ICLTE: Sources of Law and Core Legal Concepts

What the domain tests

Sources of Law and Core Legal Concepts tests hierarchy, authority and the building blocks that make a provision operative. You must identify whether a text is constitutional, statutory, regulatory, treaty-based, judicial or customary, and translate concepts such as jurisdiction, legal person, burden of proof and ratio decidendi without collapsing distinct ideas.

Core rules

• Hierarchy matters: constitution > statute > regulation > administrative guidance, subject to treaty and supranational rules such as EU law.
• An EU regulation is directly applicable; a directive binds as to result and requires transposition. Do not translate both as regulation.
• Ratio decidendi binds later courts in common law; obiter dicta does not.
• Burden of proof is who must prove; standard of proof is how convincing the evidence must be. Keep them separate.
• Jurisdiction can mean a court's authority, a territory or a legal system. Select from collocation.

Worked example

Source: The directive was transposed into national law by ministerial regulation. Reasoning: directive is an EU instrument requiring member-state implementation; regulation here is a domestic subordinate instrument, not the EU instrument. Translate directive with the EU term and ministerial regulation as a subordinate administrative measure. A blanket rendering as regulation would erase the hierarchy and the implementation relationship.

Traps

Equating statute with loi in every system; loi may include codes and constitutional statutes. Translating regulation as règlement without checking EU versus domestic sense. Rendering res judicata as double jeopardy - one is finality of judgment, the other is repeated criminal prosecution. Do not turn may into must when restating a source.