Perhaps you're an aspiring lawyer, maybe you did well in stage 5 commerce, or it's possible you've spend a few too many hours binge watching your favourite legal dramas. For whatever reason, you have picked one of the most content-heavy but most interesting HSC subject offered.
As you may know, there are two option topics that your school will focus on for two 25 marker essays. These are: Consumer; Family; Workplace; Global Environmental Protection; Indigenous People; Shelter; and World Order. No matter what topic you have been forced upon we have got you covered!
The focus of this blog is information regarding family essay in particular. You will discuss some interesting topics such as divorce, child custody disputes, the development of marriage and more. It is important to have gathered enough legislature, cases (precedent or otherwise important current ones), current articles and statistics to make sure you have a well rounded essay for the full 25/25. You also need to ensure you have enough range of knowledge on each dot point in the syllabus as NESA can ask a question on any niche dot point they desire. Typically for these option topics you get a choice between two questions for each topic which makes it a little bit easier for you but it is still better to be extra prepared!
An example paragraph structure could be as follows:
Question: Legal responses are more effective than non-legal responses in achieving justice.’ To what extent is this statement true in relation to families? (HSC 2022)
Structure: For your thesis it is typically a better approach to 'moderately agree/disagree' or 'somewhat agree/disagree' than outright agree or disagree because there is always a side of both and markers typically prefer a balanced argument. For those with more skilled writing and understanding of their content you could even create a relationship in your argument such as "it is less about legal responses being more effective than non-legal responses in achieving justice but rather the need for non-legal responses to assist when legal responses begin to fall short of achieving justice". It is also important to remember in legal studies we are often talking about the rights of society, victim and offender and how we can balance them so this is important to keep in mind when answering questions and analysing quotes. In your introduction, with a non-specific question like this you would specify what topics you are going to discuss. For example; contemporary issues for child care and protection and domestic violence.
For a question like this it is probably easier to either structure your paragraphs as legal responses and non-legal responses or you can do one paragraph on your first theme (contemporary issues for child care and protection) and discuses both legal and non-legal and one paragraph on your second theme (domestic violence) and discuss both sides, commenting on their effectiveness inside your paragraph.
Example Point:
The ineffectiveness of legal responses in achieving justice for victims is clear through the case of Andrea Patrick (1992), Andrea had an Apprehended Violence Order on her boyfriend however when she complained of him stalking and intimidating her this didn't directly breach his AVO and thus he ended up killing her. The outrage from this caused reform to the Crimes (Domestic Violence) Act 1993 (NSW) which introduced stalking and intimidation as a part of domestic violence. This was an attempt of the legal system in achieving justice for victims.
Through this one case we see how there is argument for both effectiveness and ineffectiveness of the legal response. You can use this piece of evidence to discuss both sides at once in the paragraph or to support your response for either side (effective or ineffective).
You can use a simple PEAL structure for your paragraph or you can be a bit more fluid and just have a lot of legislature, cases, articles and statistics up your sleeve that you can use at any point during your essay depending on the question.