Answer the question!
This is the first guest post published on TheLawProf.com. It is an honour for me to welcome Prof. Stephen Weatherill, the Jacques Delors Professor of EU Law at the University of Oxford.
Professor Weatherill was my doctoral supervisor in Oxford. He is an inspiration to me and to all of his students. His apparent omniscience on all matters EU law, coupled with his incredible modesty, made my doctoral journey more enjoyable than I could have reasonably hoped for.
Below you will find his essay-writing advice to law students. Do pay attention! His experience and insights are invaluable. Here we go…
Answer the question!
How trivial that sounds. Of course you are expected to answer the question. Who wouldn’t understand that?
You’d be surprised.
In thirty-five years of marking tutorial essays and examination scripts I suspect I’ve seen it all. Errors, misunderstandings, illogicality, misrepresentations … and, let me be quick to add, plenty of soaring brilliance, deep engagement, perceptive analysis and agile analogies too. But what’s the one instruction that drives me to distraction when it’s neglected?
Answer the question!
Everyone gets things wrong. Maybe because you don’t fully understand it, maybe because you could have spent a bit longer in the library and a bit less time watching the football, maybe because it’s a really tough issue. Fine. You’ll get some bits wrong, you’ll get some – most, we hope – things right, and you’ll get more-or-less the grade that your level of knowledge reflects.
But that’s not true of the student who doesn’t answer the question. If you don’t answer the question you are immediately stopping yourself achieving your potential.
Look, I know it’s tempting. You’ve worked hard on studying the matter of how far the
Charter of Fundamental Rights is treated as capable of application to private parties. You’ve read the case law, you’ve read the academic analysis. More than that, you’re bursting with normative enthusiasm, you have shaped your own pet theory of where and when horizontal application should be embraced, and your seminar leader has praised you for your insight and ambition. So you eagerly turn over your examination paper and you spot the question about the Charter, and you start writing with feverish glee. It’s a question about the extent to which measures taken at Member State level are subject to review in the light of the standards mandated by the EU’s Charter, but never mind, you know what you want to write about and it’s not that, and so you reel off your elegant essay on horizontal application.
Don’t do it.
Answer the question!
A wonderful answer to a question that has not been asked scores a lower mark than a competent answer to a question that has been asked.
And you won’t get extra marks for artistic impression. It’s a Law examination not a figure skating competition.
Answer the question!
Think about it from the perspective of the person(s) who set the examination paper. We don’t knock these out in ten minutes just before the Champions League anthem booms forth while waiting for the pizza to come bubbling out of the oven. Setting an exam paper is not exactly a source of joy but it is a matter of professional pride, and hours are invested by a team of people to ensure the paper is fair, balanced, accurate and appropriately challenging. Each question is crafted like Meissen porcelain. And if we have – after careful reflection and judicious choice – directed you to discuss a quote criticising the Court’s unwillingness to entertain preliminary references submitted by arbitral tribunals we really do not want to read your thoughts on the modern status of the CILFIT guidelines. No matter how brilliant your insights on that issue might be.
So … answer the question.
