How to write a law dissertation
Getting Started:
- Plan
- Research
- Re-Plan
- Write
- Forget
- Re-write
So you have your question and plenty of time. The first step is to consider carefully what the question is asking you. This is one of those things that is so obvious that the cleverest of people forget or ignore it. Break the question down into its individual parts and then make a plan of about a page’s length. This will give you a mental sketch, which you will develop and refine, and perhaps even radically change, after the next step: research.
When you do your research, there are two evil temptations to avoid: reading too much and reading too little. We will return to this stage below and look at how to get in the right frame of mind for it. But for now, know that you should take only so many notes as you need to understand the material. Highlight away and use tabs, but do not take down every minor detail. Have faith that if that tiny detail was important, your subconscious would have banked it, and you will be able to return to it if necessary.
Now that you are aware of what the experts think and what patterns the cases betray, the fourth step is to rework you plan. Do not be afraid to completely reconfigure your ideas, or even scrap them if they seem naïve. It takes a true intellectual to do this and it is much more likely to score you a higher mark.
The fifth step is to write your first draft. Once you have done this, take a few days off, see some friends and forget your work totally for a while. Then when you return to it and edit it, you will have a clear perspective with which to do so.
Research and Re-Writing your Plan
Research can be daunting, as there is often an enormous amount of resources that seem to deal with your topic. The good news is that reading about a topic becomes easier and quicker, the more you know about it. By far the most efficient way to go about your research is to read very thoroughly one or two articles or textbook chapters that deal in a general way with your topic. These must be general and probably will only go a little way towards helping you answer your question, but they will do something very useful for you. They will clarify issues for you and contain footnotes, which you should chase up if you feel you need to know something more about an issue. You may wish to chase up footnotes in those resources as well. But be careful not to get too involved in one idea and so forget the bigger picture.
The best way to deepen your research is slowly, in layers. Imagine a circle: you start with the one or two general articles, then add a layer by identifying four or five issues which you will chase up, and so on. You will then have a very good idea about what to write and will have kept a view of the whole picture.
Structure and Content
Your law dissertation should be written using a standard introduction-body-conclusion format. The introduction should set out what you want to say, the body says it, and the conclusion recaps the arguments, tying them all together to form a strong and clear proposition. It is vital that you fulfil the promises of your introduction. So, if you say that you will argue that the Human Rights Act gives too little protection to suspected terrorists, you must, in the body of the essay, say why you think this is true. When you develop your points in the body, separate them, perhaps with subheadings if this makes things clearer to yourself and a potential reader. Following the above example, you may wish to say that too little protection is given because (1) there is a stigma attached to being detained, which the Human Rights Act does nothing to stop, (2) that there is no right to a lawyer in the initial stages of questioning, (3) there is no right to a trial by jury. These are just examples, but the point is that your arguments must be separated clearly.
When developing your separated arguments, say why you think they are valid. Again, following the example, your third argument will have to explain why a trial by jury is more protective than a trial with no jury. It is not enough simply to describe the features of the HRA without linking them to your initial thesis in your introduction.
There is a common misconception that the introduction should be written first, and the conclusion last. But this is by no means true. Often, when actually writing your dissertation, you will clarify the issues to yourself, and perhaps you will make connections that were not apparent when you started writing. Thus, it is always useful to write your main body first, with guidance from you plan. Then, once you done this and read through it, write the introduction and conclusion. This method may seem unorthodox, but it is a very effective way of containing your essay within a clarified structure.
Resources and originality
It is often tempting to write your dissertation according to your preconceived notions of what is true, without reading what others have thought about the same topic. This temptation is often greatest among the cleverest of people. However, this is not the way to do things. It is arrogant to assume that you know more about the law, and have a more insightful opinion than a Professor, without at least reading, understanding and considering carefully what he thinks. By all means disagree, but know precisely what you are disagreeing with. This shows that you have thought and read about the subject, and that is all a law essay is intended show.
The more essays and dissertations you write, the better you will become at spotting what you need to know in order to answer your question. You may not initially know what to say, but you will become sharper at spotting what kind of thing the tutors are looking for. If, after reading the relevant material, you know how to answer the question, yet you feel there is something more to be said, something original, then go ahead. But give the tutors what they are looking for first. Legal thought is very formal and despises unjustified originality. If you can show you understand the debate (the box), then and only then can you leap outside of it and bring in something new. Otherwise it will seem like you could not be bothered to do the reading and just waffled along.
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