成人大片

Lectures and Seminars will be delivered by Michaela Okninski and guest lecturers arranged by the course co-ordinator

On successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

1. Demonstrate an in-depth understanding of key medico-legal principles relating to decision making in medical law, especially end-of-life law;

2. Demonstrate an in-depth understanding of, and explain the key legal differences between, end-of-life practices in Australia, including the right to refuse medical treatment, the doctrine of double effect, withholding and withdrawing life sustaining measures and voluntary assisted dying;

3. Develop an in-depth understanding of voluntary assisted dying legislation in selected overseas jurisdictions including, the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada and selected jurisdictions in the USA.

4. Identify and critique complex legal and ethical issues that arise in the area of voluntary assisted dying and apply primary and secondary sources of law to resolve complex legal issues that arise at end-of-life;

5. Communicate effectively individually and as part of a team. Work in collaboration with others to solve complex legal problems, and engage with team members in an ethical and professional manner.

6. Refine essential skills required for legal practice, including legal research, critical thinking, identifying legal issues in a fact pattern, applying relevant law to the facts and written communication through undertaking group and individual assessments.

The required resources for this course will consist of a combination of both primary and secondary sources of law and will be selected by the topic co-ordinator. A complete list of the required resourses will be made available on MyUni closer to the commencement of Semester 2, 2022.

Australian Guide to Legal Citation, (Melbourne University Law Review Association Inc, 4th ed, 2018)

End of Life Law in Australia, Queensland University of Technology (17 September 2021) dditional recommended resources TBC

MyUni will be used to post announcements, post additional lecture materials (including slides, and where available, audio recordings of lectures) and announce assignment tasks. It will also contain electronic copies of the Course Outline, Lecture and Seminar Guides, and
Course Materials.
Students are expected to check MyUni regularly to keep up to date with these materials and additional learning resources throughout the course.

This course will be taught through lectures supported by interactive problem-solving seminars and practical exercises aimed at developing important foundational legal skills necessary for professional legal practice.

Contact time: Contact time for this course will be one 2-hour lecture weekly and one 2-hour seminar fortnightly. This amounts to 36 hours of formal class time across the semester.

Preparation time: In addition to attending formal classes it is anticipated that students will do substantial independent work to prepare for classes and to complete the course assignments. The University expects full time students (those undertaking 12 units per semester) to devote a total of 48 hours per week to their studies.

Week 1 Introduction to End of Life Law Ethical Arguments surrounding Voluntary Assisted Dying	Lecture 1
Week 2 Existing Lawful End-of-Life Practices	Lecture 2 and Seminar 1
Week 3 Reimagining Death - The Intentional Taking of Life	Lecture 3
Week 4 Introduction to Voluntary Assisted Dying Law in Australia	Lecture 4 and Seminar 2
Week 5 Voluntary Assisted Dying in Overseas Jurisdictions - Part I: Introduction Skills Development - Legal Writing	Lecture 5
Week 6 Voluntary Assisted Dying in Overseas Jurisdictions - Part II: Drawing Comparisons	Lecture 6 and Seminar 3
Week 7 Voluntary Assisted Dying in Overseas Jurisdictions - Part III: Ethical Issues Skills Development - Legal research	Lecture 7
Week 8 Pushing the Boundaries - Voluntary Assisted Dying for Minors, and Persons with Psychiatric Illness	Lecture 8 and Seminar 4
Week 9 Guest Lecturer I - TBC Guest Lecturer II - TBC	Lecture 9
Week 10 Voluntary Assisted Dying and Organ Donation	Lecture 10 and Seminar 5
Week 11 Ethical Implications for the Medical Profession	Lecture 11
Week 12 Revision Lecture	Lecture 12 and Seminar 6

There are no additional requirements for completion of this course other than described elsewhere in this document.

Assessment item	% of final mark	Dates	Length	Individual or Group Activity?	Redeemable in exam?	Learning Outcomes
Written Assignment	30%	Friday of Week 6	2, 000	Group, Summative	No	1, 2, 5, 6
Research Essay	60%	Friday of Week 13	4, 000	Individual, Summative	No	1-4, 6
Online Quiz	10%	Friday of Week 12	2 Hours	Individual, Summative	No	1-3, 6

Students are expected to attend all 6 seminars for this course. The achievement of course learning ourcomes is substantially dependent on seminar attendance.

1. Written Assignment – Group Assessment (30%)

This assignment requires students to respond to a problem-based question. This is a group assessment, with students completing their work in groups of 2 or 3. Groups will be assigned at the beginning of the semester.

Dr X, a medical practitioner, has contacted his insurer– Indemnify-a-Doc – for advice concerning a problematic patient who wants to make a request for VAD. Students - medico-legal solicitors - will be required to draft a letter of advice to Dr X, identifying the legal issues that arise in the fact pattern and applying relevant legal principles covered in weeks 1 – 4.

Students who fail to contribute to the group work assignment will be penalised 10 marks, deducted from the overall mark awarded for the group assignment. For instance, if the group receives a grade of 75% for the group work assignment, the student who fails to contribute will receive 65% for the assignment.

2, 000 words maximum, excluding footnotes and headings.

Written work must comply with the Australian Guide to Legal Citation, 4th Edition.

Late Submission Penalties

When an assessment is submitted after the due date, without an extension, 5% of the total mark possible will be deducted for every 24 hours or part thereof that it is late, including each day on a weekend and public holidays. For example, an essay that is submitted after the due date but within the first 24 hour period, and that has been graded at 63%, will have 5% deducted, for a final grade of 58%. An essay that is more than 24 hours late will lose 10%, etc.

Word Length Penalties

5% of the total mark possible for a written assessment will be deducted for every 100 words (or part thereof) by which it exceeds a stipulated word limit. For example, a 3,000 word essay graded at 63% will have 5% deducted if it is between 3,001 and 3,100 words long for a final mark of 58%. If the essay is between 3,101 and 3,200 words long, 10% will be deducted for a final mark of 53%, etc. Word limits include all words in the text, in headings, in quotations, and citations in footnotes. Any separate cover page, table of contents, bibliography or list of sources is excluded from the word limit. If the word limit is misstated, this may be regarded as academic dishonesty.

2. Research Essay – individual Assessment (60%)

This assignment requires students to select a specified research question to address in essay form. The word length is 4, 000 including footnotes, bibliography, appendices, headings and quotations. The research questions will be drawn from content taught throughout the course.

This piece of summative assessment aims to develop student’s critical analysis, research and written communication skills. Students will be required to undertake independent research on their selected topic – i.e. using legal and academic databases and the law library – to locate authoritative primary and secondary sources of law. This research assignment must be submitted in essay style – continuous prose – with an introduction, body and conclusion, adhering to grammatical rules and correct spelling.

Written work must comply with the Australian Guide to Legal Citation, 4th Edition.

Late Submission Penalties

When an assessment is submitted after the due date, without an extension, 5% of the total mark possible will be deducted for every 24 hours or part thereof that it is late, including each day on a weekend and public holidays. For example, an essay that is submitted after the due date but within the first 24 hour period, and that has been graded at 63%, will have 5% deducted, for a final grade of 58%. An essay that is more than 24 hours late will lose 10%, etc.

Word Length Penalties
5% of the total mark possible for a written assessment will be deducted for every 100
words (or part thereof) by which it exceeds a stipulated word limit. For example, a 3,000 word essay graded at 63% will have 5% deducted if it is between 3,001 and 3,100 words long for a final mark of 58%. If the essay is between 3,101 and 3,200 words long, 10% will be deducted for a final mark of 53%, etc. Word limits include all words in the text, in headings, in quotations, and citations in footnotes. Any separate cover page, table of contents, bibliography or list of sources is excluded from the word limit. If the word limit is misstated, this may be regarded as academic dishonesty.

3. Online Quiz – Individual Assessment (10%)

This multiple choice online quiz will cover all topics in the course and will consist of 20 questions.

Students receive the mark they earn from the answers they submit.

The quiz can only be attempted once. Once the quiz has been submitted, the submission is final and students cannot gain access to the quiz to change thier answers.

The order of questions presented, and answer choices presented within each question, is ramdomised.

Students must retain a copy of all assignments submitted.

All assignments in this course are to be submitted electronically through Turnitin. All assessments will be submitted and monitored through text or code comparative software (e.g. Turnitin) where possible.

Details for electronic submission through Turnitin will be provided with the assignment
instructions.

All written work in the Law school is required to comply with the approved Law School style guide, The Australian Guide to Legal Citation.

Extensions: Requests for extensions must be made electronically according to law school policy. Extensions will be granted only for unexpected illness, hardship or on compassionate grounds in accordance with University Policy. Work commitments, travel, holidays or sporting engagements are not unexpected circumstances.

Turnaround time: The interim assignment for this course will be returned to students within 2 – 4 weeks of the submission date. Group feedback, together with written, individual feedback will be provided, which students can learn from in the final assignment.

Finality of Assessment Grades

Students are advised that Course Coordinators will not enter into negotiations of any kind with any student regarding changes to their grades. It is irrelevant, in any given circumstance, that only a minimal number of additional marks are required to inflate a student’s grade for any individual assessment item or course as a whole. Pursuant to the University’s Assessment for Coursework Programs Policyand the Adelaide Law School Assessment Policies and Procedures, grades may only be varied through the appropriate channels for academic review (such as an official re-mark).

Moderation

In accordance with the University’s Assessment for Coursework Programs Policy, course coordinators ‘ensure that appropriate marking guidelines and cross-marking moderation processes across markers are in place’ in each course. Procedures adopted by Adelaide Law School to ensure consistency of marking in courses with multiple markers include:

• assurance of the qualifications of markers, and their knowledge of the content covered in each course;
• detailed marking guidelines and assessment rubrics to assist in the marking of items of assessment;
• sharing of example marked assessments at various grade bands across markers;
• reviewing of selected marked assessments from each marker by the course coordinator;
• comparison of the marks and their distribution across markers;
• automatic double-marking of all interim assessment receiving a fail grade, and of final assessments where a student’s overall result is a fail grade;
• the availability of re-marking of assessments in accordance with Adelaide Law School’s Assessment Policies and Procedures.

Approval of Results by Board of Examiners

Students are reminded that all assessment results are subject to approval (and possible moderation/change) by the Law School’s Board of Examiners. Assessment results at the University are not scaled. Under the Assessment for Coursework Programs Policy, students are assessed ‘by reference to their performance against pre-determined criteria and standards … and not by ranking against the performance of the student cohort in the course’. However, under that same policy, the Board of Examiners (as the relevant Assessment Review Committee for courses at Adelaide Law School) is required to ‘ensure comparability of standards and consistency’ in assessment. On occasions, the Board of Examiners will form the view that some moderation is required to ensure the comparability of standards and consistency across courses and years, and accordingly provide fairness to all law students. All assessment results are therefore subject to approval (and possible change) until confirmed by the Board of Examiners and posted on Access Adelaide at the end of each semester.

The course is constantly being updated and revised to reflect the evolution of the law, to respond to student feedback, and to engage with the latest teaching practices. Student feedback is collected each time the course is run, including through SELT reports. Previous SELT reports, and staff feedback on them, are posted on the course MyUni site for students to view and consider.

The provides academic learning and language development services and resources for local, international, undergraduate and postgraduate coursework students enrolled at the 成人大片.

The centre offers practical advice and strategies for students to master reading, writing, note-taking, time management, oral presentation skills, referencing techniques and exam preparation for success at university through seminars, workshops and individual consultations.

Lex Salus Program

Lex Salus (law and wellbeing) is an initiative of the Adelaide Law School aimed at destigmatising mental health issues; promoting physical, mental and emotional wellness; building a strong community of staff and students; and celebrating diversity within the school. It also seeks to promote wellness within the legal profession, through the involvement of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia, the Honourable Chris Kourakis, as the official Patron of the program.

Students can participate in the Lex Salus program by attending barbecue lunches, pancake breakfasts, knitting and crochet circles, seminars, guest speakers, conferences and other activities. Our , and regular all-student emails promote upcoming events, and have tips and information on wellness.

Our Lex Salus YouTube channel also includes videos on topics like managing stress, and interviews with LGBTQ lawyers and their supporters which celebrate diversity and individuality. Students who commit to 10 hours of volunteering with Lex Salus in one year can have their service recognised on their academic transcript and through a thank you morning tea with the Chief Justice and law school staff.

Student Life Counselling Support

The University’s service provides free and confidential service to all enrolled students. We encourage you to contact the Student Life Counselling Support service on 8313 5663 to make an appointment to deal with any issues that may be affecting your study and life.

Academic Integrity

All students must be familiar with the University’s Academic Integrity Policy. Academic Misconduct is a serious matter and is treated as such by the Law School and the University. Academic Misconduct (which goes beyond plagiarism) can be a ground for a refusal by the Supreme Court of South Australia to admit a person to practice as a legal practitioner in South Australia. Academic Integrity is an essential aspect of ethical and honest behaviour, which is central to the practice of the law and an understanding of what it is to be a lawyer.