Learning Legal Rules

• Introduces the key topics in legal method and skills, enabling students to understand and put into practice key skills they will need throughout their degree course
• Includes a dedicated chapter on ratio decidendi and obiter dictum, which are difficult and yet vital concepts which first-year students may struggle to understand and put into practice
• Includes material on human rights and the influence of the EU, which sets the English legal system in its wider context and introduces these key topics from the outset
• It is accompanied by an extensive Online Resource Centre, complete with a test bank of 200 multiple choice questions for use by lecturers, and self-test questions for students with guideline answers

New to this edition

• The seventh edition includes a chapter on legal writing to help students prepare for their essays and exams
• There is further guidance on the use of online legal resources
• The accompanying web site has been expanded to include sections on interpreting legal materials, case citations, and diagrams from the book are now available for lecturers to download

Readership: All law students who are taking a legal skills/method module in their first year of the course.

James Holland, Professor of Law, University of the West of England, Bristol, and Julian Webb, Professor of Legal Education, University of Warwick

Review(s) from previous edition

""The authors have conceived an expansive yet straightforward, a detailed yet highly readable, examination of the vagaries of legal method both in theory and in practice." - New Law Journal

""...books like these are such a godsend. This is an excellent text." Lex Magazine, 2005"

1: Understanding the law
2: Finding the law
3: Reading the law
4: From reading to writing
5: Law, fact, and language
6: The doctrine of judicial precedent
7: How precedent operates: ratio decidendi and obiter dictum
8: Making sense of statutes
9: Interpreting statutes
10: 'Bringing rights home': legal method and convention rights
11: European legal method
12: Exploiting legal reasoning