BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 1 English 1 2022-23 - ATKT 75/25 Question Paper with Solutions

The speaker is Gratiano, Bassanio's friend, in the trial scene of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (Act IV, Scene i). Shylock is whetting his knife on the sole of his shoe, and has just answered Bassanio's question about why he does it so earnestly by saying, "To cut the forfeiture from that bankrupt there."

The pun is on "sole" and "soul", two words identical in sound and opposite in meaning. "Sole" is the leather under Shylock's shoe, on which the blade is being sharpened; "soul" is his spirit. Gratiano's point is that the knife is not being given its edge by the leather at all but by the man's own hardness of soul.

The judge is Mr Justice Stareleigh, called "the little judge" because Dickens describes him as a very short and very stout man who seemed all face and waistcoat. The lady addressed is Mrs Elizabeth Cluppins, Mrs Bardell's friend and neighbour, giving evidence for the plaintiff at the trial of Bardell against Pickwick in Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers.

The speaker is David "Pudd'nhead" Wilson, counsel for the defence at the murder trial in Dawson's Landing, and the writer is Mark Twain, in his novel Pudd'nhead Wilson.

"These men" are the Italian twins, Luigi and Angelo Capello, charged with the murder of Judge York Driscoll. Wilson has just proved that the bloody thumb-print on the knife handle matches neither of them, and he says this, indicating them with a gesture, before adding: "We will now proceed to find the guilty."

Answer: Wilson muttered to himself that it was no lie to say he was sorry he had to begin with him, miserable dog though he was.

The changes made, and why:

Answer: I was given a stupid answer by Tom.

An equally correct alternative: A stupid answer was given to me by Tom.

The changes made:

1. The verb gave has two objects: me (the indirect object, the person) and a stupid answer (the direct object, the thing). Either may become the subject of the passive, which is why there are two right answers.
2. The verb becomes was given: the simple past of be plus the past participle.
3. The subject Tom moves into a by-phrase.
4. If the thing is made the subject, the person needs the preposition to: "a stupid answer was given to me".
5. The pronoun changes case: me is an object form, and as the subject of the new sentence it becomes I.

Who he is

Jake Brigance is the young lawyer at the centre of John Grisham's A Time to Kill, practising alone in Clanton, Ford County, Mississippi. He defends Carl Lee Hailey, a Black father charged with capital murder for shooting the two men who attacked his ten-year-old daughter Tonya.

His character

1. Young, able and not yet established. A competent trial lawyer in a small town, ambitious, short of money, and without the resources of a firm behind him. Grisham makes his ordinariness part of the point: there is nothing exceptional about him except what he is willing to do.

2. Courageous at enormous personal cost. No other lawyer in Clanton will touch the case. Taking it costs him his house, which is burned down, his family, who leave for his wife's parents, and very nearly his life.

3. Professionally correct under pressure. He advises his client fully and follows his client's decision to refuse a plea and go to trial. He fabricates nothing and misleads the court about nothing.

Who he is

Dr Austin Bond is the detective in Arnold Bennett's short story "Murder!" He is brought into the investigation of the killing of John Franting after the ordinary methods have failed, and he is the man who breaks the case against Lomax Harder, the poet who committed it.

How Bennett presents him

1. As a specialist called in from outside. He arrives with a reputation already made. The point of bringing him in is that the routine inquiry has produced nothing, and everybody expects him to succeed where it did not.

2. As the direct opposite of the murderer. Harder's protection is that nobody can imagine him doing it: he is mild, slight and literary, and every ordinary suspicion slides off him. Bond does not deal in imagining. He deals in what can be observed, and that is precisely why he is a danger to a man whose alibi is other people's assumptions.

His function in the design

Bennett's subject is that violence does not belong to violent-looking people, and Harder very nearly escapes because of it. Dr Austin Bond exists to close that gap: he is the one character who declines to reason from appearances at all. Where the world says "that gentle poet cannot have done it", Bond asks what was cleaned, what was moved and what was bought.

3. The two meet at the close, in the wrong order. At the instant of that resolution the Cop appears, arrests him for loitering, and the magistrate gives him three months. He gets the Cop only once the Anthem has made him no longer want it.

The significance

1. It states the structure. The title is a pairing and the story is the collision of the pair. 2. It sets external law against internal reform, and shows the second to be the stronger and the first the more arbitrary. 3. It carries the irony for which O. Henry is known: real offences ignored, innocence punished. 4. It criticises policing by appearance. A shabby man standing still outside a church at night fits an officer's picture of a vagrant, and that is enough. 5. It is deliberately plain — two ordinary nouns whose weight the reader feels only at the end. 6. The order of the words is itself ironic. The Cop is named first and the Anthem second; in the story the Anthem comes last, and the Cop arrives to undo it.

3. Social and economic democracy, not merely political democracy. His central warning: on 26 January 1950 India would enter "a life of contradictions", equality in politics and inequality in social and economic life, and those denied equality long enough would "blow up the structure of political democracy".

4. Real popular government, not government by periodic consent. In the same broadcast he called a system in which "the function of the people has come to be to vote for their masters and leave them to rule" a travesty of government by the people; what Labour wants is government by the people in name as well as in fact.

5. Democracy as a mode of associated living, "of conjoint communicated experience", rather than as a form of government or a counting of votes.

6. Constitutional morality, which he warned is "not a natural sentiment" in India and must be cultivated, since forms alone will not work.

7. No hero-worship, and no unconstitutional methods. Quoting John Stuart Mill, he warned against laying one's liberties at the feet of a great man: bhakti in religion may be a road to salvation, but in politics it is "a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship".

I am a student of the five-year B.L.S. LL.B. course at ____ Law College, Mumbai. My coursework in Legal Method, Legal Language and Legal Writing has given me a working grounding in legal research, drafting and case analysis. I am familiar with SCC Online and Manupatra, can prepare case briefs, indexes and issue notes, and I completed a four-week internship with Adv. S. Nair at the District Court, Mumbai.

I am particularly interested in in-house practice, which I understand to be different in character from litigation: the work is preventive rather than remedial, and the client is a colleague. If appointed I would be glad to assist with contract review and the maintenance of a contract database, compliance calendars and statutory filings, the drafting of routine agreements and notices under supervision, the co-ordination of external counsel, and the upkeep of the litigation tracker. I am comfortable working across time zones when a matter requires it.

My bio-data is enclosed. I would welcome the opportunity of an interview at a time convenient to you.

Experience: Four weeks with Adv. S. Nair, District Court, Mumbai, 2022.
Skills: Legal research, contract review, drafting, MS Office and document management systems, typing 40 w.p.m.
Languages: English, Hindi, Marathi.
Activities: Moot Court Committee; college law review.
References: Available on request.

Declaration: I hereby declare that the particulars given above are true to the best of my knowledge.

Place: Mumbai
Date: 10 August 2023 Aditi Sharma

The position is as follows. The collection point at the junction of Ranade Road and the internal lane is normally cleared daily by about 8.00 a.m. It was last cleared on 30 July 2023. Refuse from about 120 households and eleven shops has since accumulated, the two municipal bins have overflowed, and waste is now spread across roughly fifteen feet of the footpath and into the carriageway. The monsoon has made it worse: the heap is waterlogged, and drainage at the junction is blocked by it.

The consequences. The stench is continuous and the whole lane is affected. Stray dogs and rodents have scattered the waste further; there has been a marked increase in mosquitoes, and three cases of dengue have been reported in these buildings since 25 July. Children use this footpath to reach the municipal school on Ranade Road and are obliged to walk in the road to pass the heap.

Steps already taken. Complaints were lodged on the MCGM portal on 2 August 2023 (No. 118743) and 6 August 2023 (No. 121004), and the matter was reported to the sanitary inspector by telephone on 8 August. No vehicle has attended.

It can also be the expression of frustration by some people who, in their way, show their hatred for the society and its value. In some cases it could be for drawing attention to themselves or just the desire to see their names permanently written in a prominent place.

One thing is clear that such people are anti-social and uncultured citizens.

Title: Vandalism and the Absence of Belonging

Precis (54 words)

Vandalism is the wilful destruction of art, nature and public property, and it appears everywhere: defaced monuments, slashed seats and scratched names. It is universal, not Indian. Its causes are an absence of any sense of belonging or loyalty to society, frustration expressing itself as hatred of social values, and a wish for notice. Such people are anti-social and uncultured.

How the precis was made

1. The passage runs to about 220 words, so roughly a quarter of it, about 50, is what the question asks for.

Model answer

Welcome Speech

Honourable Chief Guest Smt. ____, respected Principal, respected faculty adviser, members of the Cultural Committee, and my dear friends.

A very good evening to you all.

On behalf of the Cultural Committee of ____ Law College, it is my privilege to welcome you to Aavartan 2023, our annual cultural festival, and it is my particular honour to welcome our Chief Guest.

Our thanks. To our Principal for her constant encouragement; to the faculty adviser who has guided us; to the judges who have given their evening; and to the members of the Committee, who have worked for six weeks to put this together: thank you.

Madam, we know how full a working artist's calendar is, and we are grateful that you have made time to be with us. I now request you to inaugurate Aavartan 2023 and to address the gathering.

Thank you.

The accusation

The charge is old and widely believed: that a lawyer is paid to make the worse case appear the better, defends people known to be guilty, and argues on Monday the opposite of what he argued on Friday. Aristophanes made it; Dickens made it through Serjeant Buzfuz and Dodson and Fogg; Fielding made it through Lawyer Scout; and it is made in every generation since.

Where the accusation gets its force

1. Advocates argue for a side, not for the truth. Counsel is retained to put one case as strongly as it can be put, and does not tell the court what is against his client unless obliged to.

2. Guilty people are defended, which to a layman looks like assisting a lie.

3. Opposite positions on different days. The same advocate may argue strict construction in one matter and liberal construction in the next.

3. Defending the guilty is a constitutional duty. Article 22(1) guarantees every accused the right to be defended by counsel of choice, and Article 39A requires the State to provide legal aid. The advocate does not certify innocence; he compels the State to prove its case. Everyone is entitled to a defence, or nobody is.

4. Technicalities are protections. Limitation, jurisdiction and procedure exist to prevent stale, arbitrary and lawless proceedings, and look like escapes only when they benefit somebody we dislike.

5. The duty to the court outranks the duty to the client. An advocate is an officer of the court first, and that single rule answers the whole charge.

The line that actually matters

The distinction on which everything turns is between presenting a case and asserting a fact. Counsel may say "the prosecution has not proved that my client was present"; counsel may not say "my client was elsewhere" knowing that he was not. The first is argument about the evidence, which is the job. The second is a lie to the court, which is misconduct.

The facts

In John Grisham's A Time to Kill, set in Clanton, Ford County, Mississippi, Carl Lee Hailey's ten-year-old daughter Tonya is attacked and left for dead by two men, who are arrested and brought to the county courthouse. Convinced that an all-white jury will not convict them, and knowing of a recent local case in which such men went free, Carl Lee shoots them in the courthouse stairwell and wounds a deputy. He is charged with capital murder and faces the gas chamber. He asks Jake Brigance, a young white lawyer who had earlier defended his brother, to appear for him.

How Jake helps him obtain justice

1. He takes the case at all. No other lawyer in Clanton will touch it. The cost is enormous: his house is burned down, his wife and daughter leave for her parents' home, his secretary's husband dies after threats, and an attempt is made on his own life. The right to be defended is worth nothing unless some lawyer will bear the cost of providing the defence.

5. He builds a team out of nothing. Against the resources of the State he brings in Lucien Wilbanks, his disbarred former partner, whose knowledge of the county and of Judge Noose is worth more than any textbook; Harry Rex Vonner, who does the investigative work; and Ellen Roark, a law student who researches the insanity defence. He secures Dr W. T. Bass as the psychiatric expert.

6. He survives the collapse of his own expert. Buckley destroys Bass in cross-examination by exposing an old conviction, and the psychiatric evidence goes down with him. The State's expert, Dr Rodeheaver, is credible and unshaken. Jake does not abandon the defence; he shifts the ground to the jury's own moral judgment.

7. He wins it in the closing argument. He asks the jury to close their eyes, and tells them what was done to a small girl, in plain and unsparing terms, without naming her. At the end he asks them to imagine that the child was white. The jury returns a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.

What kind of justice this is

An answer worth full marks must say what sort of justice was obtained, because Grisham is careful about it. The verdict is not a finding that the killing was lawful. What Jake secures is:

What the trial scene inherits

The question asks specifically about the trial scene (Act IV, Scene i of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice), so begin by stating in one paragraph what the two men bring into court with them. Antonio lends money without interest and has, on his own admission, spat upon Shylock's gaberdine, called him dog, and voided his rheum upon his beard on the Rialto, and told him he is as like to do it again. Shylock lends at interest, has been excluded from every other trade, has lost his daughter and his money to Antonio's circle, and holds a bond forfeited by three thousand ducats that Antonio borrowed for Bassanio.

How the conflict is fought in court

1. Shylock stands on the letter, and refuses everything else. He rejects the principal, then twice the sum, then thrice it, and Bassanio's bond for ten times it. Asked why, he answers only that it is his "humour" — a certain loathing he bears Antonio, as some men cannot abide a gaping pig or a harmless necessary cat.

6. Antonio, meanwhile, has stopped fighting. Asked directly by the court whether he has anything to say, he answers "But little; I am armed and well prepared." He calls himself "a tainted wether of the flock, meetest for death", tells Bassanio not to grieve, and asks only to be remembered: "Repent not you that you shall lose your friend, and he repents not that he pays your debt."

7. Bassanio asks the court to bend the law, and is refused. "Wrest once the law to your authority: to do a great right, do a little wrong" is met with "It must not be. There is no power in Venice can alter a decree established."

How it is resolved, and reversed

Portia confirms the bond entirely, praises Shylock's insistence on the letter, and lets the case run until Antonio's bosom is bared and the scales are ready. Then: "Tarry a little; there is something else." The bond gives flesh and not one drop of blood, and an exact pound must be taken, "nor cut thou less nor more", on peril of his life and goods.

The task he faced

Serjeant Buzfuz leads for the plaintiff in Bardell against Pickwick, in Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers, and the first thing to say about his arguments is what he had to work with. There is no evidence of a promise of marriage at all. He has a misunderstood conversation overheard through a door, three reluctant witnesses who saw an embrace, and two notes about food and a warming-pan. Everything he does follows from that poverty.

His arguments, in the order he makes them

1. He opens by discrediting the other side's opening. He tells the jury that they have heard from his learned friend that this is an action for breach of promise with damages laid at £1,500, but that they have not heard the facts — which he will supply and prove "by the unimpeachable female whom I will place in that box before you", smiting the table on the word "box".

6. The serpent. "The serpent was on the watch, the train was laid, the mine was preparing, the sapper and miner was at work." Within three days of the bill going up, "a being, erect upon two legs, and bearing all the outward semblance of a man, and not of a monster", knocked at the door. "This man was Pickwick — Pickwick, the defendant."

7. Abuse of the defendant. He will say little of him, the subject presenting few attractions, and neither he nor the jury being men to delight in the contemplation of "revolting heartlessness, and of systematic villainy". He then tells Mr Pickwick, in open court, that it would have been more decent had he stayed away, and that a counsel discharging his duty is not to be intimidated or bullied — "be his name Pickwick, or Noakes, or Stoakes, or Stiles, or Brown, or Thompson."

8. The one allegation of an actual promise. He says he will prove that on one occasion Mr Pickwick "distinctly and in terms, offered her marriage", having "taken special care that there would be no witness to their solemn contract" — and that three of his own friends, "most unwilling witnesses", found him holding the plaintiff in his arms and soothing her agitation with caresses. Dickens records that this produced a visible impression.

10. The peroration. "My client's hopes and prospects are ruined." The bill is down but there is no tenant; eligible single gentlemen pass and repass but there is no invitation to inquire within; all is gloom and silence in the house, even the voice of the child is hushed, his infant sports disregarded, his "alley tors" and "commoneys" alike neglected. And then Pickwick, three times over: "the ruthless destroyer of this domestic oasis in the desert of Goswell Street — Pickwick, who has choked up the well and thrown ashes on the sward."

Discussion

1. Not one of these is an argument about the promise. They are arguments about the plaintiff's pathos, the defendant's character, and the sinister construction of innocent documents. The single sentence that alleges an actual offer of marriage is asserted, not proved, and is protected in advance by the claim that Pickwick took care there should be no witness.

2. The technique is inversion. The letters are innocent, so their innocence is made the proof of cunning; the placard has no date, so the absence of a date is made suspicious; there were no witnesses to the promise, so the absence of witnesses is made evidence of design. Every gap in the case is converted into a point in it.

The case he had to meet

In Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson, the Italian twins Luigi and Angelo Capello are charged with the murder of Judge York Driscoll, stabbed with an Indian dagger. The prosecution case was: presence at the scene, possession of the weapon in Luigi's hand, ownership of the dagger, a motive in the standing quarrel with the Driscolls, opportunity, and two witnesses, Mrs Pratt and behind her Mr Rogers and Mr Buckstone. On that material the twins would have been convicted.

The evidence Wilson placed before the court

1. The concession, which is evidence-handling and not evidence. He identified the prosecution's central claim — that the person whose hand left the blood-stained finger-prints on the knife handle is the murderer — and said, "We not only grant that claim, but we welcome it and strongly endorse it." Twain records the astonishment: the court buzzed, people said the overworked lawyer had lost his mind, and the judge asked counsel to repeat himself.

6. The identification of the murderer. The same print matched slides he had taken years earlier of Tom Driscoll, sitting in the courtroom: "The murderer of your friend and mine, Judge Driscoll of the generous and kindly spirit, sits in your midst."

7. The childhood series, and the second discovery. He returned to what he called "the infant autographs of A and B", and handed the jury pantograph facsimiles enlarged so that, as Twain says, the dullest eye could see at a distance of many feet that no two patterns were alike. Comparing the infant prints with the adult ones he found that they did not tally — and that the babies had been exchanged. Tom confessed.

Critical examination

In its favour:

1. It is objective where everything else in the case was not. Every other piece of evidence depended on what somebody saw, remembered or assumed. The print does not care what anyone believes.

2. It was proved before it was used. The demonstration to the jury is the most professional thing in the novel, and it is exactly what a modern court requires of an expert: state the principle, show that it works, then apply it.

3. There was no independent verification. No second examiner checked a single comparison. The slides were his own, made by him, labelled by him and kept by him, and the entire case rested on his word that the labels were right — the very thing he himself doubted for half an hour on the night before the trial, walking the floor and muttering that the baby's prints did not tally.

4. The chain of custody of the knife is never established. Who took it, where it was kept and whether the print could have been added is nowhere addressed.

5. The demonstration, however brilliant, was also theatre, performed on a jury that had come to see a conviction. Persuasion of that intensity is not the same as proof.

Conclusion

Wilson's evidence is the finest thing in the prescribed texts and would need considerable tidying to be admitted today. Its virtue is that it replaced impressions with a fact the court could verify with its own hands; its vice is that it arrived without notice, from an advocate acting as his own expert, unchecked by anybody. Twain's point survives the criticism: two innocent men were saved, and a whole town's twenty-three-year error was corrected, by one mark that nobody could argue with.