Looks who’s back after reading week! So for the first time in my entire academic career, I actually used my reading week for academic reading. Don’t worry I also had some downtime by going to see some family and reading the first book of Dust by Philip Pullman. Hope you all had a lovely week, but I know deep down that you were missing my writing.
Back to the academics.
So today started off with a tutorial in Tort Law. Where we just explored the questions set out prior. While it was there was nothing wrong with the class itself, I have noticed my inability to use authorities in my own answers. This is to say that I am still struggling to note down where I have gotten my answers from an who said what. So even if I noted down a case and gone through the decisions in an appeal court, then I have not said what Judge said what. While this isn’t disastrous for me at the moment, it will start to catch up if I don’t change this. My plan to combat this was a trip to the stationary store and buying some proper note cards which I shall start using for cases. The idea is to write down less irrelevant information and try to get more focus what is happening in each case. (Also should make this nightly job simpler)
Then I had a Public Law lecture. I usually have loads to write about public law, but today, this won’t be able to happen just due to the sheer amount of information that was covered in today’s class. We explored the history prerogative power, the use of the power, what happens when it conflicts with statutory authority and how governments have tried to use the Royal Prerogative to circumvent statutory power (and failed). I am sure that by the end of the year I will hear the following phrase over a million times; “Why? Parliament is Sovereign!” It’s basically the crux of any argument of why the government of the day does anything. Not a bad thing or something that doesn’t make sense, but it is getting a tad repetitive now. The only thing to note of any concern is the lack of judicial review to prerogative powers (at least before GCHQ). While it has been updated to work in hand with the nature of the power, it doesn’t seem to go far enough (if I am talking from a lawyers point of view). However, if I were a politician, I would think that things have swung in the wrong direction. If we (the ruling party) had been elected, there should be a minimal amount of barriers to stop us doing what we were put into office for by the people. All in all, considering that there have only been four cases (or we were told that and I have yet to do my readings) on the issue since 1688, it’s been a pretty good run.
HP KOTECHA 