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PLA 3013 SYLLABUS
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Assignment Due Dates

'SILLYBUS' by Tess Pyle
This is the bus station and you can travel from here to most of the pages in this website, particularly for assignments.

If you want to test your Legal Cultural Literacy for fun, run through the slides on famous cases

Course Overview

For more information on requirements for online courses check out the UCF Distributed Learning pages.

"OVERVIEW" is the appropriate label for this course. It is designed to introduce students to American law and the American legal system and the critical thinking necessary to understand them both.

CATALOG DESCRIPTION:

PLA 3013: Law and the Legal System: A survey course designed to familiarize the student with the American legal system, ethical considerations, terminology, legal reasoning, and the role of the legal assistant.

That's the official description. It was made up 20 years ago when this was basically an introduction to a paralegal program. Today the Legal Studies Program has a more liberal arts component complementing the large number of pre-law students who have enrolled in our program.

Course Objectives:

Like other introductory courses, it is the gateway to more advanced courses. Unlike some other fields, however, law can be understood in its basic features with the acquisition of the language of the law combined with a grasp of legal reasoning and legal procedure.

Successful completion of this course should allow students to read and understand all but the most specialized of legal materials and be able to make intelligent evaluations of the reports and claims of legal events reported in the media.

To This End, the following work will be stressed:

Vocabulary: You must learn the basic terms of the law
Critical thinking: Law is much more than a body of rules. The study of law relies heavily on the students's ability to read critically and evaluate what has been read.
Reading Cases: Understanding American law reading skills
Themes: There are certain fundamental features underlying American law

THE INSTRUCTOR:

Ransford C. Pyle, A.B. (Harvard); J.D. (Florida); Ph.D. (Florida).

• Admitted to Georgia and Florida bars.
  Associate Professor.
  Taught at UCF since 1976.
  Author of two legal texts:
  Foundations of Law
  Family Law

For a more interesting version, see my UCF personal home page.

THE METAPHOR: Law as a Jigsaw Puzzle

In many of my classes, I have introduced the subject of law in the first class with a metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle. We begin by encountering a bunch of pieces that seem not to have any relation to each other. The better we understand the pieces, and the more pieces we acquire, the clearer the picture of the law becomes. My point is that the study of law does not logically proceed from one point to another. We cannot really say that we should start by learning Property or Contracts, or that Civil Procedure should be taught before Torts. I deal with system and process first, but I could certainly understand why another teacher would choose the immediacy of substantive areas like criminal law, torts, and contracts because students can relate them to real-life experiences.

The study of law requires an act of faith. Study long and hard and you will understand. And for most the law will turn out to be something quite different than what they thought it would be. Get to know the pieces of the puzzle.

THEMES

Four themes will be emphasized during the course. While these are presented at the outset, they, and their accompanying queries will be addressed throughout the course. They represent fundamental features of American law and will by the subject of presentations and/or papers later in the course. Try to keep these in mind. They may help to focus on the significance of the detail. They are, in a sense, the final picture of the completed puzzle.

Required Texts

• Pyle, Foundations of Law, 2nd Ed
• You will note that the test, Foundations of Law, was written by me (Ransford C. Pyle). I have taught Law and Legal System at UCF for 24 years and based the text on what I felt students need to know to get started in learning about the law.

The guiding purpose in writing the book was to include enough material to get a basic understanding of American law without becoming embroiled in the great detail that the study of law usually entails.

While the book attempts to be as clear as possible, inevitably some concepts are difficult and I encourage you to ask for clarification of points that you do not understand.

The text is divided into two important parts in each chapter. I start off with comments and explanations of topics pertinent to each chapter. Interspersed with the comments are cases. In this instance, the cases are condensed versions of judicial decisions written by judges in deciding cases. In most instances these are appellate decisions, meaning that they are not trial court, that is, lower court, decisions, but come from courts of appeals and supreme courts, both state and federal. This means that one of the parties was not content with the decision at trial and has appealed the lower court's decision to a higher court. In our system, judicial decisions are consulted when making new decisions and the case method is the primary focus of law school training.

Grading

I.  REQUIRED WORK: ASSIGNMENTS

A. Weekly vocabulary quizzes on reading assignment

The quizzes require students to enter a word or words in a box after a definition or statement calling for the word.  Misspellings will be counted wrong.  The quiz is open book and untimed, so very few incorrect answers are anticipated.  Answers are due on Friday of the week the chapter is assigned, e.g., chapter quiz for Chaps 1&2 is due January 20.  One point will be taken for each incorrect answer and later quizzes will lose additional points, i.e., wrong answers will be cumulated and deducted from 150 point maximum score.  Max points = 100 (10%)

B. Forum Participation

Login: your initials plus the last five digits of your Student ID#
(i.e. Chris Martin Simms, Student Id# 123-45-6789 would be: cms56789)
Password: the first 4 digits of your Student Id#.

Max points = 100 (10%).

C. Case Briefs/Critical Thinking

A technique called 'case briefing' will be taught over the course of the first five weeks.  These may be done at a faster pace if desired.  The purpose of these 'exercises' is to teach a method of reading, analyzing, and recording cases (judicial opinions, see Theme #1, 'Stare Decisis').  They are designed to teach critical thinking so that students can read and evaluate legal materials and reports about law and legal events from non-legal sources.

During the final weeks of the term, students will brief cases from the book.  The exercises are for self-assessment and will be credited for completion rather than accuracy (full credit for doing the exercise, regardless of score).  Max points = 200 (20%)

D. Themes

Four themes have been chosen of overriding importance in American law.  They should be read (go to themes.html) at the beginning of the term and kept in mind during the remainder of the semester.  Each student must submit a brief answer to the 'Query' associated with each theme.  The expectation is that each answer would fill a normal letter size page, double spaced.  The purpose of this assignment is simply to make each student think in general terms about the legal system and demonstrate a basic understanding of these basic themes.  Max points = 100 (10%)

E. Midterm Exam: Max points = 250 (25%)

F. Final Exam (non-cumulative): Max points = 250 (25%)

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