Judicial Reasoning

• Members of the judiciary of all grades
• Prosecutors
• Trainee judges and prosecutors
• Court clerks
• Legal and administrative personnel of tribunals
• Counsels of States
• Legislative drafters
• Members of Parliament participating in legislative drafting committees
• Lawyers
• Legal professionals, clerks ofchambers, and paralegals
• Law graduates wishing to take either the judicial or prosecutorial route



• Enhance the ability to engage ‘critically’ and logically in judicial reasoning
• Develop the skills to articulate sound legal arguments
• Strengthen the understanding of the moral, social and political aspects of legal reasoning
• Understand the relationship between statutes and cases
• Appreciate the role of Judges and Human Rights
• In-depth understanding of the role of rights in administrative, civil and criminal justice processes
• Understand the substantive role and constitutional position of judges
• Master judicial approaches to statutory interpretation and the influence of international instruments on those approaches
• Gain an in-depth appreciation of the fundamental elements of the rule of law, and the significance of fairness and justice in social and legal systems
• Identify rapidly key issues in cases and be able to summarise key points succinctly, accurately and with high impact
• Strengthen legal research skills using primary and secondary sources
• Kolb’s Adult Learning Styles Model
• Respond coherently to challenging questions about the law by the use of legal referencing

Week 1: Judicial reasoning

• Explore ‘What’ the ‘Law’ should mean to you
• Legal, moral and justicial facets explained
• Why the nature of law evolves, its significance to society, and how big data drivers will drive future law-making
• Legislative interpretation
• Applied legislation for interpretation – Persons of legislative interpretations (PLIs) /li>
• Techniques for developing and evidencinga reasoned argument
• Rebuttable v. non-rebuttable presumptions
• Judicial precedent v. freedom to exercise judicial discretion: scoping and limitations
• The base for logical reasoning
• The aspects of judicial reasoning
• The relationships and roles of parliaments and courts
• Reasoning techniques to reach decisions
• The ‘neighbour’ principle as outlined by Lord Atkin
• Internal and external justification of conclusions of law – dictum justifications
• Use v. misuse of deduction