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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 38, Number 26. 1975

Aims of the method

Aims of the method

It is claimed that "Socratic teaching is time consuming for both the student and the lecturer of both class and private time. Thus it is a poor method of 'covering an area of law. The University of Chicago estimates that a student would spend approximately 3 hours of self-study for every class hour. In a typical second year course at V U.W. if the socratic method was used for all courses, all the time this would involve students in about forty hours work per week. However, socratic method is not used all the time and students do not spend three hours preparing for each class hour. It is not the aim of the method "to cover an area of law.' There are excellent texts available to those who want to know it all. Professor Rheinstein explains the purpose of case method thus:

"Rules and principles inductively discovered by the students throuth their own efforts (means) more to them than ready made formulas memorized from texts.....(T) he method (is) more than a device to familiarize students with the law's rules and principles. It is a superb device to teach them the peculiar ways of legal thinking it induces them first of all to pay careful attention to the facts ... to separate the legally relevant from the irrelevant It (compels) them to follow and scrutize lines of argument of the parties litigant... These lines of argument have to be analysed and criticised."

In short it teaches students to think for themselves. The aim of teaching "the law" is no longer attainable. The vastly increased volume of law due to the regulation of social problems hitherto given little attention has led to new fields of law - administrative, industrial planning, tax, commerce which have little similarity in content, except a set of common principles, traditions and thinking. Teach the method of thinking, show the development of the principles and you provide the key to understanding and working the law in a given area. The body of New Zealand law is a vast and complicated object No single mind could "know it" or "learn it.'