Thud

[major_clanger]

...As papersky would put it. Two 1000-word essays for my OU course: one on the development of the relationship between the UK courts and European law; the other on the background to, and effects of, the Human Rights Act.

1000 words is not much, and it's considerably more effort to write two essays that length than a single one of 2000 words. The OU's advice was that this course should take about 16 hours per week of effort, with each TMA (i.e. both essays together) taking perhaps 4 hours. Well, I find that my weekly study is more like 10-12 hours - I read, and assimilate, fairly quickly - but each essay took me easily 5-6 hours to plan, write and then edit to length. Fortunately, years of practice mean that I even though I draft essays and papers in note form, I know roughly what the notes for 1000 words should look like. However, the end result always comes out long and then it's a case of revising my slightly wordy prose into something a little more concise.

Oh, and doing that down to a set word limit is made a bit more complex by the rules for wordcount for legal assignments: case citations don't count, and there tend to be a lot of quite long ones to mention when writing about EC law - Van Gend en Loos v Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen (Case 26/62) [1963] ECR 1, for instance.

But, all done now. Well, all except printing out, proof-reading for the silly mistakes invisible on screen, printing again and posting off. Fortunately my tutor seems to mark quickly so I should have the results back in a week or so.

MC

Comments

[feorag.livejournal.com]

The university department I was at strongly encouraged concise essays, which was both a relief and a challenge. As I'd been doing newsy journalism stuff beforehand, I had great trouble writing to length because I'd just put down the stuff that mattered, and didn't waffle. Fortunately, the lecturers seemed to appreciate it.

It could be worse, you know - they could make you read out "Van Gend en Loos v Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen".

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough, everyone refers to that case - which happens to be one of the most important in EC legal history - just as 'Van Gend'. I wonder why.

(Why is it important? Until then, everyone assumed that the EC Treaty just applied to member nations - France could take Germany to the European Court of Justice for infringing one of the articles of the Treaty, but Herr Schmidt couldn't. In Van Gend the ECJ decided that you could interpret the Treaty such that it could be relied on by individuals. Later ECJ decisions extended that to EC Regulations and (to a lesser extent) Directives, widened the scope of this 'direct effect' and precluded member states from passing laws to get around EC legislation. But the direct influence of EC law in citizen's lives started with Van Gend.)

MC

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Ah, it's the horizontal efect case.. I didn't actually know the name, I'm ashamed to admit..

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

I'd quite like to see the HRA one - you should post it!

Your OU course is sounding quite well planned so far..

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

I'll see if I can post it in a couple of day's time, after the submission deadline. Not that I think any of my fellow students would see it (I could Friend-only it) but if I'm going to have glaring errors pointed out, best for me if it's Officially Too Late to fix them!

MC