Selecting the relevant law

At the planning stage, step two requires you to select the law which is relevant to the issues identified at stage one. At the writing stage, this is made explicit when you state the law you have selected to support the legal claims and defences you have identified.

The principal authorities in English law (and other common law jurisdictions) are statutes, delegated legislation, and case law, although in many subjects it will also be necessary to ask whether there are any relevant provisions of EU law or of the European Convention on Human Rights as made relevant to the English legal system by the Human Rights Act 1998. (The EU dimension and the impact of the European Convention on Human Rights, together with the Human Rights Act, are discussed in Chapters 2 and 5, respectively.) It is important to bear in mind the weight of the various authorities (in terms of the level of court) when selecting the law to support your arguments. Remember that no court can quash primary legislation, and persuasive authorities (for example, cases decided by the Privy Council or the High Court of Australia) might influence a court to follow a particular line of reasoning but do not bind it to do so.