Law - OU Community Online

The impact of the law on family life and relationships is examined in a new 30-credit undergraduate module starting this November.

Relationships, families and the law (W224) looks at the law in England and Wales surrounding modern relationships through the use of case studies, such as those of two fictional couples: Jenny and Ben, and Amy and Jacques. These will trace significant life events for the couples when they live together, have children, separate, form new households and experience other changes.

Phil Bates, chair of the module team, said: “There are legal aspects to all of our personal relationships, including unmarried relationships and extended families, as well as marriage and parenthood. Sometimes people are only aware of these legal issues when the relationships end, as a result of divorce, parental separation or the death of a family member.

“In this course, we trace the development of relationships through the case studies, examining the legal issues as they arise, and seeing how the law of England and Wales deals with them.”

The five-month level two module is aimed predominantly at students studying for their LLB but is also of relevance to anyone interested in social work, social policy, health care or family finance.

Students will also consider the law relating to unmarried and married couples, same-sex relationships, extended families and children. Tax, family property and inheritance are also covered in the course. Units within the module include: living together, children and parental responsibility, domestic abuse, separation and divorce, and children and parental separation.

The closing date for registration is 14 Cctober 2010. Click here for more details. 
   




 

In 2009 researcher Daniel Bennett sued Leeds University for throwing out what may have been “the largest collection of lizard faeces anywhere in the world”. Bennett said he had amassed the droppings over seven years of jungle field trips.

Meanwhile in Poland, a mother was suing an Egyptian hotel company for causing her 13-year-old daughter’s pregnancy. She claimed the girl had received a “stray sperm” while swimming in the hotel pool.

It’s hard to find a better demonstration of the “truth is stranger than fiction” proposition than Weird Cases, a collection of funny and bizarre turned into a book by Open University Law Professor Gary Slapper. It’s based on the weekly column of the same name which he’s been writing for Times Online since 2007.

The cases, all taken from real life, are divided into themes which include Love and Sex; Food, Drink and Drugs;  Death and Violence; and Pets and Animals. To get some idea of the diversity of the content, you can simply browse the index and ponder entries such as ‘Violence, fruit, with’ and ‘wife auctioned on internet’.

Although it’s hardly a legal textbook, Weird Cases does some feature landmark cases – the Carbolic Smoke Ball, for example – as well as many less distinguished ones. ¬ And it throws a little light on the way laws and principles of justice can be applied in all sorts of situations that were almost certainly never envisaged by their originators. Read on…

• In 2009 buskers James Ryan and Andrew Cave were given ASBOs at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court for playing the same two songs night after night.
• In a child custody hearing in New Zealand, the judge decided the parents were guilty of “a form of abuse” for naming their daughter “Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii”.
• At Luton magistrates’ court, a magistrate’s musical novelty tie switched on just as he was on the point of passing sentence. When his tie had ceased playing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, the magistrate jailed the defendant for four months.
• Three Italian nuns caught speeding at 112 mph said in their defence that they were racing to offer help and prayers to the Pope, who had slipped in his bathroom and broken his wrist.
• The first person in Britain  prosecuted for speeding was the pioneer of the petrol-engine car, Walter Arnold. On 27 January 1896 he was caught doing 8 mph, four times over the legal limit, by a policeman who pursued him on foot. He was fined one shilling.
• In Sydney, in 2008, a major drug conspiracy case which ran for 66 days and cost around one million Australian dollars, was aborted when the judge discovered five jurors had been playing Sudoku during the proceedings.
• The British government conducted two years of global litigation to try and ban Spycatcher, the memoirs of former secret agent Peter Wright. The result was that a book later described by one law lord as “a literary work of almost unparalleled tedium and banality” became a best seller in many countries.

Weird Cases: Comic and Bizarre cases from courtrooms around the world by Gary Slapper is published by Wildy Simmonds & Hill Publishing and available on Amazon.