Practical Exam Advice – Guest post by Professor Catherine Barnard
It is an honour for me to welcome Professor Catherine Barnard, Professor of European & Employment Law at the University of Cambridge and British Academy Fellow.
Professor Barnard is widely regarded as one of the most prominent EU law scholars. Her definitive work includes “The Substantive Law of the EU: The Four Freedoms (OUP, 2019)” and (with Prof. Peers) “European Union Law (ed) (OUP, 2020)”.
She has appeared extensively on the main media channels - BBC, ITV and Sky - as well as some of the more specialist programmes such as Law in Action, Woman's Hour and the Briefing Room. She has also written for the Guardian and the Telegraph. She has given evidence to numerous select committees on the legal issues connected with Brexit, immigration and the European Union (Withdrawal) Act.
Her guest post for TheLawProf contains lots of invaluable insights, and it provides students with the perspective of both the examiner and the examinee. Enjoy!
Practical Exam Advice
Guest post by Professor Catherine Barnard
Being examiner on a university exam paper is stressful. Not as stressful as for those sitting them, granted, but stressful none the less. Is the paper fair? Do the problem questions work? Do the questions reflect the syllabus? Are the questions challenging enough to distinguish the best students? Is the language clear? Is there sufficient diversity in the question?
Huge amounts of time and resource are devoted to setting exam papers. Depending on the faculty, one person might hold the pen or a team of people may contribute. There’s usually a meeting to discuss the paper with subject specialists and a further meeting of challenge by non-specialists. The polishing continues.
And then there is the small matter of marking the papers and ranking the students.
Generally, law exams contain two types of questions: problem style and essay style.
Problem-style questions
Problem-style questions come with their own built-in structure, especially the ones which are subdivided into parts (a), (b), (c) etc. For the ones that are not, the best advice is to begin by identifying the potential claimants and the defendants and their various claims and defences. Use some subheadings to show that you have identified the major issues and to establish a structure for your response which it will be easy for the examiner to follow.
And then there is the questions of remedies. I always suggest that students put themselves in the shoes of the claimant. What does the Claimant want out of the claim? Declaration? Damages? Injunction? In EU law exams it is always helpful to think too about the routes to get there. Is it cheaper and better to complain to the Commission to see if it can intervene (restrictive national law may get repealed but no damages) or is it better to go to the national court and rely on the directly effective right (no longer possible in the UK but still possible in certain limited circumstances in Northern Ireland) and possibly get damages? By thinking around these questions, the student shows that they can use their legal reasoning to understand not only the theory but also the practical implications of the law.
Essay questions
Essay questions are generally more challenging. First, you need to have something to say about the topic other than the most obvious. Have you read some academic literature on the subject which you can make effective use of? Second, which follows from the first, do you have a ‘thesis’ or argument. This is a major departure from a school essay. This thesis allows you to express something of your own views, to have an opinion about the law and to say something interesting; examiners like this.
So, take a general essay title e.g. ‘The Charter of Fundamental Rights has failed to deliver on its promise of individual rights protection. Discuss’. What do you think? What’s your argument? Avoid ‘on the one hand…on the other’; don’t be ambivalent, take a stance. For instance, your argument might be that you disagree, that the Court (ECJ) has striven to protect individual rights and has done so successfully, but that in so doing has stretched the boundaries of the competence of EU law and brought into question its own legitimacy. This thesis then shapes the essay that follows: e.g. para 1 sets out your argument and how you are going to make that argument. Paras 2 – 6 consider what the Charter says about individual rights, and how the Court has developed the protection of these rights. Use carefully selected examples (e.g. cases like Portuguese judges, WABE, Bauer as compared to Alemo Herron; you don’t need to be comprehensive). Paras 7-9 discuss concerns about ‘competence creep’ and criticism of the Court (perhaps citing the concerns of the Polish and German Constitutional courts); para 10 concludes by summarising what you have done.
Finally, some general points:
Write simple, clear English (if you don’t think you write well, read The Economist for a while)
Use sub-headings
Underline case names
Have evidence/source/citation for each point made
Cite academic literature where appropriate
And remember that examiners are human beings – probably tired ones – so if the exam answer is done by hand, try to make it as legible as you possibly can.
Good luck.
