Legal essay instruction

Lxi

I was looking at the essay topic that forms part of the job application for the 2016 Judicial Assistant roles. Is it just me, or is this an almost incomprehensible instruction? It's certainly very strangely worded. I've tried to parse it and the components don't make much sense either alone or in context.

"Discuss the main changes in the legal system of citizen's rights that have NOT been in consequence of any referendum and relate these to the relevant Articles of Constitution and the cases that have reasoned from these for a more tolerant or liberal society."

GeorgeOrwell

Lxi wrote: »

"Discuss the main changes in the legal system of citizen's rights that have NOT been in consequence of any referendum and relate these to the relevant Articles of Constitution and the cases that have reasoned from these for a more tolerant or liberal society."

It is really badly phrased.

I assume what they want are examples of rights which have been inserted into the constitution through judgments of the Supreme Court rather than referendums, particularly those which have extended individual rights (marital privacy etc etc).

MarkAnthony

Unenumerated rights. The worst way of actually saying it without using the actual name for them!

Mr. Incognito

I really hate verbose language like that. It's the sign of a terrible lawyer or professional in general.

"Discuss the main changes in the legal system of citizen's rights that have NOT been in consequence of any referendum and relate these to the relevant Articles of Constitution and the cases that have reasoned from these for a more tolerant or liberal society."

would be better read as

"Discuss citizen rights that have been identified from judicial interpretation of the Articles of the Constitution"

It's only when you examine the first sentence do you see that it makes an assumption that such interpretations are described as tolerant or liberal. These are subjective propositions. I have no idea why they make reference to referendums. Crotty is a cornerstone of unenumerated rights and would need to be included.

NUTLEY BOY

Lxi wrote: »

I was looking at the essay topic that forms part of the job application for the 2016 Judicial Assistant roles. Is it just me, or is this an almost incomprehensible instruction? It's certainly very strangely worded. I've tried to parse it and the components don't make much sense either alone or in context.

"Discuss the main changes in the legal system of citizen's rights that have NOT been in consequence of any referendum and relate these to the relevant Articles of Constitution and the cases that have reasoned from these for a more tolerant or liberal society."

Mystification grand central.

I would trawl as follows ;

1. Irish Statute Book to identify all new statutes impinging on the question.
Link : http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/acts.html
This brings you to 2016. You can access earlier years.

2. All decisions of the High Court.
Link http://www.courts.ie/Judgments.nsf/FrmJudgmentsByCourtAll?OpenForm&Start=1&Count=35&Expand=7&Seq=1

This opens at the judgments by the High Court page and you select the years that you want to search.

3. The mind of any constitutional lawyer that might be available to you (including previous tutors !).

I don't know from the essay title how far back you are supposed to go.

I might be wrong but I suspect that the title may have been constructed with inbuilt ambiguity to test your abilities to interpret and to research promptly and accurately.

Lxi

Thanks for the responses. The parts that threw me were "changes in the legal system of citizen's rights", because surely that would relate to legislatively rather than constitutionally protected rights, and the "cases that have reasoned from these for a more tolerant or liberal society." Did they mean that the cases were indicative of that societal change? Or that they prompted it? Or that the court's more "liberal" reasoning was because of that change? Or that it was all interdependent? And how on earth would it be possible to prove any of that through case law analysis? I have a reasonable idea of how I'm going to structure the essay, but thanks for the pointers, it's good to know that it wasn't just me who found the syntax…unusual.

maccydoodies

Crikey, the remuneration is awful for the JA.

plodder

"tolerant or liberal society" is certainly loaded terminology for a legal essay.

hullaballoo

The rest of the question, which I downloaded last night to see whether the OP's transposition was accurate, is fairly loaded as well.

Here it is in full:

Ireland in 1979 and Ireland in 2016, some say, are different countries. Yet, the same Constitution of 1937 prevails as the fundamental law. Certainly, some changes to the nature of what rights may be asserted by people living here have been introduced by referendum, gay marriage for instance, but as regards the shift to the society we have today, the 1937 Constitution already contained the seeds of change. But, there are also boundaries constricting change. Discuss the main changes in the legal system of citizen's rights that have NOT been in consequence of any referendum and relate these to the relevant Articles of Constitution and the cases that have reasoned from these for a more tolerant or liberal society.

Also, the penultimate sentence is a total non sequitur.

Edit: I just wanted to say that it seems to me that the question has to be written that way on purpose, presumably to show the candidates capacity to neutralise the question and understand someone who doesn't write good?

4ensic15

MarkAnthony wrote: »

Unenumerated rights. The worst way of actually saying it without using the actual name for them!

It is not asking about unenumerated rights per se. There are enumerated rights which have also changed without a referendum and these are caught by that question.
This is a classic case of a question which looks as if it is one thing but is in fact asking something else. It is designed to catch out the "write all you know about..." types.

MarkAnthony

4ensic15 wrote: »

It is not asking about unenumerated rights per se. There are enumerated rights which have also changed without a referendum and these are caught by that question.
This is a classic case of a question which looks as if it is one thing but is in fact asking something else. It is designed to catch out the "write all you know about..." types.

Eh?

NOT referendum is in the OP.

hullaballoo

MarkAnthony wrote: »

Eh?

NOT referendum is in the OP.

I think what 4ensic means is that the question captures constitutional changes beyond those usually discussed under unenumerated rights headings.

MarkAnthony

hullaballoo wrote: »

I think what 4ensic means is that the question captures constitutional changes beyond those usually discussed under unenumerated rights headings.

Ah misread enumerated as unenumerated.

Mr. Incognito

Thats actually a very easy question to answer.

Its about the expansion of rights based on judicial interpretation as society has moved on. Id go through the expansion of constitutional law, a paragraph on natural law being read into the conctitution and id argue that these rights have been teased out due to the progressive nature of the judiciary who have teased them out.