Bachelor of Laws (Honours) and Bachelor of Arts

While either Law or Arts can be a fine start to your career, you can enhance your options and professional expertise by combining them in this double degree course.

A feature of the Law component is the large number of specialist units available. Coupled with some 40 Arts majors and minors, you can enhance your study of Law with subjects such as bioethics, criminology, international relations, holocaust or genocide studies, or indulge your passion for the performing arts, language, music or theatre.

You will acquire a solid foundation in the concepts, procedures and reasoning underpinning the Australian legal system and the research, analytical and communication skills of the legal profession. You will also be challenged to think critically and creatively, to resist easy answers or simplistic solutions and to develop an ethical and intellectual framework within which to understand what it means to be human, and how this changes over time.

Double degree courses include the features of the component degree courses, except that electives may be reduced.

Law

L3001 Bachelor of Laws (Honours) course is a specialist course that develops through themes: legal methodology and legal practice; public law; and private law. The specialised knowledge and advanced skills are imparted in later year elective units, including a final year project involving intensive research and writing.

Part A. Legal methodology and legal practice

This theme includes the nature of law, and particularly statute law enacted by Parliaments and common law developed by courts. It also includes the key concepts, principles and methods of research and reasoning that enable lawyers to identify and interpret law and apply it to relevant facts in order to provide legal advice. It covers the law of procedure and evidence that governs judicial proceedings, alternative methods of resolving legal disputes, and the code of ethics that regulates the professional conduct of legal practitioners.

Part B. Public law

Public law includes constitutional law, administrative law and criminal law. It concerns the powers and procedures of the legislative, executive and judicial organs of government, and how they are regulated and controlled by 'the rule of law'. It also concerns the legal relationship between government and individuals, including the protection of the individual rights.

Part C. Private law

Private law deals with legal relationships between legal persons, including corporations as well as individuals. It includes the study of property rights, contractual rights and obligations, wrongs (called 'torts') such as trespass and the negligent infliction of injury, and the law of equity and trusts.

Part D. Extending specialised knowledge and advanced skills: Law electives

In later years of the course, you will be able to choose from a broad range of elective law units. High achieving students may also include one or two Master's units in their final year of study. Elective law units enable you to develop specialised knowledge and advanced skills in areas of law that suit your own interests, skills and career goals. In addition to public and private law, these include international law, commercial law and human rights law. You will have opportunities to study overseas, and to undertake work-based learning, for example, in our legal clinical program and in local and international internships.

Arts

A2000 Bachelor of Arts is a comprehensive course, structured in three equal parts. In the double degree course you complete:

Part A. Arts specified study

This will expose you to several Arts disciplines areas of study contributing breadth to your knowledge of the arts, humanities and social sciences. It will also give you the opportunity to learn about several areas of study before finalising your choice of major and minor.

Part B. Arts listed major

This will provide you with a focused program of study that will develop your practical and theoretical skills and knowledge in one Faculty of Arts listed major area of study. You will learn to critically analyse, apply and communicate an advanced level of understanding of the concepts and theoretical frameworks that constitute the knowledge base of the area of study.

Students must complete 252 points, of which 156 points are from the Bachelor of Laws (Honours) (including all of the requirements in Part A, B, C, and D for the single degree) and 96 points from the Bachelor of Arts (including all of the requirements in Part A and B for the single degree).

The course progression mapcourse progression map (http://www.monash.edu.au/pubs/2016handbooks/maps/map-l3003.pdf) will assist you to plan to meet the course requirements, and guidance on unit enrolment for each semester of study.

Units are six credit points unless otherwise stated.

Students may be eligible to exit the double degree program and graduate with either a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) or a Bachelor of Arts after 4 or 3 years respectively, depending on the units studied.

Students who wish to graduate with a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) prior to the completion of the double degree must have completed at least 204 points of studies, including all of the requirements in Part A, B, C and D for the Bachelor of Laws (Honours) degree. Students who wish to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts prior to the completion of the double degree must have completed at least 144 points of studies, including all of the requirements in Part A and B the Bachelor of Arts degree.