Legal Studies

Subject Description

The law is intended to facilitate fairness, justice, and harmony within communities. Legal Studies enables an understanding of the operation of the Australian legal system, its principles, and processes, and prepares students to be informed and articulate in matters of the law and society. Central to Legal Studies is an exploration of the competing tensions that arise between rights and responsibilities, fairness, and efficiency, the empowered and the disempowered, and certainty and flexibility. Laws must constantly evolve to resolve these tensions, while also responding to changes in community values and circumstances.

Through Legal Studies, students examine how people, governments and institutions shape the law and how law controls, shapes, and regulates interactions between people, institutions, and government. Students develop an understanding of the ways in which they can influence democratic processes, the importance of critical and conceptual thinking, and the significance of checks and balances in providing lawful mechanisms to control the exercise of power.