LAW 2599 - Criminal Law
North Terrace Campus - Semester 1 - 2021
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General Course Information
Course Details
Course Code LAW 2599 Course Criminal Law Coordinating Unit Adelaide Law School Term Semester 1 Level Undergraduate Law (LLB) Location/s North Terrace Campus Units 3 Contact 3 hours per week Available for Study Abroad and Exchange Y Prerequisites LAW 1501 Corequisites LAW 1501 Incompatible LAW 1004; LAW 2503 Restrictions Available to LLB and B.Criminology with B.Laws and BArts Advanced with B.Laws students only Assessment Typically to include one problem question, one advocacy exercise, one invigilated exam Course Staff
Course Coordinator: Dr Kellie Toole
Course Timetable
The full timetable of all activities for this course can be accessed from .
There will be a two hour lecture and a one hour seminar each week. The lecture will be delivered online only. The details are available on the class planner at .
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Learning Outcomes
Course Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
- Analyse the principles of criminal responsibility, undertake self-directed legal research using primary and secondary materials, and analyse and evaluate legal information relating to criminal law and legal theory.
- Apply principles of criminal law to complex legal problems, and critique the operation of criminal law from both a policy and theoretical/principled perspective.
- Prepare persuasive written and oral arguments for a legal and lay audience on issues relating to the drafting of new criminal laws and the application of existing criminal laws to common scenarios that arise in criminal practice.
- Demonstrate awareness of principles of ethical professional judgement in the management and conduct of a criminal law matter, relevant to both prosecution and defence.
- Analyse the impact of criminal law from a policy perspective, with a focus on the impact of the law on those people who are vulnerable or outside mainstream culture.
- Reflect on individual capacity to complete self-directed tasks and to work effectively in teams. Extend their skills by utilising feedback and reflection to drive personal improvement.
The Legal Practitioners' Education and Admissions Council (LPEAC) sets rules for the academic requirements for admission to legal practice in South 最新糖心Vlog. Students must demonstrate a satisfactory level of understanding and application of 11 core areas of legal knowledge. This course teaches the following topics within these core areas:
CRIMINAL LAW AND PROCEDURE
1. The definition of crime.
2. Elements of crime.
3. Aims of the criminal law.
4. Homicide and defences.
5. Non-fatal offences against the person and defences.
6. Offences against property.
7. General doctrines.
8. Attempts, strict responsibility.
9. Elements of criminal procedure - classification of offences.最新糖心Vlog Graduate Attributes
This course will provide students with an opportunity to develop the Graduate Attribute(s) specified below:
最新糖心Vlog 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, 2, 3 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
1, 2, 3, 5 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
6 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
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Learning Resources
Required Resources
Students will require a copy of:
David Caruso et al, South 最新糖心Vlogn Criminal Law and Procedure (Lexis Nexis, 2nd ed, 2016)
Criminal Law Consolidation Act 1935 (SA)
Summary Offences Act 1953 (SA) Part 5A—Filming and sexting offencesRecommended Resources
The following text will assist students who seek an alternative view or an extended knowledge of the material covered in the course:
- Simon Bronitt and Bernadette McSherry, Principles of Criminal Law (Thomsons, 4rd ed, 2017)
- Anne Hewitt and Kellie Toole ‘The Practical Knowledge Conundrum: What Practical Knowledge Should Be Included in a Law School Curriculum and How Can it Be Taught? (2013) 25(5) New Zealand Universities Law Review 980
Legal Services Commission, Law Handbook Online, Foolkit: A Lawyer's Toolkit, Court's Administation Authority, http://www.courts.sa.gov.au/Pages/default.aspxOnline Learning
Online Communication
The MyUni Discussion Board will be activated by the start of teaching and will be available until immediately before the primary exam. All questions relating to substantive course content and assessment should be posted on the Discussion Board, rather than emailed to staff. Guidelines on communication, including the use of the Discussion Board, will be posted on MyUni.
Students are expected to check MyUni regularly to keep up to date with announcements during the semester.
Online Learning
All lectures will be delivered online only. Powerpoint lecture slides will be posted on MyUni before or after the lecture, as appropriate.
Additional recordings may be placed on MyUni thoughout the semester if issues arise that cannot be covered in the scheduled lecture or seminar times, or topics need consolidating.
Written assignments must be submitted online through the Turnitin text-matching software program designed to assist with the detection of plagiarism and other forms of cheating. -
Learning & Teaching Activities
Learning & Teaching Modes
Lectures
The lectures will be a combination of pre-recorded and live via Zoom sessions. There will not be any live in-person lectures.
The lectures will include aspects of traditional lecture format, class exercises, process mapping/flowcharts covering the type of scenarios you will encounter in seminars and summative assessment, and sessions with members of the profession. It will serve as a bridge between the content presented in the first hour of the lecture and the application of the content to practical exercises in the seminars.
Seminars
Seminars will run from week 2 to week 13. They will involve application of the law to practical legal problems. They will revolve around two separate scenarios that will be presented as case files that will run across the whole semester and progressively raise issues in the way they would unfold in a real-world criminal case. There will be both live in-person and live via Zoom seminars.
Neither lectures nor seminars are compulsory. Students are encouraged to attend as much contact time as possible to maximise their own learning and to support the learning of other students. If you chose not to attend classes, you may miss some content.
There will be an assessed, individual advocacy exercise in week 9. The week 8 lecture will be dedicated to preparing for the advocacy exercise. It will involve a legal argument based on issues raised in one of case files.Workload
The information below is provided as a guide to assist students in engaging appropriately with the course requirements.
The information below is provided as a guide to assist students in engaging appropriately with the course requirements.
In taking this course students are expected to attend 24 hours of lectures and 12 hours of seminars. To get the most from this course and be able to produce written work and oral contributions of a high quality, it is essential that students spend 6-7 hours per week doing the readings, taking notes, thinking about the issues, and preparing questions, answers and discussion points for seminars.Learning Activities Summary
RECORDED LECTURES BEFORE SEMESTER The Criminal Justice System - Intro and general administration; classification of offences; role of police, prosecutors, judges and victims; federal/state jurisdiction; common law/criminal code; the court system; sources of law, lawyers and legal responsibilities and ethical issues; crime statistics Criminal Law and Responsibility - Difference between civil and criminal law; principles of criminal responsibility; aims of the criminal law; social context of crime SEMESTER *The following program is subject to change* Week Topic Lecture A Seminar 1 Elements of Offences Welcome and elements of offences No seminar 2 He Kaw Teh Analysis Processes and Principles Element analysis – case file 3 Homicide Murder He Kaw Teh analysis – case file 4 Offences against the person Assault, Cause harm/Cause serious harm Murder and Manslaughter – case file analysis 5 Sex Offences (1) Rape Assault, cause serious harm and cause harm – case file analysis 6 Sex Offences (2) Filming and sexting offences Rape - case file analysis 7 Dishonesty offences Theft Filming and sexting offences - case file analysis 8 Advocacy Advocacy Theft and robbery – case file 9 Attempts Common law of attempts Assessed advocacy exercise - in seminar 10 Defences (1) – affirmative Affirmative defences Attempts – case file analysis 11 Defences (2) – mental state Common law on mental Impairment Self defence – case file analysis 12 Revision and exam preparation Revision Mental impairment – case file analysis 13 Revision and exam preparation No lecture Revision Specific Course Requirements
There are no additional requirements for completion of this course other than described elsewhere in this document.
None of the assessment tasks are threshold tests i.e. students are able to pass the course overall even if they fail one or more assessment tasks as long as their overall grade is 50% or greater.Small Group Discovery Experience
There is no small group discovery experience as part of this course. -
Assessment
The 最新糖心Vlog'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 Task Type Due Weighting Redeemable Length Learning Outcome Quiz Individual Friday of week 1 5% No 30 minutes 4 File note/letter of advice Individual Friday of week 6 - 2pm 30% Yes 2,000 words - compulsory 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Advocacy Exercise Individual Monday of week 9 - 2pm for pre-recorded option; seminar in week 9 for live version (via Zoom or in person) 10% No 3 minute oral 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 Take Home Exam Individual In semester 1 examination period - online 55 or 85% No 2.5 hours open book - compulsory 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Assessment Detail
File note/letter of advice 30% or 0%, Compulsory, Redeemable
Each student will be required to answer a problem-based question in the form of a file note for a senior lawyer on a particular legal issue, and to write a letter to a client on the same matter. The legal issue will arise from one of the case files used in the seminars. It will be redeemable by performance in the final exam provided that it represents a bona fide effort as determined by the course coordinator.
A pass in the problem question is not a prerequisite for passing Criminal Law.
Advocacy exercise 10%, Compulsory, NOT Redeemable
Each student will be required to undertake an assessed, advocacy exercise. It will involve a legal argument based on one of the case files used in seminars. Students will have the option to pre-record their submissions and submit them via MyUni, or to make their submissions live in their usual seminar.
A pass in the advocacy exercise is not a prerequisite for passing Criminal Law.
Take Home Examination [60% or 90%]
Each student will be required to complete a two and a half hour, open book examination. All of the offences, defences, principles and issues covered in the course are examinable.
A pass in the exam is not a prerequisite for passing Criminal Law.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.
Late Submission of Assignments: 5% of the total mark possible will be deducted for every 24 hours or part thereof that it 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. Hard copy submissions made after 5.00pm on a Friday will be assumed to have been submitted on the next business day and will be penalised accordingly.
Word Length: Assignments which exceed the allocated length (word length or page limit) will be subject to a penalty of 5% of total marks possible per 100 words or part thereof (ie with a word limit of 3,000, an essay graded 63% will have 5% deducted if it is 3001 words long, for a final grade of 58%, 10% if it is 3101 words long, etc). Words are calculated including all footnotes and headings within the text but excluding cover page information. Quotations and all referencing information are included in the word count.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.
Final results for this course will be made available through .
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 最新糖心Vlog’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 最新糖心Vlog’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 最新糖心Vlog 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. -
Student Feedback
The 最新糖心Vlog 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 最新糖心Vlog 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.
Student feedback The course is constantly being updated and revised to reflect the evolution of the law, to respond to student feedback, and to engage with the latest teaching practices. Student feedback is collected each time the course is run, including through SELT reports. Previous SELT reports, and staff feedback on them, are posted on the course MyUni site for students to view and consider. -
Student Support
- Academic Integrity for Students
- Academic Support with Maths
- Academic Support with writing and study skills
- Careers Services
- Library Services for Students
- LinkedIn Learning
- Student Life Counselling Support - Personal counselling for issues affecting study
- Students with a Disability - Alternative academic arrangements
The provides academic learning and language development services and resources for local, international, undergraduate and postgraduate coursework students enrolled at the 最新糖心Vlog 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 最新糖心Vlog, 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 , 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 最新糖心Vlog’s 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. -
Policies & Guidelines
This section contains links to relevant assessment-related policies and guidelines - all university policies.
- Academic Credit Arrangements Policy
- Academic Integrity Policy
- Academic Progress by Coursework Students Policy
- Assessment for Coursework Programs Policy
- Copyright Compliance Policy
- Coursework Academic Programs Policy
- Intellectual Property Policy
- IT Acceptable Use and Security Policy
- Modified Arrangements for Coursework Assessment Policy
- Reasonable Adjustments to Learning, Teaching & Assessment for Students with a Disability Policy
- Student Experience of Learning and Teaching Policy
- Student Grievance Resolution Process
Academic Integrity
All students must be familiar with the 最新糖心Vlog’s Academic Integrity Policy. Academic Misconduct is a serious matter and is treated as such by the Law School and the 最新糖心Vlog. Academic Misconduct (which goes beyond plagiarism) can be a ground for a refusal by the Supreme Court of South 最新糖心Vlog to admit a person to practice as a legal practitioner in South 最新糖心Vlog. Academic Integrity 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. -
Fraud Awareness
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鈥檚 disciplinary procedures.
The 最新糖心Vlog of Adelaide is committed to regular reviews of the courses and programs it offers to students. The 最新糖心Vlog of Adelaide therefore reserves the right to discontinue or vary programs and courses without notice. Please read the important information contained in the disclaimer.