Read Law Right

Aim to spend the final few minutes of a reading session making notes. Mere reading only gives you a basic familiarity with a topic. To understand and retain you need to interact with it. This is one of the objectives of your assignments, but you don’t have to wait for an assignment to take advantage of this benefit.

Back in post 1.3 How to read individual textbook sections, I talked you through what elements to look for in the structure of the source you are reading. Elements like discussion of the history and context, the main principles, exceptions to the main principles, critique of the principles and proposals for amendments to the principles.

When you identify a section of reading like this that you will return to, perhaps in a later reading session, these are some of the elements you should consider making detailed notes on.

Let’s use an example you will come across in criminal law: the elements of the crime of theft.

A typical textbook chapter on theft might start with its historical antecedent, larceny. The offence of larceny was wholly replaced by theft in the Theft Act 1968.

The textbook will of course provide you with the definition of the main offence of theft, found in section 1, which is the ‘dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.’

There will follow a general discussion of the meaning of this phrase, before the author breaks it down into its component parts: dishonesty, appropriation, property, belonging to another, intention to permanently deprive.

Each of those individual elements will have a section of the textbook devoted to it, starting with explaining the principle in plain terms, discussing any exceptions to the principle, critiquing the principle and discussing any developments or amendments to that principle.

You might devote a first reading session on theft to understanding the context, background and main definition, with subsequent reading sessions studying each of the principles in turn.

So your notes from your first reading session on theft might look something like this:

• Allen, Criminal Law, 16th ed, chapter 12 “Offences under the Theft Act”, pp518-565.
• Theft Act 1968 – wholly new law. “Swept away the previous law.” (518).
• Amended in 1978 (Theft Act), 1996 (Theft Amendment Act) and 2006 Fraud Act.
• Main definition of Theft “dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it”, section 1.
• Chapter goes on to discuss the definition of property, pp519-525.
• Meaning of belonging to another, pp525-531.
• Appropriation, pp531-540.
• Intention to permanently deprive, pp540-544.
• Dishonesty, pp545-556.
• It looks like dishonesty is going to be the most complicated, twice the number of pages devoted to its discussion, noticed several cases are considered quite deeply (Ghosh, Ivey, Barton & Booth).
• Noticed that Theft Act also covers robbery, taking a vehicle without consent, and in a subsequent chapter, burglary too.

And your notes on subsequent reading sessions would aim to pick off those individual elements of the definition of theft.