This course explicitly examines the analytical process needed to solve legal problems. Because it is difficult to separate process from substance, the course will consider the building blocks of legal reasoning within the context of problems that arise in certain first year substantive courses. Specific competencies include analogical and deductive reasoning, application of law to facts, issue spotting and exam taking.
In general, Legal Methods provides an introduction to the processes and the skills necessary in the professional use of case law and legislation, and to the development of Tanzanian legal institutions. The course starts with materials from simple common law litigation, statutes and institutions, and with a country having to fashion its law for itself, largely through its courts. As the country industrializes, judicial styles change, statutes and their interpretation become more and more important, administrative agencies emerge. Our materials largely explore the developing law on the related questions of product liability and workplace injury both arising in the borderland between Contract and Tort, the one development occurring almost wholly through common law cases; the other, by statute. In proceeding from the early 19th Century to the greater complexities of the current day, the course explores the sources, forms, and development of law, the analysis and synthesis of judicial precedents, the interpretation of statutes, the coordination of judge-made and statute law, and the uses of legal reasoning. Understanding that today's lawyer must often deal with transactions governed by the civil law, the dominant legal system in much of the rest of the world, the course attempts to expose the student to its development as well.
LEARNING OUTCOME
At the end of the course, students shall be able to:
- Learn
additional legal research skills as well as persuasive writing techniques
- Know
different style employed in interpretation of statutes
- Learn the
basis and styles of legal reasoning
- Learn the
contribution of common law in Tanzania legal regime and the development of the
law of negligence and its effects to Tanzania
COURSE CONTENT
- The Nature,
classification and sources of law, authoritative legal materials and usage:
- Statutes,
case law and other materials, legal research, writing, citation of authorities,
language of Law, and Language of the Court.
- Forms and
Precedents, forms and types dispute settlement
- Logic and
Legal reasoning-forms, styles and systems of reasoning and systems of
reasoning, legalism and two basic activities in law i.e law making and law interpretation.
- case law
techniques
- precedents
and Stare Decisis, statutory interpretation- basic presumptions in the
interpretation of statutes, canons of interpretation of statutes and aid to the
interpretation of statutes.
COMPULSORY READINGS AND SELECTED REFERENCES
- Block, G. Effective
Legal Writing - A Style Book for Law Students and Lawyers, The Foundation
Press, New York, 1988
- Gold N, Mackie K
and Twinning W, (Eds) Learning Lawyer Skills, Butterworth, London, 1989
- Hellen Shapo (Ed),
Writing and Analysis in Law, Westbury, The Foundation Press, New York, 1989
OPTIONAL READING
- Hook,
Lucycle, The Research Paper: Gathering Library Material,
- Organizing and
Preparing the Manuscript, 4th Edition,
- Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey,
Prentice-Hall, 1969