Legal studies essay

[psoaze]

Any feedback would be really really really helpful. Thank you xx

[NowYouTseMe]

I'd love to give some advice on improvements, but could you please provide the question that this essay's supposed to answer? It's not exactly clear in the response haha

[psoaze]

I'd love to give some advice on improvements, but could you please provide the question that this essay's supposed to answer? It's not exactly clear in the response haha

Great! Thank you so much!
The question to this essay is
'How does the criminal justice system effectively balance the rights of the victim, offender and society?'

[NowYouTseMe]

A themes and challenges essay, nice. Sorry about the late reply, I had my own legal assessment today.

I feel like your introduction isn't really that clear about what you're trying to say - which was probably why I didn't know what the essay question was. imo you should have a main thesis on why the CJS needs to balance the rights of victim, offender and society, then outline your body paragraphs, then have an assessment on how effective it is in doing so. You have the thesis down, but just for clarity, separate your argument intent from it. Also, in outlining your body paragraphs, 'This is prominent in our modern-day society through the Criminal Investigation Process (CIP) of bail, Criminal Trial Process (CTP) complete defences and Sentencing – factors affecting a sentencing decision.' should probably be reworded into something like 'The extent to which the criminal justice system does so is explored through the contemporary issues of bail and remand, defences and the factors which affect a sentencing decision.'

Your topic sentence for the first body paragraph needs to be rephrased to be clearer and more concise. Your use of the effectiveness criteria and incorporation of international law is good, but again, it just needs to be tightened up through introducing and discussing legislation first, then moving onto the case just for a clear flow. You could also add in another piece of counter-evidence underneath the Ray Hadley statement, potentially a professional opinion or a case where the Bail Act 2013 didn't work out so well. I'd suggest R v Hawi (2014). You also probably want an evaluative statement to conclude the paragraph too.

With your second body paragraph, you probably want to make it more specific how defences balance the rights of the offender and the victim in the topic sentence. The phrasing of 'law’s scale tilting towards the voice of the victims and society as defence of mental illness to not guarantee an acquittal' could probably be made more persuasive as well, potentially something like 'exemplifying the law's tendency to succumb towards victim and community interests, as the mental illness defence did not guarantee an acquittal.' Also, if you're going to quote a news article, you probably want to quote the article itself or quote a professional opinion that the article uses instead. Your use of 'the nature of the law' in your concluding statement is somewhat ambiguous, so you should probably describe what about the law's nature makes it imbalanced.

With your third body paragraph, your topic sentence isn't really a topic sentence as it doesn't say anything about factors affecting sentencing that make it an imbalance of rights. In 'In case McCartney v R [2009] NSWCCA 244, aggravating and mitigating factors are considered, however significantly favouring society’s needs over the offenders plead. McCartney had appealed to the NSW Court of Criminal appeal, regarding his 2 years and 6-month imprisonment for sexual assault on the purpose of deterrence.' you can make it more concise by saying 'In McCartney v R [2009] NSWCCA 244, the appellant had appealed his imprisonment sentence for sexual assault. In this appeal, aggravating and mitigating factors were considered, but ultimately, the court favoured society's concerns over the offender's rights.' imo you also need a clear concluding statement here as well.

In your conclusion, I feel like mentioning 'case studies' isn't enough and you need to summarise your arguments. Also, that's a really long sentence so just for clarity, you should probably break it up. Otherwise, it's a solid first draft with good evidence; it just needs to be refined and it'll be good.