A Level Law

Introduction to OCR Law

Activity 1 – Law in the news

Law is part of everyday life. Instructions: Look at the home page of a news website (e.g. BBC News). Try to spot the link that the law has with each story. The purpose of the activity is to show that there is a legal aspect to most, if not all stories in the news every day. Some examples could be e.g. sport – drugs testing, contractual law, international law, corruption

Activity 2 The differences between civil and criminal law. A civil case – Donoghue V Stevenson (1932)

Research this case: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8367223.stm

1.What are the important facts of this case? 2. Who won the case? 3. What did the claimant want from the defendant? 4. What law comes from this case? 5.How does this law affect you?

Activity 3 – A criminal case – R V Dudley & Stephens (1884) Activity 3 – A criminal or Civil Case

Research the above case. There is a short video clip about this case taken from the BBC Coast programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p018gjjp

1.What are the important facts of this case? 2. What defence did they raise? 3. What was the verdict?   4. What law comes from this case? 5.What would your decision have been?

Activity 4 – A criminal or civil case

Task: To decide whether each case study is a civil offence or a criminal offence and then to place it in hierarchical format dependant on the seriousness of the case.

Extra activities:

Watch this video on how to prepare for A Level Law. We study OCR Law. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwh5fzX8IcA

Law Extra Reading/Watch List:

• Is Eating People Wrong?: Great Legal Cases and How they Shaped the World, by Allan Hutchinson
• Under the Wig, by William Clegg
• The law’s strangest cases, by Peter Seddon
• The Collected Stories of Rumpole, by John Mortimer
• The Secret Barrister
• Blog – The Secret Barrister