Nature of Law and Legal System overview: the WJEC Unit 1 legal system and the nature of law

This overview maps WJEC A-Level Law Unit 1: The Nature of Law and the Welsh and English Legal System. It is the foundation of the course, covering what law is, how it is made and interpreted, the courts and the people who run them, and the constitutional principles that hold the system together. The dot-point pages below give exam-focused answers with cases and worked questions.

What Unit 1 covers

Unit 1 introduces the legal system of England and Wales and the nature of law itself. The examinable content falls into linked areas:

• The nature of law. The distinction between legal and moral rules, the relationship between law, morality and justice, and the Hart-Devlin debate.
• Law-making. Parliamentary law-making and supremacy, delegated legislation and its controls, statutory interpretation, and judicial precedent.
• The courts and dispute resolution. The civil courts and the track system, alternative dispute resolution and tribunals, and the criminal courts and the classification of offences.
• Legal personnel. The legal profession, the judiciary and judicial independence, lay magistrates and juries.
• Access to justice. Funding, legal aid and its restriction, and the rule of law and law-making in Wales.

The nature of law, morality and justice

The course opens by asking what law is. Legal rules are made and enforced by the state; moral rules are shared, informal standards. The two overlap but are distinct, and the Hart-Devlin debate frames how far the law should enforce morality. Justice, the idea of fairness and giving each person their due, is the goal the legal system aims at but does not always reach.

Law-making

Three mechanisms make and refine the law. Parliament makes primary legislation through a settled legislative process, underpinned by parliamentary supremacy. Delegated legislation lets other bodies make detailed rules under a parent Act, subject to parliamentary and judicial control. The courts both interpret statutes, using the rules of interpretation, and develop the common law through judicial precedent.

The courts, personnel and access to justice

Civil disputes are resolved through the County Court and High Court, the three-track system, and alternative dispute resolution; criminal cases are classified and tried in the Magistrates' Court and Crown Court with their own appeal routes. The system is run by the legal profession, an independent judiciary, and lay people as magistrates and jurors. Access to justice, and the funding that makes it real, ties the unit to the rule of law and to the distinctive Welsh constitutional position.

How to study Unit 1

1. Attach a case or statute to every point. Pepper v Hart, the Practice Statement 1966, LASPO 2012 and the Wales Act 2017 are anchors.
2. Explain and evaluate. Higher marks need analysis (AO2), not just description.
3. Keep the institutions straight. Know which court, which personnel and which procedure applies where.
4. Learn the Welsh dimension. The Senedd and the reserved-powers model are distinctive to WJEC.
5. Practise past questions. Time your answers and reach clear judgements.

The topics, dot point by dot point

Each topic below has its own dot-point page with worked exam questions and cross-links, covering law and morality, the three law-making mechanisms, the civil and criminal courts, legal personnel, access to justice, and the rule of law and Welsh law-making.

For the official specification

WJEC publishes the full specification, past papers and mark schemes at wjec.co.uk. Always revise from the current specification and WJEC's own past papers, because question style and mark schemes are board-specific.