LAW 7174 - Advanced Comparative Law

Course Details

Course Code	LAW 7174
Course	Advanced Comparative Law
Coordinating Unit	Adelaide Law School
Term	Semester 1
Level	Postgraduate Coursework
Location/s	North Terrace Campus
Units	3
Contact	Intensive
Available for Study Abroad and Exchange	Y
Prerequisites	Students without a Bachelor of Laws must have completed LAW 7177
Incompatible	LAW 7024
Assessment	Assessment in this course will include a combination of two or more of the following: interim written assessment; in-class presentation; assessment of contribution to class discussion; examination (invigilated or take-home); and/or research essay.

Course Staff

Course Coordinator: Ms Cornelia Koch

Cornelia Koch (Course Coordinator)
Senior Lecturer
Ligertwood Building, room 3.22
Phone: 8313 5713
Email: cornelia.koch@adelaide.edu.au
Staff website: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/directory/cornelia.koch

Jessica Viven-Wilksch
Lecturer
Ligertwood Building, room 2.09
Phone: 8313 4676
Email: jessica.viven-wilksch@adelaide.edu.au
Staff website: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/directory/jessica.viven-wilksch

Course Timetable

The full timetable of all activities for this course can be accessed from Course Planner.

Course Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this course students will be able to:

Undertake self-directed research in comparative law, analyse and synthesise comparative law information and materials.
Apply the comparative law method to complex issues of law reform, and critique the operation of law from a comparative perspective.
Structure and sustain concise and cohesive written and oral arguments for a legal audience.
Conduct and analyse legal, historical and jurisprudential research and effectively communicate resulting ideas orally and in writing.
Analyse the impact of law on social issues from a comparative legal perspective and in the context of social and cultural diversity.
Reflect on their ability to effectively undertake comparative legal work, discuss sensitive issues and share ideas with a broader audience.

University Graduate Attributes

This course will provide students with an opportunity to develop the Graduate Attribute(s) specified below:

University Graduate Attribute	Course Learning Outcome(s)
Deep discipline knowledge informed and infused by cutting edge research, scaffolded throughout their program of studies acquired from personal interaction with research active educators, from year 1 accredited or validated against national or international standards (for relevant programs)	1
Critical thinking and problem solving steeped in research methods and rigor based on empirical evidence and the scientific approach to knowledge development demonstrated through appropriate and relevant assessment	2
Teamwork and communication skills developed from, with, and via the SGDE honed through assessment and practice throughout the program of studies encouraged and valued in all aspects of learning	3
Career and leadership readiness technology savvy professional and, where relevant, fully accredited forward thinking and well informed tested and validated by work based experiences	4
Intercultural and ethical competency adept at operating in other cultures comfortable with different nationalities and social contexts able to determine and contribute to desirable social outcomes demonstrated by study abroad or with an understanding of indigenous knowledges	5
Self-awareness and emotional intelligence a capacity for self-reflection and a willingness to engage in self-appraisal open to objective and constructive feedback from supervisors and peers able to negotiate difficult social situations, defuse conflict and engage positively in purposeful debate	6

Required Resources

This intensive course is taught utilising the flipped classroom method.

Students will have to watch a set of videos produced for this course, read set materials and answer seminar questions before coming to class.

The videos, materials and questions will be published on MyUni. MyUni can be found at http://www.adelaide.edu.au/myuni/.

There is no prescribed textbook for this course.

Recommended Resources

Please see the course site on MyUni for additional resources.

Online Learning

Lecture videos will be made available on MyUni. It is crucial that students watch these in preparation of the course. The content of the videos will not be repeated in the lecture, but the in-class discussion and student presentations will be based on prior knowledge of the videos.

Additional web-links, further resources, assessment, important messages, topic notes, power point slides, case studies and other materials relating to the course will be placed on MyUni.

You should check the Advanced Comparative Law course link on MyUni regularly.

Learning & Teaching Modes

Course dates and classrooms

This intensive course is held on the following dates:

Friday, 6 March, 9am - 4pm (room 5.15 Ligertwood)
Wednesday, 11 March, 5-8pm (room 5.15 Ligertwood)
Thursday, 12 March, 5-8pm (room 5.15 Ligertwood)
Wednesday, 18 March, 5-8pm (room 5.15 Ligertwood)
Thursday, 19 March, 5-8pm (room 5.15 Ligertwood)
Friday, 3 April, 9am - 4pm (Moot Court, Ligertwood)

Students are expected to attend all of the scheduled classes.

Class format and classroom etiquette

Classes are based on class discussion and student presentations. Students are encouraged to interact with each other and the teachers as much as possible.

Classroom discussions may occasionally grapple with contentious and difficult topics where a range of different views and perspectives are expressed. As is expected of a legal professional, students should be prepared to introduce, explain and defend their conclusions in the face of probing questions and challenges. While a lively and spirited discussion is encouraged, students are expected to respect different views and perspectives to ensure that the classroom environment is one where all students feel comfortable to participate. In order to maintain this environment, it is important that discussions are carried out in the appropriately respectful language, tone and manner.

Workload

The information below is provided as a guide to assist students in engaging appropriately with the course requirements.

The University expects full-time students (i.e. those taking 12 units per semester) to devote a total of 156 hours to a three unit course.

Preparation time: In addition to attending formal classes, students are expected to do substantial independent work to prepare for classes and to complete the course assignments, including doing the prescribed readings, answering the seminar questions and watching the pre-recorded videos.

Learning Activities Summary

This course covers the following topics:
	Comparative law methodology
	Classification of legal systems
	Legal history and comparative law
	The impact of values on legal systems
	Conflicts of values in multicultural societies
	Legal Transplants
	The origins of Western legal systems: The law of God in Western countries The Roman law legacy The common law legacy
	The origins of legal systems in Muslim countries
	The impact of the Enlightenment on legal systems: The codification movement Human rights as effective elements of government
	Comparative law in the courts
	Indigenous Law and Legal Pluralism

Small Group Discovery Experience

There is no Small Group Discovery Experience in this course.

The University's policy on Assessment for Coursework Programs is based on the following four principles:

Assessment must encourage and reinforce learning.
Assessment must enable robust and fair judgements about student performance.
Assessment practices must be fair and equitable to students and give them the opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned.
Assessment must maintain academic standards.

Assessment Summary

Assessment Task	Due Date	Weighting	Length	Redeemable	Learning Outcomes
Online Examination	19 March, 5pm	30%	1 hour	no	1, 2, 5
Seminar Presentation	Various, during class time, to be determined with the course coordinator	20%	40 minutes	no	1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Research Assignment	27 April, 2pm	40%	3500 words	no	1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Seminar Participation	All seminars	10%	n/a	no	1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Due to the current COVID-19 situation modified arrangements have been made to assessments to facilitate remote learning and teaching. Assessment details provided here reflect recent updates.

To support the changes to teaching, the following revisions to assessment have been made:-

Examination for this course is online and the participation component of this course is already finished.

Assessment Detail

(I) ONLINE EXAMINATION (30% of the final result)

Administered in class on Thursday 19 March at 5pm. The venue will be announced on MyUni.

This examination will consist of multiple choice questions. It will test students’ critical understanding of the course contents. This examination will be a closed book test (60 minutes).

The test is intended to show how well students are able to absorb efficiently and quickly information which conveys factual matters and legal considerations. The questions are intended to test the level at which the material studied has been understood and is being recalled. To avoid misunderstanding, it should be made clear that this test has nothing to do with rote learning. The questions are sufficiently complex to ensure that understanding them is, in itself, an important part of the test. Students will be given sample questions in advance so that they know what to expect. The great advantage of this form of testing is that marking does not depend on subjective judgment. Furthermore, foreign students whose native language is not English are not at a disadvantage. The results are objective and reliable; they are usually well distributed over the whole of the available range from high distinction to failure. Rarely is there any bunching around the pass mark. The limitation of this kind of examination is that it tests only a limited range of capacities and must therefore be supplemented by other forms of assessment (see (II) - (IV)).

(II) SEMINAR PRESENTATION (20% of the final result)

Each student will be assigned a topic and class date on which he or she will have to give a presentation to the class. Students will be provided with some readings for their topic, but they are encouraged to conduct further independent research. The rest of the class will also be provided with the readings, to facilitate group discussion. Presenters will have to give a presentation on the assigned topic and lead class discussion during the seminar. Every presentation inclusive of class discussion will take 40 minutes.

(III) RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT (40% of the final result)

Students must submit a 3500 word essay. Some topics will be suggested by the course co-ordinator, but students are encouraged to select their own topics with the cooperation and approval of the co-ordinator. Topics can be related to the seminar presentation given by students (see (II) above). Topics chosen by students must be approved by Wednesday 25 March. The deadline for submission is Monday 27 April.

(IV) SEMINAR PARTICIPATION (10% of the final result)

This aspect of the assessment is designed to facilitate student engagement with the course materials during the course, to ensure student understanding of the material, and to facilitate development of students’ oral communication skills. Students who wish to succeed in this aspect of the assessment will need to prepare for each session by careful study of the assigned material, including the lecture videos.

Submission

Students will be provided with submission instructions as part of the assessment instructions for each item of assessment which will be made available on MyUni.

The research assignment in this course is to be submitted electronically on MyUni through Turnitin. By submitting your assignment electronically you are agreeing to the following:

I declare that all material in this assessment is my own work except where there is clear acknowledgement and reference to the work of others. I have read the Policy on Cheating in Examinations and Related Forms of Assessment. I have also read the University's Plagiarism Policy.

Details for electronic submission through Turnitin will be provided on MyUni.

All written work in the Law School is required to comply with The Australian Guide to Legal Citation (Melbourne University Law Review Association, 4th ed, 2018) available at https://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/3090935/AGLC4-with-Bookmarks.pdf.

PRESENTATION OF RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT
The research assignment must be written in prose style (using complete sentences), adhere to grammatical rules and use correct spelling. It should be typed in Times New Roman font, using 1.5 or double spaced paragraphs and 12pt font size. The pages must be numbered and the margins should be at least 2.5 cm wide. The essay should include a cover page, table of contents and a bibliography.

ASSIGNMENT EXTENSION APPLICATION
Requests for extensions must be made electronically according to law school policy. Extensions will be granted only for unexpected illness, hardship or on compassionate grounds in accordance with University Policy. Work commitments, travel, holidays or sporting engagements are not unexpected circumstances.

Late Submission Penalties: When an assessment is submitted after the due date, without an extension, 5% of the total mark possible will be deducted for every 24 hours or part thereof that the assignment is late, including each day on a weekend. For example, an essay that is submitted after the due date and time but within the first 24 hour period, and that has been graded at 63%, will have 5% deducted, for a final grade of 58%. An essay that is more than 24 hours late will lose 10%, etc.

Word Length Penalties: 5% of the total mark possible for a written assessment will be deducted for every 100 words (or part thereof) by which it exceeds a stipulated word limit. For example, a 3,000 word essay graded at 63% will have 5% deducted if it is between 3,001 and 3,100 words long for a final mark of 58%. If the essay is between 3,101 and 3,200 words long, 10% will be deducted for a final mark of 53%, etc. Word limits include all words in the text, in headings, in quotations, but exclude citations in footnotes. Any separate cover page, table of contents, bibliography or list of sources is excluded from the word limit. If the word limit is misstated, this may be regarded as academic dishonesty.

Course Grading

Grades for your performance in this course will be awarded in accordance with the following scheme:

M10 (Coursework Mark Scheme)
Grade	Mark	Description
FNS		Fail No Submission
F	1-49	Fail
P	50-64	Pass
C	65-74	Credit
D	75-84	Distinction
HD	85-100	High Distinction
CN		Continuing
NFE		No Formal Examination
RP		Result Pending

Further details of the grades/results can be obtained from Examinations.

Grade Descriptors are available which provide a general guide to the standard of work that is expected at each grade level. More information at Assessment for Coursework Programs.

Courses for which a result of conceded pass has been obtained may not be presented towards the degree requirements for the Bachelor of Laws or the Honours Degree of Bachelor of Laws programs, or any postgraduate law program, nor to satisfy prerequisite requirements within any law course.

Final results for this course will be made available through Access Adelaide.

Finality of Assessment Grades

Students are advised that Course Coordinators will not enter into negotiations of any kind with any student regarding changes to their grades. It is irrelevant, in any given circumstance, that only a minimal number of additional marks are required to inflate a student’s grade for any individual assessment item or course as a whole. Pursuant to the University’s Assessment for Coursework Programs Policyand the Adelaide Law School Assessment Policies and Procedures, grades may only be varied through the appropriate channels for academic review (such as an official re-mark).

Moderation

In accordance with the University’s Assessment for Coursework Programs Policy, course coordinators ‘ensure that appropriate marking guidelines and cross-marking moderation processes across markers are in place’ in each course. Procedures adopted by Adelaide Law School to ensure consistency of marking in courses with multiple markers include:

assurance of the qualifications of markers, and their knowledge of the content covered in each course;
detailed marking guidelines and assessment rubrics to assist in the marking of items of assessment;
sharing of example marked assessments at various grade bands across markers;
reviewing of selected marked assessments from each marker by the course coordinator;
comparison of the marks and their distribution across markers;
automatic double-marking of all interim assessment receiving a fail grade, and of final assessments where a student’s overall result is a fail grade;
the availability of re-marking of assessments in accordance with Adelaide Law School’s Assessment Policies and Procedures.

Approval of Results by Board of Examiners

Students are reminded that all assessment results are subject to approval (and possible moderation/change) by the Law School’s Board of Examiners. Assessment results at the University are not scaled. Under the Assessment for Coursework Programs Policy, students are assessed ‘by reference to their performance against pre-determined criteria and standards … and not by ranking against the performance of the student cohort in the course’. However, under that same policy, the Board of Examiners (as the relevant Assessment Review Committee for courses at Adelaide Law School) is required to ‘ensure comparability of standards and consistency’ in assessment. On occasions, the Board of Examiners will form the view that some moderation is required to ensure the comparability of standards and consistency across courses and years, and accordingly provide fairness to all law students. All assessment results are therefore subject to approval (and possible change) until confirmed by the Board of Examiners and posted on Access Adelaide at the end of each semester.

The University places a high priority on approaches to learning and teaching that enhance the student experience. Feedback is sought from students in a variety of ways including on-going engagement with staff, the use of online discussion boards and the use of Student Experience of Learning and Teaching (SELT) surveys as well as GOS surveys and Program reviews.

SELTs are an important source of information to inform individual teaching practice, decisions about teaching duties, and course and program curriculum design. They enable the University to assess how effectively its learning environments and teaching practices facilitate student engagement and learning outcomes. Under the current SELT Policy (http://www.adelaide.edu.au/policies/101/) course SELTs are mandated and must be conducted at the conclusion of each term/semester/trimester for every course offering. Feedback on issues raised through course SELT surveys is made available to enrolled students through various resources (e.g. MyUni). In addition aggregated course SELT data is available.

The University Writing Centre provides academic learning and language development services and resources for local, international, undergraduate and postgraduate coursework students enrolled at the University of Adelaide.

The centre offers practical advice and strategies for students to master reading, writing, note-taking, time management, oral presentation skills, referencing techniques and exam preparation for success at university through seminars, workshops and individual consultations.

Lex Salus Program

Lex Salus (law and wellbeing) is an initiative of the Adelaide Law School aimed at destigmatising mental health issues; promoting physical, mental and emotional wellness; building a strong community of staff and students; and celebrating diversity within the school. It also seeks to promote wellness within the legal profession, through the involvement of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia, the Honourable Chris Kourakis, as the official Patron of the program.

Students can participate in the Lex Salus program by attending barbecue lunches, pancake breakfasts, knitting and crochet circles, seminars, guest speakers, conferences and other activities. Our Facebook page, website and regular all-student emails promote upcoming events, and have tips and information on wellness.

Our Lex Salus YouTube channel also includes videos on topics like managing stress, and interviews with LGBTQ lawyers and their supporters which celebrate diversity and individuality. Students who commit to 10 hours of volunteering with Lex Salus in one year can have their service recognised on their academic transcript and through a thank you morning tea with the Chief Justice and law school staff.

Student Life Counselling Support

The University’s Student Life Counselling Support service provides free and confidential service to all enrolled students. We encourage you to contact the Student Life Counselling Support service on 8313 5663 to make an appointment to deal with any issues that may be affecting your study and life.

This section contains links to relevant assessment-related policies and guidelines - all university policies.

Academic Honesty

Academic dishonesty is a serious act of academic misconduct. All students must be familiar with the University’s Academic Honesty Policy.

Academic dishonesty is a serious matter and is treated as such by the Law School and the University. Academic dishonesty (which goes beyond plagiarism) can be a ground for a refusal by the Supreme Court of South Australia to admit a person to practice as a legal practitioner in South Australia.

Academic honesty is an essential aspect of ethical and honest behaviour, which is central to the practice of the law and an understanding of what it is to be a lawyer.

Students are reminded that in order to maintain the academic integrity of all programs and courses, the university has a zero-tolerance approach to students offering money or significant value goods or services to any staff member who is involved in their teaching or assessment. Students offering lecturers or tutors or professional staff anything more than a small token of appreciation is totally unacceptable, in any circumstances. Staff members are obliged to report all such incidents to their supervisor/manager, who will refer them for action under the university's student’s disciplinary procedures.

Authorised by:	Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President (Academic)
Maintained by:	Course Outlines Administrator