Legal Studies Exam: Discussion and Suggested Answers

[elysepopplewell]

Question 18 was the one I got wrong. I put down necessity for some odd reason as I didn't think 'Accident' was the actual name of any defence.

Yeah well you're right, accident isn't the official name given to a defence. I wondered if they were using it synonymously for mistake? But even then, people have raised great points in the comments here so I'm a bit unsure about that question myself.

[grace.estelle]

The more I'm thinking about it, common law can be mitigated/undermined by acts of Parliament too. But I seem to think the separation of powers mitigates the devastation of any conflict between legislation that dismisses human rights.

I'm on the fence, but still leaning towards common law. If the wording of this question were different, I'd have very distinct and different answers. But the wording is playing on me..

Hey Elyse, can you reply to my previous posts above? I'm keen to hear what you think.

[elysepopplewell]

Hey Elyse, what were the options for question 13? I seem to have forgotten what I put.

Sorry Grace it got lost in the shuffle!  Question thirteen was about the former police officer being convicted of a crime and requesting to be placed in protective custody.

A. Restorative Justice
B. Continued Detention
C. Preventative Detention
D. Post-Sentencing Consideration

The judge can give his or her thoughts and recommendations on this at the time of sentencing, although that won't be binding. It is up to the corrective services to assess the situation I believe! But this isn't relevant to the question anyway, just extra

[grace.estelle]

Sorry Grace it got lost in the shuffle!  Question thirteen was about the former police officer being convicted of a crime and requesting to be placed in protective custody.

A. Restorative Justice
B. Continued Detention
C. Preventative Detention
D. Post-Sentencing Consideration

The judge can give his or her thoughts and recommendations on this at the time of sentencing, although that won't be binding. It is up to the corrective services to assess the situation I believe! But this isn't relevant to the question anyway, just extra

Ah, thank you. Looks like I got that wrong too then

[elysepopplewell]

Ah, thank you. Looks like I got that wrong too then

What did you put down? Happy to be challenged!

[rodero]

Overall the exam was a lot nicer than I had expected

Multiple Choice: I left the exam thinking that this was the hardest section of the exam, but apparently if all these answers are correct then I scored a 20/20!! I chose accident for Q18 as the syllabus specifically mandates what complete defences are; so self defence, necessity and insanity must be ruled out as they are outlined as being a complete defence. Meanwhile, the partial defences to murder don't specify what we need to learn. Even though we commonly just learn provocation and substantial impairment, we could technically be asked about every single partial defence that exists in the legal system. I don't know if accidents is actually a partial defence, but at the time I assumed that it must be due to process of elimination.

Short Answer: I think the trade unions question was the most tricky one here. I've only ever learnt the actual development of labour rights, but I didn't really delve into trade unionism and they're role in it. So I just hoped for the best and used the ILO as the main forum for the discussion of labour rights, as well as the Australian Labour Party. I then mentioned that they played and avid role in having labour rights enshrined in Article 23 and 24 of the UDHR (beats me if that's true or not). The common law one was a bit different, I employed my knowledge of crime here in Dietrich v The Queen and the establishment of the limited right to legal representation, in line with the ICCPR's right to a fair trial.
For my contemporary issue of human trafficking and slavery I have no clue how we're meant to fit 8 marks onto that single page. I had to use another booklet and noted that I've used another booklet below my response, since that's what my examiner told me to do. I'd say that ATARNotes was a god send specifically for this question, as everything I used was straight from the notes! I started off with international measures in the Trafficking Protocol 2000, but also mentioned how only 117/170 have actually ratified it, demonstrating ineffectiveness due to state sovereignty. I also said how Australia has enacted the treaty through the Criminal Code Amendment (TIP) 2005. My non legal measures were the UTS Anti Slavery Campaign and 'Trafficked' by SBS. Overall my final argument was that it's been partially effective due to state sovereignty and the fact that 27 mil are still enslaved, according to the ILO

Crime Essay: I got spooked when I first saw this question, so I left it to last so that I could get my brain jogging a bit. Key part for me was 'criminal justice system', so that gave me a springboard to go beyond bail. I just said that the struggle to balance community expectations with individual rights and freedoms is an issue that is prevalent throughout the criminal justice system, not just in the provision of bail or remand. P1 was on bail, P2 Mandatory sentencing, P3 Juries, P4 Provocation

World Order: Thank the lord for generic questions. I was going to do a at first, and started writing an intro for it. But then I realised if I answer b, that allows me to talk about he contemporary issues anyway and make a judgement about its effectiveness, in contrast to simply evaluating the generic statement. I felt that if I chose to do a, my essay would have been extremely repetitive. So yeah, did B P1 R2P, P2 Global Threats, P3 Regional Threats, P4 Conduct of Hostilities. I felt like my non legal responses were so weak here, which is why I felt like I HAD to use conduct of hostilities even though I hate it so much. It's just that the Red Cross has such a prevalent role there, so it was good to mention. I used an example from Religion and Peace in SOR2 for the nuclear threat lmao (Pax Christi). I reckon world order was my weakest section

Family: Absolutely loved both questions. I chose B as it was somewhat similar to what I had in my adjusted trial paper, and I scored well so I thought I'd give it a go. P1 Divorce, P2 Property, P3 Children, P4 Domestic Violence. My non-legal responses were again very weak here. I honestly had nothing for divorce and property, so I just used media as a means of promotion but that makes no sense for divorce haha. I didn't walk in to the exam with NGOs but for some reason during my children paragraph my mind started thinking about Dad's in Distress? I don't know if they exist or what they do but I used it anyway so hope that goes well. My non legal responses only really shined in the domestic violence paragraph, where I used the White Ribbon Campaign and Rosie Batty's Never Alone foundation. However, non-legal links throughout the essay weren't so strong so I hope the markers weren't expecting an exact 50/50 analysis!!

Tl;dr: fair exam, options were only weakened by a lack of non-legal measures

EDIT: I said common law for the tricky MC question. I don't know WHY that's the case but I recall a past HSC paper where the answer was common law. It's been catching me out for the entire year because I always think it's best upheld in statute law. So when I saw that in reading time I was like "this is not the time to make mistakes, put common law even though you don't know why"

EDIT 2: For anyone wondering, 2015 Q16 was "International human rights are best protected in NSW by", and the answer is common law. It isn't the exact same wording but it was close enough for me haha

[paigek3]

Overall the exam was a lot nicer than I had expected

Multiple Choice: I left the exam thinking that this was the hardest section of the exam, but apparently if all these answers are correct then I scored a 20/20!! I chose accident for Q18 as the syllabus specifically mandates what complete defences are; so self defence, necessity and insanity must be ruled out as they are outlined as being a complete defence. Meanwhile, the partial defences to murder don't specify what we need to learn. Even though we commonly just learn provocation and substantial impairment, we could technically be asked about every single partial defence that exists in the legal system. I don't know if accidents is actually a partial defence, but at the time I assumed that it must be due to process of elimination.

Short Answer: I think the trade unions question was the most tricky one here. I've only ever learnt the actual development of labour rights, but I didn't really delve into trade unionism and they're role in it. So I just hoped for the best and used the ILO as the main forum for the discussion of labour rights, as well as the Australian Labour Party. I then mentioned that they played and avid role in having labour rights enshrined in Article 23 and 24 of the UDHR (beats me if that's true or not). The common law one was a bit different, I employed my knowledge of crime here in Dietrich v The Queen and the establishment of the limited right to legal representation, in line with the ICCPR's right to a fair trial.
For my contemporary issue of human trafficking and slavery I have no clue how we're meant to fit 8 marks onto that single page. I had to use another booklet and noted that I've used another booklet below my response, since that's what my examiner told me to do. I'd say that ATARNotes was a god send specifically for this question, as everything I used was straight from the notes! I started off with international measures in the Trafficking Protocol 2000, but also mentioned how only 117/170 have actually ratified it, demonstrating ineffectiveness due to state sovereignty. I also said how Australia has enacted the treaty through the Criminal Code Amendment (TIP) 2005. My non legal measures were the UTS Anti Slavery Campaign and 'Trafficked' by SBS. Overall my final argument was that it's been partially effective due to state sovereignty and the fact that 27 mil are still enslaved, according to the ILO

Crime Essay: I got spooked when I first saw this question, so I left it to last so that I could get my brain jogging a bit. Key part for me was 'criminal justice system', so that gave me a springboard to go beyond bail. I just said that the struggle to balance community expectations with individual rights and freedoms is an issue that is prevalent throughout the criminal justice system, not just in the provision of bail or remand. P1 was on bail, P2 Mandatory sentencing, P3 Juries, P4 Provocation

World Order: Thank the lord for generic questions. I was going to do a at first, and started writing an intro for it. But then I realised if I answer b, that allows me to talk about he contemporary issues anyway and make a judgement about its effectiveness, in contrast to simply evaluating the generic statement. I felt that if I chose to do a, my essay would have been extremely repetitive. So yeah, did B P1 R2P, P2 Global Threats, P3 Regional Threats, P4 Conduct of Hostilities. I felt like my non legal responses were so weak here, which is why I felt like I HAD to use conduct of hostilities even though I hate it so much. It's just that the Red Cross has such a prevalent role there, so it was good to mention. I used an example from Religion and Peace in SOR2 for the nuclear threat lmao (Pax Christi). I reckon world order was my weakest section

Family: Absolutely loved both questions. I chose B as it was somewhat similar to what I had in my adjusted trial paper, and I scored well so I thought I'd give it a go. P1 Divorce, P2 Property, P3 Children, P4 Domestic Violence. My non-legal responses were again very weak here. I honestly had nothing for divorce and property, so I just used media as a means of promotion but that makes no sense for divorce haha. I didn't walk in to the exam with NGOs but for some reason during my children paragraph my mind started thinking about Dad's in Distress? I don't know if they exist or what they do but I used it anyway so hope that goes well. My non legal responses only really shined in the domestic violence paragraph, where I used the White Ribbon Campaign and Rosie Batty's Never Alone foundation. However, non-legal links throughout the essay weren't so strong so I hope the markers weren't expecting an exact 50/50 analysis!!

Tl;dr: fair exam, options were only weakened by a lack of non-legal measures

EDIT: I said common law for the tricky MC question. I don't know WHY that's the case but I recall a past HSC paper where the answer was common law. It's been catching me out for the entire year because I always think it's best upheld in statute law. So when I saw that in reading time I was like "this is not the time to make mistakes, put common law even though you don't know why"

EDIT 2: For anyone wondering, 2015 Q16 was "International human rights are best protected in NSW by", and the answer is common law. It isn't the exact same wording but it was close enough for me haha

I honestly think you’ll state rank! Well done for such an amazing year

[elysepopplewell]

Overall the exam was a lot nicer than I had expected
EDIT: I said common law for the tricky MC question. I don't know WHY that's the case but I recall a past HSC paper where the answer was common law. It's been catching me out for the entire year because I always think it's best upheld in statute law. So when I saw that in reading time I was like "this is not the time to make mistakes, put common law even though you don't know why"

EDIT 2: For anyone wondering, 2015 Q16 was "International human rights are best protected in NSW by", and the answer is common law. It isn't the exact same wording but it was close enough for me haha

You're incredible! Ella is right, you've been incredible all year and now you've made it here and I hope your passion and determination has made you proud

[rodero]

I honestly think you’ll state rank! Well done for such an amazing year

You're incredible! Ella is right, you've been incredible all year and now you've made it here and I hope your passion and determination has made you proud

Thanks guys ! I will admit that I felt more confident walking out of legal than I have for any other exam. That being said I don't want to get my hopes up too much with state ranking  If it happens, it happens I guess haha

[inescelic]

Hmmm the crime question though... i'm thinking its only referring to bail and remand because it says, "Assess THIS statement" and the statement is exclusively talking about bail/ remand.. Also I reckon tension between community and individuals in the CJS is just too broad for a 15 marker

[Anfar3]

Guys excel book page 116 "statute law... remains the main way that human rights are protected in australia". Any chance its not common law?

[matthoward979]

Could anyone explain how they answered family question b) ?? plz

[daenyy]

Guys for the 8 marker i found im impossible to write enough in the space given to us so i asked the examiner if could write in another booklet and she said yes so i wrote more in another booklet.

However, there was no box to say tick if u have answered in additional booklets for the human rights question so im wondering if they will disregard my other booklet. If they do im screwed.

Thanks im pretyy sure its fine but was wondering if i am stressing over nothing.

hey, nah don't stress about that at all, as long as you wrote your student number on your additional booklet, it will find its way to the marker 

[dantoun13]

I did the Mabo case for Question 22 on common law in the short answer, which subsequently led to the Native Title Act 1993. Is this an example of human rights?!?

[grace.estelle]

Guys excel book page 116 "statute law... remains the main way that human rights are protected in australia". Any chance its not common law?

Yep, I agree with this. I mentioned in my post above about seeing statute law as the main form of protection in the Excel book too. Hopefully, it is right!