By saidi kassim, Bachelor of laws, Moshi cooperative university
1. General citation of authorities
One of the most important requirements for answering questions on the law is that you must be able to back the points you make with authority, usually either a case or a statue. It is not good enough to state that the law is such and such, without stating the case or statute which says that that is the law.
Higher marks will be given where the candidate has cited authorities by name; quite simply it helps to give the impression that you know your material thoroughly, rather than half-remembering something you heard once in class.
This means that you must be prepared to learn fairly long lists of cases. For exam purposes you need to memorise the name of the case, a brief description of the facts, and the legal principle which the case established. Once you have revised a topic well, you should find that a surprisingly high number of cases on that topic begin to stick in your mind anyway, but there will probably be some that you have trouble recalling.
Knowing the names of cases makes you look more knowledgeable, and also saves writing time in the exam, but if you do forget a name, referring briefly to the facts will identify it. It is not necessary to learn that the dates of cases, though it is useful if you know whether it is a recent or an old case. N.B Dates are usually required for statutes.
You need to know the facts of a case in order to judge whether it applies to the situation in a problem question. However, unless you are making a detailed comparison of the facts of a case and the facts of a problem question, in order to argue that the case should or could be distinguished, you should generally make only brief reference to facts, if at all – long descriptions of facts waste time and earn few marks.
2. Is there always a right answer?
In law exams, there is not usually a right or wrong answer. What matters is that you show you know what type of issues you are being asked about. Essay questions are likely to ask you to ‘discuss’, ‘criticize’, or ‘evaluate’, or ‘examine’. You simply need to produce a good range of factual and critical material in order to do this. Please do not reproduce large chucks of lecture notes! The lecturer will want to see evidence that you understand the topic you are writing about.
