[Kathy2]

This class is taught by Professor Flynn and it is REALLY helpful if you plan on going into law school. It's a full year course and it takes a lot of work and effort, but it's actually interesting and fun. Here is the mark breakdown:

Assignments - 30%
December Exam - 30%
Research Paper and Presentation - 40%
OR
Final Exam - 40%

There are 4 assignments, but only your best 3 marks are counted. They are called "hypothetical cases", where you are given a fake case and you have to make the decision as if you are the judge. As long as you go to class, it all comes right out of the notes and it's pretty basic. There are 2 in term 1 and 2 in term 2. You have a choice between the paper/presentation or the final exam. In the end, so many people wanted to do the paper that he decided you didn't have to do a presentation if you didn't want to. We got a list of topics for the paper, and they all related pretty closely to lectures.

In term 1, the lectures are more introductory, and they are focussed on things like administrative law, judges, etc. In term 2, the lectures are about the rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Each week is 3 lectures on a right. The assignments/paper aren't very hard - but you literally can't miss a day of lecture. If you fall behind, it is very difficult to catch up. It's a hard class in terms of lectures and it takes a lot of work, and I don't even plan on going to law school, but I enjoyed it. If you like Flynn, take this class!

Thank you Kathy2. I plan on taking this class and this review really really helped me. (PS> You're talking about the public law course, right? 3nn6?) Thanks!
Are there any required course materials?

Yes, it's 3NN6. I put the course code in the wrong spot, sorry!
There are "required" textbooks, but I never bought them and I never needed them. It was more like supplmentary readings.

Great review! I'm just wondering: were the tutorials mandatory? Also, did this course get a low-medium difficulty rating because you had to keep up with the lectures or was it difficult to obtain a high mark, too? Thanks again!

There were no tutorials, just three hours of lecture per week. The Friday lecture was cancelled a lot of the time. The difficulty level I chose was based on having to go to the lectures and pay close attention - you really can't slack off in class time. It wasn't hard to get a good mark if you went to class and paid attention, because the assignments are pretty easy.

He actually told us that the average for the class in the year before us was C-, and it was the lowest he had ever had in Public Law. I think he said our average was about B or a B-.

I took POLSCI 3NN6 during the 2016/2017 school year. Overall, I enjoyed this course. This is a great course for those interested in going to law school. I took this course because I was interested in going to law school. I took it with two other friends, also interested in law school. By the end of the year, two of us had clearly decided we had no interest in law school, while our other friend was even more interested in law school.

Course content was good, could get dry at times (I think that's expected with law though lol). If you go to class and put effort in to your assignments, you will do well. This isn't an extremely difficult class (homework load was quite low), but you need to keep on top of lecture content.

Assignments were: 3 two-page assignments, a midterm, and a take-home exam.