Criminal Law Assessment: Concepts, Principles, and Legal Decision-Making

This assessment requires you to answer 1 problem question which is based on the case study and 1 essay question which is based on workshop discussions. Each answer should contain no more than 1500 words, with the overall assessment being no more than 3000 words. Questions will be available in the “Assessment Information” section of the NILE site; you will have 72 hours from the release of the questions to submit your answers.

Subject-Specific Knowledge, Understanding & Application

a)Explain the fundamental concepts and principles of the substantive law governing criminal activity.

b)Utilise the fundamental concepts and principles of the substantive law governing criminal activity and apply these to hypothetial situations.

c)Explore the influence and impact of legal decision-making, in relation to the criminal law, in its social context.

d)Use literature from a prescribed range of sources to develop an evidence based argument. Employability & Changemaker Skills

e)Effectively communicate ideas in a structured and appropriately written format which demonstrates an understanding of the substantive law governing criminal  activity.

Your grade will depend on the extent to which you meet these learning outcomes in the way relevant for this assessment. Please see the grading rubric at the end of this assessment brief for further details of the criteria against which you will be assessed.

Assessment Support

The questions will relate to topics covered during the workshop sessions. There will also be specific assessment support workshops during the final two weeks of the spring term.

Generic Grading Criteria

You will find the generic grading criteria for achievement at  University Grading Criteria.  Also explained here are the meanings of the various G grades at the bottom of the grading scale.

Assessment Submission

To submit your work, please go to the ‘Submit your work’ area on the NILE site and use the relevant submission point to upload your report. The deadline for this is 5pm (UK local time) on the date of submission. Please note that essays and reports must be submitted as word documents and not PDFs. 

Written work submitted to TURNITIN will be subject to anti-plagiarism detection software.  Turnitin checks student work for possible textual matches against internet available resources and its own proprietary database.   

When you upload your work correctly to TURNITIN you will receive a receipt which is your record and proof of submission.  

If your assessment is not submitted to TURNITIN rather than a receipt you will see a green banner at the top of the screen that denotes successful submission.  

N.B Work emailed directly to your tutor will not be marked. The only exception to this is when you are instructed to do so because TURNITIN is down.  

·Ensure that you have read the Assessment Information section of the NILE site and the Assignment Briefing Sheet for this assignment.

·You can choose which question to answer for Part A and then you must answer the question in Part B. You will therefore answer two questions.

When in the hospital, Chris refuses stitches in his leg because the nurse is a woman and “women are completely useless, no woman is going to stitch me up”. He bleeds to death as a result of this refusal.  Benjamin receives treatment for a bruise on his head but suffers from frequent losses of concentration for months after the attack. The doctor says that these may last for the rest of his life.

Benjamin:

“When I saw David groping Gabrielle I lost my temper and went over to give him a piece of my mind. I waved my fist in his face to warn him off and to frighten him. I must have misjudged the distance, however, and my fist hit his nose. Lots of blood came out and I realised I had hurt him. I’m sorry but I was in a temper and I didn’t mean to actually hit him.