LAW 121, LAW 121 G Law and Society

Credit points: 15 points
Offered: First and Second Semester
Contact hours: Lectures - 3 hours per week, Tutorials - 1 hour per fortnight
Coordinators: professor David V Williams
Prerequisites: None

Course description

The course is an introduction to the nature, functions, origins and contemporary questions relating to law in its social context.  The focus is on law and society in New Zealand, including its sources of law, its institutions, and its operation historically and today.  Maori concepts of law and justice, and their relationship to the New Zealand legal system, are also addressed.

Content outline

The course materials are divided into five parts:

• Concepts of law — a brief comparative perspective on approaches to law in society;
• Branches of Government — the origins of New Zealand’s flexible constitution, the balance of powers and the relationship to each other of the legislative, the executive and the judicial branches of government;
• The concept of property — a comparative social context approach to the important legal conception of property;
• Laws and Rights — a study of definitions of crime, due process in criminal justice, human rights and the Bill of Rights Act 1990;
• Law, colonisation and the Treaty of Waitangi — changing views on the legal status of the Treaty of Waitangi, Treaty settlement processes, and options for constitutional change.

Assessment

Final two-hour examination (Plussage: 1 hour mid-semester test counts 20% and the final examination mark counts 80% if the mark for the final examination is lower than the test. If the final examination mark is higher than the test mark, then the final examination mark counts 100%).