UNIVERSITY OF DAR ES SALAAM

SCHOOL OF LAW (FORMERLY FACULTY OF LAW)

1^ST YEAR LL.B & BALE 2012/2013

LW 103: LEGAL METHOD I

TIMED TEST QUESTIONS

Instructions:

1. Students should prepare to attempt either question within 40 minutes on 17^th January 2013 at 10:00hrs.

2. Answers shall be confined to 2 pages (two sides of a single sheet of paper) only hence students should be focused and should aim at responding to the question only avoiding unnecessary verbosity.

3. This is totally closed-book test, no any reference is allowed. You may bring clean and unannotated copies of this questions paper for ease of reference.

QN 1.

 “Whatever merits a precedent may possess (and they are many) certainty is the very least quality which we can attribute to it…No body knows, until a case has come to trial, what will emerge from all the “authorities “…Every lawyer is aware of points on which the authorities are conflicting and obscure, and as precedents multiply, so do the conflicts and obscurities.” (Carleton Kemp Allen, Case Law:  An unwarrantable Intervention (1935) 51 LQR 333.)

How far, if at all, do you subscribe to the above contention?

QN 2.

“The doctrine of judicial precedent is based on stare decisis. That is the standing by of previous decisions. Once a point of law has been decided in a particular case, that law must be applied in all future cases containing the same material facts.” (Anonymous)

Discuss this statement.