Welcome to another module breakdown post! So far, I have done 17 posts in this little series on my blog. Essentially, I break down each module and look at it in detail so if you are doing this module, or something very similar, then you know what to expect!
You can find my previous module breakdown posts here:
Year 1 Modules
- Power, Freedom and the State
- Contract Law
- Legal System of England and Wales
- Legal Skills
- Britain: From Blitz to Brexit
- Public Law
Year 2 Modules
- Social and Political Research
- EU law
- Equity and Trusts
- Tort Law
- Criminal Law
- 20th Century Ideas and Movements
Year 3 Modules
Today’s post is actually the final one in this series for now. All of the modules I have shared so far have been from my undergraduate degree. However, I will be sharing a breakdown for each of my modules in my LLM very soon so stay tuned! Anyway, today’s post is on Criminal Evidence. Let’s get to it!
Content
Criminal Evidence was a module that basically included exactly what it says on the tin. It was basically an additional module related to Criminal Law. We looked at different types of evidence such as expert evidence, hearsay evidence, bad character evidence and confessions. In addition, we also looked at other aspects of a criminal trial. For example, we looked at cross-examination, burden of proof, the relevance of evidence and competence and compellability.
Lectures
Lectures occurred in the second semester of my third and final year. We had two each week that there were two hours long. They were really interactive with lots of discussions and questions asked from our lecturer. They were like a seminar or a tutorial but on a bigger scale with more people. This is because there were no seminars or tutorials.
Assignments
I had two assignments for criminal evidence. These were an essay and an exam.
The essay was worth 40% of the module. It was 3500 words, with second years looking at burden of proof and third years (aka me) looking at relevance of evidence.
The exam was worth 60% of the module and 2 hours long. We had to answer two questions: an essay question and a problem question. We had a choice of 3 questions for each question we had to answer which was good.
Overall Thoughts
Overall, I absolutely adored criminal evidence. It was such a wonderful module that I found thoroughly interesting. My lecturer was really good and I ended up doing really well which is always nice.
And that’s it! Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to read this post and I will see you soon for another one!
Beth
Beth Olivia 