How to Form Your Own (Legal) Opinion
In this blog post, we will be discussing how a law student can work towards forming her own legal opinion on a particular legal issue or debate.
I have noticed that many law students, especially first-year undergrads, struggle with this. They frequently ask me and their other course leaders: “Professor So-and-so has said everything there is to be said, how do I go beyond that?”. Or: “this Supreme Court ruling is very persuasive, how could anyone argue against it?” etc etc.
If this sounds like you, then please know it is completely normal to feel this way; it’s happening for a reason. You have just entered a brave new world (the study of law) and you find yourselves reading articles and judgments written by experts who have spent decades honing their skills. Of course everything sounds persuasive and every single line of argumentation seems … water-tight!
However, as we have analysed before, in matters of legal argumentation, there is no single, objective, overarching truth. Law is a grey area par excellence. Therefore, there is always room for your … “grey” views too!
The main reason why you find it hard to form your own legal opinion on, say, whether capital punishment should be legal, or on whether e.g. the Sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament was eroded by the UK’s participation in the EU, is that you think you are being asked for an opinion that is … bullet-proof. But this is not the case!
When you are asked to answer an essay question, your law lecturer is not asking you to come up with the "perfect” argument, nor to “defeat” all of the arguments of Lord Whomever; just to contribute to the debate in a way that is logical, reasonable and well-researched. That’s it!
In other words, your law lecturer is not scouring your essay for a killer argument; instead, she is interested in hearing YOUR argument, i.e. your own unique blend of hypotheses, reasoning, selection of primary and secondary sources, all amalgamated by your unique writing style.
So, to conclude: forming your own legal opinion is tough, but not as daunting as many of you seem to think. Keep calm and keep writing!
