Final Revision: Thinkers, Cases and Exam-Day Strategies

Do the match-the-list questions by elimination: pin down the two items you are sure of; the rest usually follow.

Read 'NOT' and 'INCORRECT' twice; the examiner often uses a minor swap (for example Bentham for Austin, Stammler for Kohler).

For statement questions, look for absolute words ('always', 'only', 'never'); they usually signal a false statement.

Remember who attacks whom: Hart attacks Austin; Dworkin attacks Hart; Fuller attacks Hart; Devlin versus Hart; Rawls versus utilitarians; Pogge and Beitz versus Rawls (on the global level); Habermas versus the postmodernists; Carrington and Fiss versus CLS.

Years matter: Ancient Law 1861; Province 1832; Concept of Law 1961; Theory of Justice 1971; Law's Empire 1986; Development as Freedom 1999; Idea of Justice 2009; Declaration on the Right to Development 1986; SDGs 2015.

Indian cases are favoured in applied questions: know the one-line holding of each landmark case, including whether it was later overruled or stayed.

Distinguish similar concepts: ownership versus possession; right versus privilege (Hohfeld); fiction versus concession versus realist theory; strict versus absolute liability; legal versus moral duty.

Use the schools' 'five questions' (nature, source of authority, law and morality, law and society, who finds the law) to place any unfamiliar proposition.

Where news is involved (rivers, animals, EWS, privacy, climate), recall the court, year and outcome and any subsequent stay or reversal.

Never leave a question blank, since there is no negative marking.