Module Catalogue 2024/25

Pre Requisite Comment

Either LAW1221 or LAW1220 & LAW1240

Co Requisite Comment

N/A

Aims

N/A

Outline Of Syllabus

Introduction to Tort Law

Negligence law: the basic Framework (embracing the doctrines of duty of care, breach of duty, causation, remoteness, and defences). Applications of negligence law particular areas: (i) psychiatric harm and (ii) medical liability.

Private nuisance and the rule in Rylands v Fletcher (including a detailed examination of remedies).

Applications of negligence law particular areas: (i) psychiatric harm ad (ii) pure economic loss (with the emphasis on negligent misstatement).

Private nuisance and the rule in Rylands v Fletcher (including a detailed examination of remedies).

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

(i) Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the fundamental principles of the areas of tort law they study;

(ii) Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the adjudicative and legislative processes that result in the development of tort law;

(iii) Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of legal materials (e.g., common law authorities) that have relevance to the bodies of tort law they study;

(iv) Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of other bodies of law (e.g., human rights law) that interface with and have relevance to the bodies of tort law they study;

(v) Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of academic analyses and arguments that relate to the bodies of tort law they study; and –

(vi) Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of materials from other disciplines (e.g., political philosophy) that have relevance to the bodies of tort law they study.

Intended Skill Outcomes

Subject-Specific Skills:

By the end of the course, students should have developed the ability to:

(i) Identify legally significant issues (problems and matters of legal controversy) and facts relevant to those issues;

(ii) Identify legal materials relevant to legally significant issues (and the associated skills of case analysis, statutory interpretation, and policy-based analysis);

(iii) Use legal materials both to solve legal problems and to address other legally significant issues;

(iv) Build up arguments (both written and oral) in which relevant materials are used to support plausible conclusions;

(v) Identify issues that it would be apt to research (e.g., because they are sources of uncertainty and/or controversy); and -

(vi) Retrieve relevant materials (both legal and non-legal) in primary and secondary form and in both paper and digital formats.

Cognitive Skills:

By the end of the course, students should have developed the ability to:

(i) Engage in analysis involving, inter alia, the identification of the key features of concepts (e.g., duty of care) and practices (e.g., incremental development of the existing law of negligence);

(ii) Engage in Synthesis involving, inter alia, the integration, within a particular argument, of materials from a variety of sources (e.g., domestic law, persuasive sources of law, and academic commentary);

(iii) Exercise critical judgement involving, inter alia, discerning choice between particular arguments based on their relative merits; and -

(iv) Engage in evaluation involving, inter alia, appraisal of the significance to be attached to considerations under scrutiny..

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

The design of this course reflects a determination to establish a close relationship between the various teaching activities (lectures and seminars) and the assessment.

The teaching activities have the purpose of providing a knowledge base, developing understanding, and refining skills in ways that that will make it possible for students taking the course to deliver richly informed, insightfully researched, and powerfully argued coursework.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Assessed coursework enables students to demonstrate knowledge, understanding, and skills (e.g., research-, interpretation-, and argument-related skills). This medium is particularly suited to developing in students a capacity for analysis and argument on topics that call for critical reflection in the light of research.

The unseen examination enables students to demonstrate knowledge and understanding and to apply a range of skills. More particularly, it provides a context in which students can demonstrate their ability to identify issues, apply knowledge insightfully to them, and advance arguments that, among other things, bear constructively on areas of controversy in the law.

General Notes

The course outline which appears above has been put together with two aims that seem worth noting here. The first of these aims has been to achieve a high degree of correspondence with ‘core principles’ of Tort listed by the SRA. This has not been done on the assumption that we should simply follow the SRA’s lead but, rather, to see what is feasible. The course outlined above makes it possible to examine (i) negligence, (ii) private nuisance and the rule in Rylands v Fletcher, and (iii) vicarious liability in depth. It also provides a context in which it is possible (iv) to examine breach of statutory duty and contributions to tort theory in detail. To have also included the law on products liability (which appears in the SRA’s list of core principles) would have involved a dilution of the way in which students would engage with tort across the whole of the course. All things considered, such dilution is undesirable.

The second point has to do with the coursework-based examination format. Here, the aim is to give those taking the course a very definite goal towards which they will work over the weeks during which the course runs. The formative element in the workshops has the purpose of sharpening the focus of those taking the course (and prompting them to refine their existing skill-set).