example, my tort tutor was telling us the other day that social networks such as Facebook and Twitter could affect the world of defamation, if people start suing one another for posting an allegedly defamatory statement about them in a status, tweet, etc. The growth of technology has already affected the world of liability because it affects what the reasonable man can do to prevent an accident/problem occurring. No doubt this must have affected the possible extent of a driver's liability for an accident as cars have been built with more safety mechanisms, although liability in general must have been affected by the developments in technology.
Because Tort Law changes quite quickly your lecturers and tutors will stress the importance of having an up to date text book for the subject. You should always make sure that you have up to date text books in any sort of law but it's particularly important in the world of tort.
Sunday 29 January 2012
Learning Arabic
I'd decided before getting to university that one of my
extra-curricular activities had to involve learning a language because
I've always learnt languages in some way or form throughout my
education, so it would be hard for me to not keep on learning languages.
I was torn between Russian and Arabic but eventually I chose Arabic
because I thought it would be more interesting to learn a language that
wasn't a European language and that has a different alphabet and
numerical system to the roman alphabet and numerical system. I also
thought that it would be a good way to learn about and gain a better
understanding of the culture of the Middle East.
I thought Arabic would be hard but I soon learnt that it wasn't as difficult as it is often made to seem. Arabic is actually very easy to learn phonetically because their sentences are often much simpler than our sentences as they often don't use a verb, where we would use a verb. So, for example, when they say our equivalent of, "My name is (insert name)", the contents of their sentence will actually amount to a sentence, whose literal translation means, "My name (insert name)". This can admittedly be explained in part by the fact that they share a similarity with Russian by not having the verb, "to be" for simple sentences. Admittedly Russian has no present tense for the verb "to be" at all and I'm not entirely sure when Arabic sentences do necessitate this verb. The other odd characteristic I've noticed about the language is that it involves a lot of words, which would sound like colloquialisms or child speak to most Europeans, e.g. "omm", meaning "mother", "howa", meaning "he", etc.
Nevertheless, although Arabic is easy to learn phonetically, it takes a while to get used to writing the characters of the Arabic alphabet. I remember the first time, when I was introduced to the characters of the Arabic alphabet and I started trying to write them, it felt like I was back in year 1 or the receptionary year of primary school, when you're given lessons in how to write the letters of the roman alphabet, although it was harder than writing those letters because I'd never seen these characters before. One of the hardest characteristics to get used to when learning to write the Arabic alphabet, is that all of their vowels apart from "a" and "y" are represented by diacritics (a mark or sign added to a character/letter to change its phonetic form). The other characteristic of Arabic that it takes some time to adapt to is the way in which there is no Arabic equivalent for some vowels in our language, even though some words will be given a phonetic spelling that includes the letter. There are no equivalent Arabic characters for the letters "i" and "u, so you often have to substitute the letter "y" in for a word which has an "i" sound in it. Although they have a diacritic for "o", as is the case with all diacritics, it can only be represented in such a way, if it is a short vowel in the word, so you have to substitute in the Arabic character for "w", when you want "o" to be represented as a long vowel, naturally though this "logic" has taken a while to grasp! I can on the other hand say that it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be to get used to writing from the left rather than the right. In my most recent lesson, we were introduced to the Arabic numbers but I have a feeling that it will take a while to grasp those aswell because I can only remember the way in which 1 and 0 are written.
I think learning Arabic has also been good from a social point of view because the good majority of the people, who do it, study International Relations, so it means that I get to know people other than those, who live in my flat or study law. Some people would get around the problem of meeting people outside of their course or their halls of residence by joining societies but I haven't found any French or German societies, so that wasn't an option for me. I admit that I haven't made any close friends by doing Arabic classes but it still exposes me to new ideas, helps me to cultivate new skills and gives my mind a rest from law, so I think it's been a good activity for me to take up.
I thought Arabic would be hard but I soon learnt that it wasn't as difficult as it is often made to seem. Arabic is actually very easy to learn phonetically because their sentences are often much simpler than our sentences as they often don't use a verb, where we would use a verb. So, for example, when they say our equivalent of, "My name is (insert name)", the contents of their sentence will actually amount to a sentence, whose literal translation means, "My name (insert name)". This can admittedly be explained in part by the fact that they share a similarity with Russian by not having the verb, "to be" for simple sentences. Admittedly Russian has no present tense for the verb "to be" at all and I'm not entirely sure when Arabic sentences do necessitate this verb. The other odd characteristic I've noticed about the language is that it involves a lot of words, which would sound like colloquialisms or child speak to most Europeans, e.g. "omm", meaning "mother", "howa", meaning "he", etc.
Nevertheless, although Arabic is easy to learn phonetically, it takes a while to get used to writing the characters of the Arabic alphabet. I remember the first time, when I was introduced to the characters of the Arabic alphabet and I started trying to write them, it felt like I was back in year 1 or the receptionary year of primary school, when you're given lessons in how to write the letters of the roman alphabet, although it was harder than writing those letters because I'd never seen these characters before. One of the hardest characteristics to get used to when learning to write the Arabic alphabet, is that all of their vowels apart from "a" and "y" are represented by diacritics (a mark or sign added to a character/letter to change its phonetic form). The other characteristic of Arabic that it takes some time to adapt to is the way in which there is no Arabic equivalent for some vowels in our language, even though some words will be given a phonetic spelling that includes the letter. There are no equivalent Arabic characters for the letters "i" and "u, so you often have to substitute the letter "y" in for a word which has an "i" sound in it. Although they have a diacritic for "o", as is the case with all diacritics, it can only be represented in such a way, if it is a short vowel in the word, so you have to substitute in the Arabic character for "w", when you want "o" to be represented as a long vowel, naturally though this "logic" has taken a while to grasp! I can on the other hand say that it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be to get used to writing from the left rather than the right. In my most recent lesson, we were introduced to the Arabic numbers but I have a feeling that it will take a while to grasp those aswell because I can only remember the way in which 1 and 0 are written.
I think learning Arabic has also been good from a social point of view because the good majority of the people, who do it, study International Relations, so it means that I get to know people other than those, who live in my flat or study law. Some people would get around the problem of meeting people outside of their course or their halls of residence by joining societies but I haven't found any French or German societies, so that wasn't an option for me. I admit that I haven't made any close friends by doing Arabic classes but it still exposes me to new ideas, helps me to cultivate new skills and gives my mind a rest from law, so I think it's been a good activity for me to take up.
Monday 16 January 2012
Internships
Naturally, as a law student it's important to think about doing
internships. Although, a lot of people leave it until next year, I've
decided to start applying this year because I have a lack of experience
and because I want to have good chances of being employed, when I
graduate. We also have to apply for training contracts in our second
year, if we want to be employed by a law firm, in the year that we
graduate and of course it's important to try and have completed an
internship before applying for training contracts.
Originally, I focused solely on doing internships with law firms because I'm still set on working with law firms but as most of these firms won't accept many first year students, I've decided to apply to a wider range of employers. At first I wasn't so keen on applying to do internships with the banks because I didn't know if I could feign enough of a keen interest in finance/economics to make it worthwhile. I ended up changing my mind when other first years told me that they had applied to the banks and that this had in turn led to interviews and eventually some internships. I decided that I had to stop being so narrow minded, when it came to internships because I've got to try and have as much experience as possible, that relates to law because I'll be graduating in a tough economic climate, so I'll need to have the option of being employed by other firms such as banks, in the event that I can't get a job with a law firm.
I've applied to DMH Stallard because they're more receptive of applications from first years but I'm not planning on making any other first year applications to law firms. Otherwise, I'm currently applying to Barclays Corporate (ie. the part that doesn't relate to investment banking) and Deutsche Bank. I've decided to apply for internships in their risk departments because this relates to the drafting of policies, so I feel that it would be a good internship for me to pursue as someone, who enjoys contract law.
Nevertheless, when it comes to answering the questions, which require between 100-300 words, I find that I struggle. I've therefore only submitted one application so far. I'm planning to finish my other two applications but I find it hard to try and think of the qualities, which distinguish me from any other candidate. I've gotten better at answering these sort of questions now that I've had a gap year and I have a chance to get used to filling out application forms and work out what my weaknesses are, when answering questions. So from this point of view, I'm definitely glad that I had a gap year even though it wasn't necessarily the most exciting year of my life.
I found that DMH Stallard's form was the easiest to complete because they tend to just ask you why you want to work there and why you want to be a solicitor, although as a firm with a upper limit of 300 words, they've made me write the longest answers. Barclays tends to ask you more of these long questions but they ask for a maximum of 250 words. I'd tend to say that Deutsche Bank was in a way more annoying because they ask you about the way in which they're distinguished from other banks, what you're greatest contribution was during periods of work experience and if you hate maths, then be aware that they make you do a numeracy test. Nevertheless, they only allow you to give answers of 100 words at most, so there's less to worry about in that respect.
Originally, I focused solely on doing internships with law firms because I'm still set on working with law firms but as most of these firms won't accept many first year students, I've decided to apply to a wider range of employers. At first I wasn't so keen on applying to do internships with the banks because I didn't know if I could feign enough of a keen interest in finance/economics to make it worthwhile. I ended up changing my mind when other first years told me that they had applied to the banks and that this had in turn led to interviews and eventually some internships. I decided that I had to stop being so narrow minded, when it came to internships because I've got to try and have as much experience as possible, that relates to law because I'll be graduating in a tough economic climate, so I'll need to have the option of being employed by other firms such as banks, in the event that I can't get a job with a law firm.
I've applied to DMH Stallard because they're more receptive of applications from first years but I'm not planning on making any other first year applications to law firms. Otherwise, I'm currently applying to Barclays Corporate (ie. the part that doesn't relate to investment banking) and Deutsche Bank. I've decided to apply for internships in their risk departments because this relates to the drafting of policies, so I feel that it would be a good internship for me to pursue as someone, who enjoys contract law.
Nevertheless, when it comes to answering the questions, which require between 100-300 words, I find that I struggle. I've therefore only submitted one application so far. I'm planning to finish my other two applications but I find it hard to try and think of the qualities, which distinguish me from any other candidate. I've gotten better at answering these sort of questions now that I've had a gap year and I have a chance to get used to filling out application forms and work out what my weaknesses are, when answering questions. So from this point of view, I'm definitely glad that I had a gap year even though it wasn't necessarily the most exciting year of my life.
I found that DMH Stallard's form was the easiest to complete because they tend to just ask you why you want to work there and why you want to be a solicitor, although as a firm with a upper limit of 300 words, they've made me write the longest answers. Barclays tends to ask you more of these long questions but they ask for a maximum of 250 words. I'd tend to say that Deutsche Bank was in a way more annoying because they ask you about the way in which they're distinguished from other banks, what you're greatest contribution was during periods of work experience and if you hate maths, then be aware that they make you do a numeracy test. Nevertheless, they only allow you to give answers of 100 words at most, so there's less to worry about in that respect.
Thursday 29 December 2011
Misconceptions about the EU
Naturally as a student, who studies English Law, I learn a fair amount about the EU but as my understanding of the EU grows, I get more annoyed by the media gives rise to all these misconceptions about it.
I'm sure anyone, who's studied UK law and quite possibly the law of a member state of the EU will be aware of the fact that the media always seem to amalgamate The Council of Europe (the body responsible for the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights) with the European Union and therefore make out that the European Union is responsible for the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. It's true that a member state needs a good record regarding respect of human rights to become a member state of the EU, so a member state is quite likely to be part of the Council of Europe but that doesn't make the Council of Europe a part of the European Union. This conception naturally gives people, who support anti-EU parties like UKIP, the wrong reasons to support such parties, when they hear stories about the ECtHR taking human rights too far by deciding that young men and young women should have to pay the same rate of car insurance, etc.
However, the misconception about the EU that annoys me most is the idea that the European Commission makes most of the EU's laws and so a lot of a member states rules are therefore made by an unelected body. It's true to say that the European Commission proposes most of the EU's legislation but what we aren't told, is that the Commission's proposals don't become law until the European Council (not to be confused with the Council of Europe) has agreed to pass such legislation and the European Parliament has had a chance to propose amendments (which the European Council agrees with) to the legislation. The European Council is made up of ministers from each member state and citizens of each member state vote for the European Parliament, so although the proposals are made by an unelected body, the content and legal status of the proposals are dependant on the decisions of elected bodies. There are also a fair amount of standing committees (and no doubt similar bodies in other member states) in Parliament that scrutinise the Commission's proposals and send their recommendations to the ministers of the European Council, so government and Parliament still play quite a big role in the legislation, which affects Britain. It is therefore ridiculous to use this fact to make it seem as though being part of the EU means that we've been taken over by a non-democratic body, although I agree that the European Parliament and perhaps the European Council should have a greater role to play in this legislative process.
Moreover, the role that Parliament plays in the passing of EU legislation depends on the type of legislation that has been introduced. There are 3 types of legislation: regulations, decisions and directives. Parliament has less of a role in passing decisions and regulations of the EU because they are essentially decided by the process described in the paragraph above. Directives are also subject to the same process but Parliament decides how directives should be implemented because these are the sorts of laws, that cannot be decided in their entirety by the EU because the efficiency of such laws would be subjective to the individual country, so it is better to let the member state decide how these laws should be implemented in their country. This therefore means that when we see the directive embodied in UK law, it will be embodied in the form of an act, unlike the regulations and decisions, which have names that make it clear that they originate from the EU. Admittedly because of indirect effect, the directive can be used when it is passed by the European Council, without being developed by Parliament, if the meaning of the directive is clear and there is nothing further that must be clarified by Parliament, before it can be legally enforced. There is a particular problem as regards clarity because one judge could enforce a directive (which has not been developed by Parliament) because he thinks it's meaning is clear, whereas another judge might choose to not enforce it because he feels it is ambiguous, so this can cause problems with regard to the principle of the rule of law because a citizen could be unaware of the rule their case will be subject to. Nevertheless, it is still an example of how the EU doesn't always limit Parliament's role in passing legislation.
It should also be remembered that the principle of subsidiarity is an important part of the EU because it means that the EU will only pass legislation in a certain area of law because the extent or the effect of this area of law is such that the EU would pass a more efficient law than the individual member state. This principle is so important to the EU that they have published a document known as, the "Protocol on the Application of the Principles of Subsidiarity and Proportionality", which obliges the Commission to have a wide consultation before proposing laws. This means that the Parliament or Chamber has eight weeks to send the Commission a reasoned opinion as to why a proposal does not conform to the principle of subsidiarity, after they have received the particular legislative proposal. Nevertheless, there are problems regarding the extent of the principle, that have been raised by the Kompetenz-Kompetenz question because the European Court of Justice has at times been known to push the boundaries of subsidiarity, when making decisions about the extent of a law. All the same, this is still an important concept, which is given a lot of consideration by the EU, to the extent that there are certain competences they won't assume, so it means that no Parliament of any member state will lose their entire power to make laws.
So although the EU is a powerful body, it's not as powerful as it can be made out to be.
I'm sure anyone, who's studied UK law and quite possibly the law of a member state of the EU will be aware of the fact that the media always seem to amalgamate The Council of Europe (the body responsible for the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights) with the European Union and therefore make out that the European Union is responsible for the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. It's true that a member state needs a good record regarding respect of human rights to become a member state of the EU, so a member state is quite likely to be part of the Council of Europe but that doesn't make the Council of Europe a part of the European Union. This conception naturally gives people, who support anti-EU parties like UKIP, the wrong reasons to support such parties, when they hear stories about the ECtHR taking human rights too far by deciding that young men and young women should have to pay the same rate of car insurance, etc.
However, the misconception about the EU that annoys me most is the idea that the European Commission makes most of the EU's laws and so a lot of a member states rules are therefore made by an unelected body. It's true to say that the European Commission proposes most of the EU's legislation but what we aren't told, is that the Commission's proposals don't become law until the European Council (not to be confused with the Council of Europe) has agreed to pass such legislation and the European Parliament has had a chance to propose amendments (which the European Council agrees with) to the legislation. The European Council is made up of ministers from each member state and citizens of each member state vote for the European Parliament, so although the proposals are made by an unelected body, the content and legal status of the proposals are dependant on the decisions of elected bodies. There are also a fair amount of standing committees (and no doubt similar bodies in other member states) in Parliament that scrutinise the Commission's proposals and send their recommendations to the ministers of the European Council, so government and Parliament still play quite a big role in the legislation, which affects Britain. It is therefore ridiculous to use this fact to make it seem as though being part of the EU means that we've been taken over by a non-democratic body, although I agree that the European Parliament and perhaps the European Council should have a greater role to play in this legislative process.
Moreover, the role that Parliament plays in the passing of EU legislation depends on the type of legislation that has been introduced. There are 3 types of legislation: regulations, decisions and directives. Parliament has less of a role in passing decisions and regulations of the EU because they are essentially decided by the process described in the paragraph above. Directives are also subject to the same process but Parliament decides how directives should be implemented because these are the sorts of laws, that cannot be decided in their entirety by the EU because the efficiency of such laws would be subjective to the individual country, so it is better to let the member state decide how these laws should be implemented in their country. This therefore means that when we see the directive embodied in UK law, it will be embodied in the form of an act, unlike the regulations and decisions, which have names that make it clear that they originate from the EU. Admittedly because of indirect effect, the directive can be used when it is passed by the European Council, without being developed by Parliament, if the meaning of the directive is clear and there is nothing further that must be clarified by Parliament, before it can be legally enforced. There is a particular problem as regards clarity because one judge could enforce a directive (which has not been developed by Parliament) because he thinks it's meaning is clear, whereas another judge might choose to not enforce it because he feels it is ambiguous, so this can cause problems with regard to the principle of the rule of law because a citizen could be unaware of the rule their case will be subject to. Nevertheless, it is still an example of how the EU doesn't always limit Parliament's role in passing legislation.
It should also be remembered that the principle of subsidiarity is an important part of the EU because it means that the EU will only pass legislation in a certain area of law because the extent or the effect of this area of law is such that the EU would pass a more efficient law than the individual member state. This principle is so important to the EU that they have published a document known as, the "Protocol on the Application of the Principles of Subsidiarity and Proportionality", which obliges the Commission to have a wide consultation before proposing laws. This means that the Parliament or Chamber has eight weeks to send the Commission a reasoned opinion as to why a proposal does not conform to the principle of subsidiarity, after they have received the particular legislative proposal. Nevertheless, there are problems regarding the extent of the principle, that have been raised by the Kompetenz-Kompetenz question because the European Court of Justice has at times been known to push the boundaries of subsidiarity, when making decisions about the extent of a law. All the same, this is still an important concept, which is given a lot of consideration by the EU, to the extent that there are certain competences they won't assume, so it means that no Parliament of any member state will lose their entire power to make laws.
So although the EU is a powerful body, it's not as powerful as it can be made out to be.
Monday 26 December 2011
Should the European Court of Human Rights focus on a more select group of issues/claims?
Now that I've covered issues relating to university life and my course, I'd like to write more about current issues within the British and European legal system.
I'm sure many of you will be aware of the fact that some minister's are currently trying to suggest that the European Court of Human Rights should merely focus on "major issues of principle". Clarke believes that the ECtHR should focus on what the Daily Telegraph refers to as "major issues such as freedom and torture and not minor compensation claims".
Words cannot express my anger at this suggestion from Britain and Switzerland. I was angry enough, when the Conservatives said that they had plans to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 because this appeared to be a way to win votes from those, who have been convinced by rubbish written by newspapers such as the Daily Mail that rapists have been allowed to leave jail early because of this act.
The main point of the Human Rights Act is that public authorities have to behave to act in a way that is compatible with this act. Nevertheless, it only affects judges' judgements in the sense that they have to interpret the laws so that they are in line with this act. As can be seen in the case of Ghaidan v Mendoza, this power that section 3 of the act gives judges allows judges to modify the meaning of legislation that affects their judgement, so long as it does not conflict with the purpose of legislation. Section 4 of the act makes it quite clear that judges can only declare legislation as incompatible with this act, if they cannot find a way to interpret legislation in such a way that it is in line with the act whilst simultaneously fulfilling the purpose of the incompatible act. So the Human Rights Act is clearly not the reason for scenarios such as rapists getting out of jail early, etc.
Furthermore, as Tom Bingham said in his article about this act (which was published shortly before his death in 2010), it would take us back to a time, where individuals had to pay £30,000 (this pre HRA 1998 figure could very well have increased with inflation) in order to make sure that the outcome of their case was the result of judgement that was in line with the European Convention on Human Rights. So repealing the Human Rights Act 1998 would mean that the poorest people in our society would be less likely to be able to ensure that the judgements of their cases were in line with the convention.
As you can imagine, I was relieved when the coalition with the Liberal Democrats stopped the Conservatives from repealing the act. But it seems that the grounds for my relief had weak foundations because limiting the power of the ECtHR is inherently worse.
The whole reason why the convention was drawn up was to limit the likelihood of dictators like Hitler from being able to being able to have such power in the future. So naturally the ECtHR was set up to make sure that countries, who signed the convention, adhered to the rights enshrined in the convention.
Kenneth Clarke might claim that this has led to a culture of people claiming compensation on the grounds that "something has been done to your dog" but I'd love to know which case he's referring to when he says this, because it sounds an awful lot like the rumour started by Theresa May that an illegal immigrant couldn't be deported because he had a pet cat in the UK. I find it hard to believe that someone would spend so much money on taking a case to the ECtHR because something had been done to their dog.
Moreover amongst issues that he defines as "minor compensation claims", he includes the issue of people challenging the blanket ban on full time prisoners being able to vote. The notion of this issue not being worthy of scrutiny from the ECtHR disgusts me. The right to fair representation is something that many people such as Emeline Pankhurst have suffered for. What's more, many people such as those currently holding protests in Russia are an example of how many people still suffer for the right to fair representation. Indeed countries of the European Union criticise countries like Russia for not holding fair elections, so how can Clarke then describe the right to representation as a right which is merely used to claim compensation? In general, if we start saying that it's more important for the ECtHR to uphold some rights in comparison to others, then that is to say that some of the suffering, which people endured under the Nazis, other dictatorships, and so on, is less meaningful.
Furthermore, what one might define as a "major issue" is subjective to the person. For example, (I don't want to focus too much on the right to fair representation) nowadays the good majority of us would think it cruel to deny women the right to vote but I'm sure that at the time of the protests by suffragettes many people thought that the suffragettes were just campaigning about the "minor" issue of women not being able to vote, so I think we can conclude that there are a lot of serious issues regarding human rights, which could potentially be defined as "minor". We could therefore destroy the efficiency of the convention, if we categorised some alleged breaches of the convention as "minor compensation claims".
It naturally suits a country's government to say that ECtHR to focus on what they deem to be "major issues" because it means that they don't have to pay so much in compensation to victims of human rights abuse and it gives them a better image because there'll be less cases in the newspaper of the ECtHR saying that a right enshrined in the convention was breached. But if we change the role of the ECtHR so that a country's laws/legal system are less open to foreign scrutiny then we would be destroying the purpose of the establishment of the court, which was to make sure that the courts and laws did comply with the convention.
I'm sure many of you will be aware of the fact that some minister's are currently trying to suggest that the European Court of Human Rights should merely focus on "major issues of principle". Clarke believes that the ECtHR should focus on what the Daily Telegraph refers to as "major issues such as freedom and torture and not minor compensation claims".
Words cannot express my anger at this suggestion from Britain and Switzerland. I was angry enough, when the Conservatives said that they had plans to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 because this appeared to be a way to win votes from those, who have been convinced by rubbish written by newspapers such as the Daily Mail that rapists have been allowed to leave jail early because of this act.
The main point of the Human Rights Act is that public authorities have to behave to act in a way that is compatible with this act. Nevertheless, it only affects judges' judgements in the sense that they have to interpret the laws so that they are in line with this act. As can be seen in the case of Ghaidan v Mendoza, this power that section 3 of the act gives judges allows judges to modify the meaning of legislation that affects their judgement, so long as it does not conflict with the purpose of legislation. Section 4 of the act makes it quite clear that judges can only declare legislation as incompatible with this act, if they cannot find a way to interpret legislation in such a way that it is in line with the act whilst simultaneously fulfilling the purpose of the incompatible act. So the Human Rights Act is clearly not the reason for scenarios such as rapists getting out of jail early, etc.
Furthermore, as Tom Bingham said in his article about this act (which was published shortly before his death in 2010), it would take us back to a time, where individuals had to pay £30,000 (this pre HRA 1998 figure could very well have increased with inflation) in order to make sure that the outcome of their case was the result of judgement that was in line with the European Convention on Human Rights. So repealing the Human Rights Act 1998 would mean that the poorest people in our society would be less likely to be able to ensure that the judgements of their cases were in line with the convention.
As you can imagine, I was relieved when the coalition with the Liberal Democrats stopped the Conservatives from repealing the act. But it seems that the grounds for my relief had weak foundations because limiting the power of the ECtHR is inherently worse.
The whole reason why the convention was drawn up was to limit the likelihood of dictators like Hitler from being able to being able to have such power in the future. So naturally the ECtHR was set up to make sure that countries, who signed the convention, adhered to the rights enshrined in the convention.
Kenneth Clarke might claim that this has led to a culture of people claiming compensation on the grounds that "something has been done to your dog" but I'd love to know which case he's referring to when he says this, because it sounds an awful lot like the rumour started by Theresa May that an illegal immigrant couldn't be deported because he had a pet cat in the UK. I find it hard to believe that someone would spend so much money on taking a case to the ECtHR because something had been done to their dog.
Moreover amongst issues that he defines as "minor compensation claims", he includes the issue of people challenging the blanket ban on full time prisoners being able to vote. The notion of this issue not being worthy of scrutiny from the ECtHR disgusts me. The right to fair representation is something that many people such as Emeline Pankhurst have suffered for. What's more, many people such as those currently holding protests in Russia are an example of how many people still suffer for the right to fair representation. Indeed countries of the European Union criticise countries like Russia for not holding fair elections, so how can Clarke then describe the right to representation as a right which is merely used to claim compensation? In general, if we start saying that it's more important for the ECtHR to uphold some rights in comparison to others, then that is to say that some of the suffering, which people endured under the Nazis, other dictatorships, and so on, is less meaningful.
Furthermore, what one might define as a "major issue" is subjective to the person. For example, (I don't want to focus too much on the right to fair representation) nowadays the good majority of us would think it cruel to deny women the right to vote but I'm sure that at the time of the protests by suffragettes many people thought that the suffragettes were just campaigning about the "minor" issue of women not being able to vote, so I think we can conclude that there are a lot of serious issues regarding human rights, which could potentially be defined as "minor". We could therefore destroy the efficiency of the convention, if we categorised some alleged breaches of the convention as "minor compensation claims".
It naturally suits a country's government to say that ECtHR to focus on what they deem to be "major issues" because it means that they don't have to pay so much in compensation to victims of human rights abuse and it gives them a better image because there'll be less cases in the newspaper of the ECtHR saying that a right enshrined in the convention was breached. But if we change the role of the ECtHR so that a country's laws/legal system are less open to foreign scrutiny then we would be destroying the purpose of the establishment of the court, which was to make sure that the courts and laws did comply with the convention.
Tuesday 20 December 2011
Am I happy with my law course?
As a student of the University of Sussex I thought I'd tell you about my opinions regarding the law course here because an open day can only tell you so much about the particular department.
Sussex is currently one or two places short of being one of the top 20 universities for law and it's grade requirements for law are now AAA-AAB. The Times university league table rated them as being the 8th best university for law but no other university league table ranks them as being quite so good for the subject. They generally emphasised the fact that they're trying to encourage more university league tables to recognise them as a top ten university during freshers week but I don't feel that they're doing enough to be a top ten university for the subject.
The top ten universities like Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, UCL, KCL, Nottingham, Durham, etc. will ask that you do preliminary reading before you get there, so that means that you should have you're text books before you get there, so that you can get on with work as soon as possible. Sussex does not take this attitude because they did not set us any preliminary reading and we didn't even know which text books we were supposed to have until the week after freshers week. To me this would be an obvious feature of the law degree to change if they want to be considered generally as a top ten university for this subject.
There are many cases of the university making us do exercises, where we spend too much time on the easier parts of a law degree. For example, for our first Frameworks of English Law Seminar all we had to do was a referencing exercise. I don't doubt that there are benefits of doing this exercise because it does take a while to get used to the referencing used in law but we could have covered more ground than the way in which cases/journals/etc. are referenced. What's more we did this seminar in the third week of the course, when we really could have done it in the first week of the course. I'm also not very happy with my (associate) tutor for this module because he sometimes doesn't get facts, which are written in the text book, right.
I was also not very impressed with the first public law seminar. The first exercise for it entailed the construction of a flow chart of the UK's constitutional power, followed by a second exercise of the purpose of constitutions and a third exercise where we defined the rule of law. Admittedly the work we do for seminars now is a bit harder but we still get questions, where the answers are pretty obvious, like "name 5-10 constitutional conventions". I was pushed harder for Politics AS level than I currently am for Public Law. I'm generally not happy with the staff in charge of this module because my public law lecturer for this term openly admitted to gaps in his knowledge and didn't like us to "ask [him] hard questions" and my seminar tutor's only knowledge of law comes from a conversion course. This meant that my seminar tutor was not able to answer the question of whether the fact that Parliament didn't convene on weekends was a convention. Furthermore, as soon as I read Jowell & Oliver's, The Changing Constitution, it became apparent to me that my lecturer had taken the majority of his information from there. My problem with the Public Law department is that we generally don't go into enough depth because it wasn't until I got home and started revising that I realised that we hadn't covered anything on the criticisms of Dicey's doctrine regarding the rule of law and the question of sovereignty regarding the constitutional acts, that have been brought in in the past few years.
I'm happy that my tutors and lecturers for Tort Law and Contract Law have enough knowledge of the subjects but I still have a few problems with these departments. My first two Contract Law seminars were about the conditions of offer and acceptance (if you haven't studied law this is the most basic condition for forming a legally binding contract), so we had less time to spend on more complicated parts of Contract Law like privity of contract (the idea that only the parties involved in the contract have the legal power to enforce the contract). My sister also disapproved of the text book we were recommended (Koffman and Macdonald) because it doesn't go into enough depth, so I have had to replace this with McKendrick. The text book (Markesinis) we were recommended for Tort Law is good. My criticisms of the Tort Law department would be that my first two lecturers were not great because although they're very intelligent they don't seem to like lecturing. The first lecturer was very monotonous and didn't engage us by asking questions and the next one was too intelligent for the job and so he would spend too much time illustrating his points and go off on a tangent to the point where he'd get through an average of three power point slides per lecture.
I had two other offers from Essex and Exeter and I don't regret choosing Sussex over these two universities but I really wish I was at a better university like UCL, etc. You can read my reasons for choosing Sussex over these two universities on the blog I wrote about having a gap year.
Sussex is currently one or two places short of being one of the top 20 universities for law and it's grade requirements for law are now AAA-AAB. The Times university league table rated them as being the 8th best university for law but no other university league table ranks them as being quite so good for the subject. They generally emphasised the fact that they're trying to encourage more university league tables to recognise them as a top ten university during freshers week but I don't feel that they're doing enough to be a top ten university for the subject.
The top ten universities like Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, UCL, KCL, Nottingham, Durham, etc. will ask that you do preliminary reading before you get there, so that means that you should have you're text books before you get there, so that you can get on with work as soon as possible. Sussex does not take this attitude because they did not set us any preliminary reading and we didn't even know which text books we were supposed to have until the week after freshers week. To me this would be an obvious feature of the law degree to change if they want to be considered generally as a top ten university for this subject.
There are many cases of the university making us do exercises, where we spend too much time on the easier parts of a law degree. For example, for our first Frameworks of English Law Seminar all we had to do was a referencing exercise. I don't doubt that there are benefits of doing this exercise because it does take a while to get used to the referencing used in law but we could have covered more ground than the way in which cases/journals/etc. are referenced. What's more we did this seminar in the third week of the course, when we really could have done it in the first week of the course. I'm also not very happy with my (associate) tutor for this module because he sometimes doesn't get facts, which are written in the text book, right.
I was also not very impressed with the first public law seminar. The first exercise for it entailed the construction of a flow chart of the UK's constitutional power, followed by a second exercise of the purpose of constitutions and a third exercise where we defined the rule of law. Admittedly the work we do for seminars now is a bit harder but we still get questions, where the answers are pretty obvious, like "name 5-10 constitutional conventions". I was pushed harder for Politics AS level than I currently am for Public Law. I'm generally not happy with the staff in charge of this module because my public law lecturer for this term openly admitted to gaps in his knowledge and didn't like us to "ask [him] hard questions" and my seminar tutor's only knowledge of law comes from a conversion course. This meant that my seminar tutor was not able to answer the question of whether the fact that Parliament didn't convene on weekends was a convention. Furthermore, as soon as I read Jowell & Oliver's, The Changing Constitution, it became apparent to me that my lecturer had taken the majority of his information from there. My problem with the Public Law department is that we generally don't go into enough depth because it wasn't until I got home and started revising that I realised that we hadn't covered anything on the criticisms of Dicey's doctrine regarding the rule of law and the question of sovereignty regarding the constitutional acts, that have been brought in in the past few years.
I'm happy that my tutors and lecturers for Tort Law and Contract Law have enough knowledge of the subjects but I still have a few problems with these departments. My first two Contract Law seminars were about the conditions of offer and acceptance (if you haven't studied law this is the most basic condition for forming a legally binding contract), so we had less time to spend on more complicated parts of Contract Law like privity of contract (the idea that only the parties involved in the contract have the legal power to enforce the contract). My sister also disapproved of the text book we were recommended (Koffman and Macdonald) because it doesn't go into enough depth, so I have had to replace this with McKendrick. The text book (Markesinis) we were recommended for Tort Law is good. My criticisms of the Tort Law department would be that my first two lecturers were not great because although they're very intelligent they don't seem to like lecturing. The first lecturer was very monotonous and didn't engage us by asking questions and the next one was too intelligent for the job and so he would spend too much time illustrating his points and go off on a tangent to the point where he'd get through an average of three power point slides per lecture.
I had two other offers from Essex and Exeter and I don't regret choosing Sussex over these two universities but I really wish I was at a better university like UCL, etc. You can read my reasons for choosing Sussex over these two universities on the blog I wrote about having a gap year.
Saturday 17 December 2011
A law student's work load
As you've probably know by now, law students have pretty hectic work loads. During fresher's week one of the first things we were told was that law degrees require the most reading and that whilst most first years will be having an introductory year, where the work load isn't so tough, law students have a tough work load for the whole of their three years at university.
They say that if you're doing the work properly, the degree is meant to occupy 35 hours of each week. I, however, have found that I seem to spend pretty much all of my time thinking about work, unless I'm out doing the weekly shop. One of my friends, who is also very dedicated to doing well is also finding that this is the case. This is admittedly in part because I'm genuinely not interested in going out clubbing, so I just use this as an excuse. You also could say that I do set aside to do an Arabic class and the homework for that, so it's not that bad. But even if I dedicate all the free time I have to doing the reading, I tend to find that I don't get it all done. Another friend agreed with me when I said that I've either read the majority of the cases and barely pages in the relevant chapter of the text book or a lot of the text book and barely any cases. So as you can see, the first term of university is not the easiest for a law student.
Our academic advisor told us at the beginning that we would almost certainly find that we would struggle with the work load at the beginning and that we should therefore go and see her, when we found that this was the case. So naturally, I went to go and see her when I'd struggled with getting all the reading done in the first few weeks and she said that there was no particular way out of the problem because a law student has to struggle in order to find a way of dealing with all the reading.
Since having this appointment with her, I've stopped reading so many judgements of cases and I tend to use a West Law/Lexis analysis in order to learn the majority of cases. I've also stopped making as many notes on what I read because this takes up a huge amount of time and you often won't refer back to what you've written. I tend to just make notes if the text I'm reading is so dense that the only way of taking it in is to make notes on it. Nevertheless, I am considering making more notes because I don't feel like I remember so much of what we covered in the past few weeks.
I'm not entirely sure if this is necessary because there were other reasons that could explain why I can't remember so much information from the last few weeks. I had a test and I had some essays and case notes to write, so that meant that there was less time to do the necessary reading.
If you're reading this as a prospective law student, then I hope you still remain a prospective law student. Although law is a hard degree, I still love it and I still think it's worth all the time you have to give up for it. I just want you to be aware of the work load you will face. I know a lot of people, who've either had trouble settling in or want to see their boyfriend, and therefore go and see their boyfriend/family/etc. each weekend but this really is not advisable because they often find that they don't get a lot of work done this way and therefore get behind by doing this. So my objective of writing this post is to make you aware of the commitment necessary for a law degree.
Thursday 15 December 2011
My preferred sorts of law
So now that I've covered my issues regarding university life in general, I thought I'd write about my experience of my law degree and the modules I enjoy. My modules for this year are Public Law, Contract Law, Tort Law and Frameworks of English Law (often known as English Legal Systems). I'll deal with each of these modules respectively.
Public Law
Public Law is my least favourite module because it's very theoretical. Some would say that Public Law is one of the better modules because there aren't so many cases to learn, so you have to worry less about backing up every point you make with a case. This can in a sense this can be advantageous as it means that you have less to remember for an exam but from the point of view interest, it can be quite boring because you get less of a chance to see how the law is applied and interpreted. This can be an easy module if you've done Politics at AS level but this does not mean that there won't still be a fair amount of reading to do for this module. At first I took too much advantage of the fact that I'd done politics because I seemed to get away with my knowledge from AS Politics, reading some of Colin Munro and just looking at the lecture power points when I was preparing for seminars but I soon learnt that this was a bad idea when I got a better textbook (ie. Bradley & Ewing) and soon realised that I didn't know as much as I should know. I also realised that I didn't know as much as I should know when I had to write my first essay for Public Law.
Tort and Contract Law
I've written about these two sorts of law under one heading because as all lawyers will know, they overlap quite a lot since tort law is about compensation. These two sorts of law are my favourite sorts of law because this is where you DO get to see the law being applied and interpreted. It's really interesting to see how the judges decide the outcome of a complicated case. Overall I prefer contract law but there are many people who would prefer tort law. One of the reasons why I love contract law so much is because you have the opportunity to read a lot about Lord Denning and the way in which he tried to change the law by his judgements.
Tort law should be interesting and it certainly is when you read about it but I've not found it as interesting as contract law because my first two tort law lecturers were rather unenthusiastic lecturers, who seemed to be pretty bored of having to perform the exact same lecture for another year. Nevertheless, now I've got my contract law lecturer for tort law and I'm enjoying it so much more, so you'll probably find that the sort of law you enjoy will very much depend on your lecturer.
Frameworks of English Law/English Legal systems
Not all universities will offer this module but the universities that do will often make you study this module. It's often not the same as studying the other modules because it's often just a half-module, that doesn't require that you do an exam. Nevertheless it is interesting to see how exactly the English Legal System works. You study how the EU and the Human Rights Act 1998 affects us, the general principles of how judges make their judgements, European legal methods, how laws are drafted and how judges interpret the law.
If you are reading this as someone, who has studied law or is currently studying law, I'd be interested to know which sorts of law you prefer.
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