Much of the reading you are assigned will be textbook chapters, and there isn’t much you can do to avoid this. In upcoming posts I will explain how to avoid this become drudgery to get through or avoid. But I don’t recommend starting with textbook reading.
This may come as a surprise, but I don’t think beginning with the textbook is the greatest place to start your reading for a new topic or Module.
Instead, I recommend starting with case law. This is because reading a well-chosen case will indirectly get you some ‘skin in the game’.
Most judgments begin with a summary of the facts of the case, and it’s unlikely that you will read those facts without forming some opinion as to what the outcome should be. This is a great position to find yourself in, because it will fuel your motivation to understand the legal arguments and the way the judge applies them.
- Motivation to go back to the textbook and understand the context: how the law developed to this point.
- Motivation to explore the academic responses to the case and find arguments that agree and disagree with the outcome.
- Motivation to explore whether the Law Commission, the government or parliamentarians have shown an interest in reforming that area of the law.
You’ll also gain the practical benefit in learning the legal principles from a primary source document, which will serve you well as your studies progress.
Following up in the textbook then becomes revision and augmentation, and reading further about it in the journals and other official responses deepens your understanding and gives you the keys to your own critique and analysis.
So how do you identify examples of case law to kick off a new topic?
In an ideal world you will have a reading list provided by your institution, in which case, pick one from that list. You can be discerning here – if there are half-a-dozen cases to read, have a quick scan of them on Westlaw or Bailli and find one that is palatably short or has facts that grab your interest.
Or you could ask your lecturer or tutor for some ideas.
Aim to pick a case from one of the appellate courts: the Court of Appeal, Appellate Committee of the House of Lords, or the Supreme Court.
In a later post, I will explain how to read a case using the 30-minute reading challenge, but for the moment, if your chosen case has multiple judgments within it (i.e. several judges decided it, each giving their own individual judgment) aim to identify the lead judgment from the majority who decided the case and read just that one.
For example, a good case early on in Criminal Law would be R v Woollin [1999] 1 AC 82. I have no doubt you will form an opinion whether Mr Woollin should have been successful in his appeal, and this will spur you on to read why the case was decided as it was. You may or may not agree with the outcome or the reasoning and that is fine!
The key with reading law is not that you will agree with the state of the law as it currently is, but that you understand the law as it currently is: why it is the way it is, what the arguments are about that, and what, if any, reform proposals are in the pipeline.
In other words, you are allowed an opinion. The ‘price’ of that opinion is that you understand the basis of it and the arguments around it.
But having such informed opinions is a great way to establish and fuel your motivation, even in topics that may appear dry or uninteresting at first glance.
Read Law Right 