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Advantages And Disadvantages Of Black Letter Law

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Black-letter analysis of legal proceedings is a highly debated approach with many either completely in favour of it or completely against its application. In this essay, I will discuss the disadvantages, of this approach as presented in the article An Introduction and Guide to the Conduct of Legal Research , and their relevance to South African legal education specifically. Black-letter Law refers the basic elements of law which are free from dispute or doubt. It refers to the law accepted by most judges in a certain jurisdiction. The black-letter analysis focuses on the primary sources of law such as legislation. It aims at gaining an understanding of how the law and legal process impact the parties involved. I have selected the …show more content…

Thirdly, a fatal weakness of this approach to analysis is its inability to adapt with the changing legal system. With the developments in the context of law and the influx of more conscious and aware students the black-letter approach quickly became outdated . This means that this approach did not change enough or was not quick enough on the uptake of new principals and understandings as the times did and therefore students would not have benefited from use of this approach. Fourthly, the approach relies heavily on students being able to memorise large amounts of facts, as well as all the exceptions to rules and exceptions to exceptions . This approach thus lacks depth rather choosing to focus on theoretical knowledge than teaching students to how to apply their learned knowledge. Finally, the extremely narrow approach that is adopted by this approach means that a range of important subjects are downplayed which means that legal principals may be separated from their context, such as economic, social and cultural context, in which the law operates in practice . Thus, subjects such as legal history which will provide a student with context as to the adoption and application of laws are not given the proper attention and therefore, students lack the understanding of reasons why such laws have been adopted and implemented. Making use solely of this approach to legal analysis would mean that students studying law in South Africa may lack a fundamental ability to put

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