Judicial and Prosecutorial Reasoning

Week 1: Judicial reasoning

• Explore ‘What’ the ‘Law’ should mean to you
• Legal moral and judicial 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)
• 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

Week 2: Prosecutorial reasoning

• Why become a ‘Prosecutor’
• What Prosecutors Do and Do Not Do
• Interests skills and characteristics of a Prosecutor
• The structure of the Interview Process that Interviewers Look For
• Common hypothetical questions
• The character of a ‘Prosecutor’ – how to develop one
• Statutory background and normative forces
• Powers and limitations
• Discretion and its maximum limits
• Legality v. illegality
• Ideology
• Criminological skills
• Accountability
• Transparency
• Inertia
• Role ambiguity
• Systemic oversight and confidential investigations management skills
• Internal checks
• Prosecutions in rem and in personam
• Adaptive management
• Disempowerment
• Role specification
• Court prosecutorial skills