Law - Using Forums to Build Students’ Analytical Skills

For this activity you will need:

• Access to an VLE such as Moodle
• A group of willing students.
• The 'carrot' in the activity is the idea that whatever comes out of the forums will form the basis for the students own individual essays or assessments which follow on form the Forum.

When opening any Forum for use in an educational context it is wise to set ground rules.

My Own Ground Rules for Working In Forums

• The forum is to be time-limited. After the allocated time it will be made available as an archive but not for on-going contributions. This gives a sense of urgency to the task.
• All students must participate and make at least (three) postings. You can tell students that part of the overall assessment grade will depend on their contribution in the forum.
• A posting can be an original idea or a development of another students posting.
• All postings, being public, must show a certain level of respect and be generally supportive. Any criticism must not be personalised or sarcastic, etc.

Example Task

Often it works best to take students into a computer room for the initial launch of the forum. This will definitely speed things up and hopefully create the  initial ‘buzz’ needed for students to return to the forum in their own time.

Teacher ‘seeds’ the forum with some initial comments and questions.

From my own subject - law - on a topic of reforming the law or murder I might ask:

• How satisfactory is it that we are relying on an ancient definition of such a serious crime?
• What issues are there arising from the definition?
• Is the Mens Rea for murder clear?
• What about recent cases about assisting a loved one to die or euthanasia – how satisfactory is the law?
• How might we consider reforming the law?

And so on...

Each prompt forms a thread within the Forum and students join in as many threads are they are willing and able to join.

Advantages of this Technique

• It leaves a permanent record of a discussion.
• It allows students to construct their own knowledge according to their own interest.
• It allows students across several groups to collaborate when they would normally be limited to the class group.
• It allows students to add in comments at any time.

The technique allows students to work collaboratively for a limited period of time and then use the resource to build an Individual piece of work. It works.

Nigel Briggs

Secondary Law - Intoxication

Intoxication: Jig-Saw Scenarios

Intoxication is the last topic I teach because it requires students to synthesize knowledge from so many other parts of the criminal law. The activity below is designed to allow students to create and solve their own criminal law scenarios and then draw appropriate conclusions from the exercise.

The Target Law

• Intoxication is often referred to as a ‘defence’ in criminal law. This is a misnomer. Case law tells us that Intoxication usually makes the defendant’s situation worse. DPP v Beard (1920). 
• Voluntary Intoxication is evidence of the accused being ‘reckless’. It will supply the evidence of mens rea for basic intent crimes. Majewski (1976).
• Involuntarily Intoxication (through ‘spiking’) is no automatic defence. A drunken intent is still an intent. Kingston (1994).

Try this activity with your students – download the scenarios and the Intoxication cards here.

Step One:
Students choose a scenario to consider initially without any evidence of the defendant’s level of intoxication. They identify the actus reus and look for mens rea in the usual way. They decide whether the crime is one of basic or specific intent.

Example: Scenario 3
Walking through town after a night out Alan spots a shoe shop with a broken window. He manages to use his tie as a lasso and pull out a pair of expensive trainers. 

Students would correctly identify s.1 theft and s. 9(1)(b) burglary as two possible crimes. They would correctly identify both as Specific Intent crimes.

Step Two:
Now they choose an intoxication card. They then have to decide what impact this has on the scenario above.

Example: Card C
A large orange juice ‘spiked’ with several vodkas.

This time they have to discuss:
Was the intoxication Voluntary or Involuntary?
Involuntary: by ‘spiking’.

Was the crime basic or specific?
Specific: both theft and burglary crimes have a clear ulterior intent.

They may even argue that because it was a high level of intoxication he may be entitled to an acquittal. This would apply if the intoxication was so high as to destroy his intent. Gallagher (1963). But, see below.

Step Three: Synthesising the 2 halves of the scenario.
Stronger students will examine the mens rea and behaviour of the defendant and conclude that his acts of forming a lasso and hooking a pair of trainers were so ‘purposive’ as to be evidence of intent. Drunk yes, but guilty anyway.

Plenary: 
The class attempts as many different combinations of scenarios as time will allow. Despite a tendency to jump to an easy conclusion based purely on the intoxication they will realise it is (as always) the mens rea that proves conclusive.

Nigel Briggs
Head of Law, Notre Dame Sixth Form College, Leeds

Secondary Law - Legal Dilemmas in Film

Legal Dilemmas in Film (3 of the best!)

The love affair between the courtroom and the silver screen is nothing new. There is a natural, underlying tension in a legal case which is undeniably dramatic. Most law students will eventually be exposed to the classic 12 Angry Men and To Kill a Mocking Bird, not to mention Legally Blonde and Erin Brockovich.

I’d like to offer up three new films for a place in the Pantheon. Each one is an excellent vehicle for promoting wider discussion and ethical debate. They resonate well beyond the law class. Be warned though. They are not ‘feel good’ films to be approached lightly. But with careful pump priming and selection they provide thought-provoking material for 16 year olds and upwards.

1) Pierrepoint (Lionsgate Films)

How does a man justify taking life on behalf of the state?

This film explores the changing mental landscape of the executioner, Albert Pierrepoint as he dispatches over 600 condemned men and women. Amongst his charges; the last woman to hang - Ruth Ellis and the wrongly-executed Timothy Evans (hanged for Christie’s crime of murdering Evans’ wife and child) as well as many of the Nazi war criminals. It is an A-Z of high profile cases of the last century. Timothy Spall’s portrayal of Pierrepoint is simultaneously humane and harrowing.

If you have time show the whole film, but it is graphic and raw in places. The dilemmas here are both legal and moral.

• Can a man remain unscathed by such terrible deeds? 
• What is innocence? And what is guilt?
• And ultimately, what is punishment for? How should it be meted out and by whom? 

Of one executed murderer he philosophically reflects: “She’s paid the price. She’s innocent now.”

Further research at Amnesty: http://www.protectthehuman.com/tags/death-penalty

2) Touching the Void (Film Four)

What if the only way you could save your own life was by taking the life of another?

On the slopes of a remote Peruvian mountain, Siula Grande, two real, living, breathing mountaineers find themselves enacting a legal dilemma often imagined in legal textbooks. Joe, having fallen, is suspended off the edge of the mountain. Tied to Simon, his body weight is slowly pulling his friend towards the edge of the precipice. If Simon does nothing he will eventually be pulled over the edge. He finds a penknife in his rucksack.....

Show the 15 minute clip leading up to this crisis point. Then pause the film.

• Should he cut the rope? Is it morally justifiable? 
• If he does is it a legally justifiable act? If so on what grounds? 
• Does he have the mens rea for murder?

Dudley and Stephens (1884) provides many of the legal answers.

3) Ghosts (Tartan)

Does slavery still exist in modern Britain?

Nick Broomfield’s disturbing account of the 2004 Morecambe Bay disaster when 23 Chinese migrant workers lost their lives by drowning is stark, elegiac, and deeply moving.
One of the most tragic cases of manslaughter in recent times, it raises profound questions.

• Who is protected under our law?  
• What is society’s attitude towards illegal immigrants? Does the Rule of Law work for them?

The journey from China to England is both a shocking beginning and a good place to start the discussion.

Nigel Briggs 
Head of Law, Notre Dame Sixth Form College, Leeds

Secondary Law - The Jackson Trial

The Jackson Trial - A Comparative Exercise

Partly because of the celebrity of the victim and partly because of the use of cameras in court, the current trial of Dr Conrad Murray for the Manslaughter of Michael Jackson is generating a vast body of evidence for students to mull over.

It provides an opportunity not available in our legal system for them to get to grips with the processes of a trial and the concepts of Involuntary Manslaughter. It’s the perfect source material for a Mock Trial.

The case merits comparison to our own leading case of Adomako [1994] and, although American law is not exactly the same as English law, their crime of 'criminally negligent manslaughter' neatly equates with our own crime of 'gross negligence manslaughter'.

In Adomako [1994] a distracted anaesthetist failed to realise that his patient had become disconnected from the oxygen supply for several minutes. This had fatal consequences. The House of Lords judgment became the leading case on gross negligent manslaughter. There are some obvious parallels with the Jackson trial.

The Key Elements from Adomako:

1. Was there a duty of care?
2. Was this duty breached?
3. Did the breach cause death?
4. Were the acts and omissions of the defendant so bad in all the circumstances as to amount to a criminal act or omission?

It is not difficult to show a duty of care between the doctor and his patient. The other elements form the contentious parts of the trial. I’ve divided them up below.

Activity Stage One:
Divide the group into two halves and allocate a research question to each half.

Research Question One: Causation
Examining the evidence so far, is it fair to say that Conrad Murray’s acts or omissions caused the death?
Students might consider:

• How did the combination of different drugs find their way into Michael Jackson’s system?
• Was the quantity and combination of drugs medically justified?
• Were they administered solely by Dr Murray?

Research Question Two: ‘Grossness’
Was the breach of duty so bad in all the circumstances (per Adomako [1994]) as to be classed as criminal?
Students might consider:

• Did Conrad Murray breach his duty in his choice of medication and his advice to the patient? 
• Did he monitor his patient properly? 
• Did he take appropriate steps to seek help once he had noticed the difficulties his patient was in?
• Was it anyone else’s responsibility to look after Michael Jackson?

Activity Stage Two: 
Convene new groups containing an even mix of the two research questions.
Re-allocate roles as Prosecution and Defence and let battle commence!

Research:
Any news site search will generate huge volumes of material but here are 2 useful starting points.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/conrad_murray
http://www.reuters.com/search?blob=MJ+TRIAL

Nigel Briggs 
Head of Law 
Notre Dame Sixth Form College Leeds