LAW5501 Law and repair

Law is not only a system of rules and remedies; it is also a set of forms through which we imagine the world, and which we can repair when they fall short. This unit examines law’s central forms (legislation, judgments, contracts, testimony and proceedings) and the traditions of reimagining and rewriting them.

You will learn to read each form for the world it imagines: who appears in it, who is missing, and what it assumes about how life is lived. You will then study how these forms have been repaired or rewritten, including feminist redrafting of statutes, alternative judgments, contracts recognising emerging relationships, and proceedings staged to hear what courts have not.

Each module focuses on a single legal form, how it works and what it imagines, and how it has been repaired. You will practise two complementary modes of reading: critically, asking what a legal form leaves out; and reparatively, asking what it makes possible and for whom. The unit is as practical as it is conceptual: rewriting a statute or judgment requires precision drafting, redrafting a contract is exacting transactional work, and reading a form for its assumptions is core to legal interpretation and advice. The drafting and interpretive skills you will build are central to legal practice across public and private law.