The course will employ a variety of instructional methods to accomplish its objectives, including some of the following:
- lectures
- labs
- small group discussion
- audio-visual materials
- research projects and writing assignments
- Introduction and Overview
- Purpose of legal research and reasoning
- Rationale for developing legal research skills
- Rationale for understanding the requirement that judges conform to prescribed modes of reasoning.
- Sources of Law
- Primary sources
- Bills, statutes, regulations, by-laws
- Judicial decisions
- Structure of Canada’s court system and hierarchy
- Doctrines of precedent and stare decisis
- Briefing cases
- Secondary sources and their use in legal research
- Texts, journals, encyclopaedias, digests
- Legal Research
- Methods of finding and updating legislation
- Citation of legislation
- Methods of finding and updating case law
- Citation of case law.
- Legal Reasoning in the Common Law System
- The judicial mandate to interpret and apply the law
- The complexity of, and constraints on, judicial reasoning
- Structure and rules that govern judicial reasoning: interpretation of legislation; precedent and stare decisis
- Judicial flexibility and distinguishing
- Methods of Reasoning
- Inductive and deductive reasoning
- Arguing from principle
- Reasoning from prior cases
- The concepts of clarity, detail, precision and abstraction
- Concealed issues
- Critical thinking and the law:
- legal thinking
- points of view
- interpretation and influence
- assumptions
- consequences
At the conclusion of the course the successful student will be able to:
- Explain the importance of legal research skills.
- Explain the rationale behind the requirement that judges conform to methods of legal reasoning.
- Identify primary sources of law and explain their use in the context of the Canadian legislative and judicial system.
- Identify and use secondary sources of law in legal research.
- Use electronic and print methods of finding and updating statutory and case law materials.
- Write proper citations for all legal materials.
- Compare and contrast main elements of Civil and Common Law systems used in Canada.
- Explain the theory underlying the Civil and Common Law systems.
- Explain the judicial mandate to apply the law and constraint thereon.
- Explain the structures and rules governing judicial reasoning, including rules of statutory interpretation, the operation of precedent and stare decisis, judicial flexibility and distinguishing.
- Identify and explain different forms of reasoning, including inductive and deductive reasoning, arguing from principle and reasoning from prior cases.
- Describe the importance of the concepts of clarity, detail, precision, abstraction and concealed issues in reasoning.
- Describe the importance of critical and ethical thinking to legal reasoning.
- Research, write and analyze judicial reasoning in case studies.
Evaluation will be based on the course objectives and carried out in accordance with Douglas College policy. The instructor will provide a written course outline with specific evaluation criteria at the beginning of the course. Evaluation will be based on the following:
- Exams
- Labs
- Assignments in legal research and writing
An example of one possible evaluation scheme would be:
| Labs | 20% |
| Midterm exam | 25% |
| Research writing assignment I | 25% |
| Research writing assignment II | 30% |
| Total | 100% |
Textbooks and Materials to be Purchased by Students:
Tjaden, Ted. (2016). Legal Research and Writing. Toronto: Irwin Law.
Additionally, throughout the course students will work with the following materials:
- legislation (federal and provincial)
- case law
- online secondary legal resources such as Lexis Advance Quicklaw, BC Laws, LegisInfo, LawSource, CanLii, and a variety of court and legislative websites.