Who needs the past exam database?
So, you’ve survived your first exam season relatively unscathed. Well guess what, another one is right around the corner. We here at Ultra Vires wish you all the best (unless you are in classes with us). To this end, we have once again created some exam questions to test your legal understanding.
Side effects of doing these questions may include: LP’ing, Frustration, Anger, Confusion, Laughing Fits, and deciding you should have listened to your parents when they told you to go to med school.
Administrative Law:
Hamish and Kathryn claim they were “robbed” at their competitive moots when they did not win. In the absence of written reasons provided by the moot organizers, what standard of review applies to this decision? Additionally, if the standard of review was reasonableness, do Hamish and Kathryn have a reasonable path to overturning this result?
The Law Intramural Dodgeball team alleged that an opposing player crossed the centre line and should have been “out” in their game against the med school. The referee declined to declare the player out. Team Captain Alex has launched a judicial review of this decision and claimed it was procedurally unfair. Under the Baker framework, what degree of procedural fairness attaches to this decision?
Constitutional Law:
John sent an anonymous Candy Gram through the SLS Valentine’s Day initiative. However, an SLS exec told his intended target that it was indeed him who sent it. Was this a violation of John’s s. 8 privacy rights? Consider whether the Charter applies to student government as well as whether candy gram sending is considered part of a biographical core.
IP Law:
In Justice Lauder’s Psycho-Dynamics class, students must write a case study analyzing an appeal court decision through the lens of rhetorical techniques and cognitive bias. A quarter of the class has decided to write about the Supreme Court decision in Bykovets. Now, each student is accusing the others of copying their “totally original” idea. Can Intellectual Property protection flow to a paper idea? If so, would this area of IP law be best served by a first to invent or a first to file system?
A student secretly recorded Professor Stacey’s parody version of “Hamilton” based on the Supreme Court case of Vavilov. After the video was published online, it went viral and Stacey was able to quit to pursue his true passion of musical theatre. However, Lin Manuel Miranda is now suing on the basis of copyright infringement. Is a parody song based on a Canadian Supreme Court case sufficiently transformative to count as fair use? As an added twist, Mr. Vavilov himself is also suing as he alleges Stacey did not get the rights to adapt his life story into a musical rap. How cooked is Stacey?
Competition Law:
The school has discovered a covert scheme by the 1L’s. In response to Paul Kim’s claim that “they can’t fail all of us,” many 1L’s agreed to not study at all for exams in order to make the curve easier. Would this count as an illegal anti-competitive agreement? How can the law surrounding price-fixing be applied to “grade-fixing”?
Tort Law:
A group of law student’s have launched a class action suit against the student who was caught using AI on an open book exam. What tort would be most applicable: intentional infliction of mental suffering, or gross negligence? If neither, could this be a case where the courts establish a new tort such as negligent interference with academic performance?
After seeing the Law Follies sketch making fun of clerking applicants, incoming ONCA clerk Navya Sheth called Follies writers “talentless hacks who wouldn’t know a good comedy sketch if it hit them in the face”. The Follies writers are now suing on the basis of libel. Could the clerks have a defence in proving the truth of the statement? Would the Follies writers be likely to succeed if they played the show for the presiding judge?