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Every student thinks they know the law until someone asks a question. Here are twenty, arranged roughly from easy to hard. Score one point for each correct answer. The answers follow, but try them all first.

Bangladesh

1. On what date did the Constitution of Bangladesh come into force?
2. Which Article of the Constitution provides that any law inconsistent with the Constitution is void to the extent of the inconsistency?
3. Who chaired the committee that drafted the Constitution in 1972?
4. In which year was the judiciary formally separated from the executive, following the Masdar Hossain judgment?
5. Which river was the first to be declared a legal person by the High Court Division?
6. Under which section of the Code of Criminal Procedure may a police officer arrest without a warrant on reasonable suspicion?
7. Which constitutional amendment created the caretaker government system?
8. Which body did the Sixteenth Amendment case restore as the mechanism for removing Supreme Court judges?

English Law

9. What creature was allegedly found in the ginger beer in Donoghue v Stevenson?
10. In Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Co, how much did the company promise to pay anyone who caught influenza after using its product?
11. Which 1610 case is usually cited as the origin of the courts’ power to determine the limits of the royal prerogative, relied on by the Supreme Court in the prorogation case of 2019?
12. What did R v Dudley and Stephens decide about the defence of necessity to a charge of murder?
13. Which Act of Parliament abolished scandalising the court as a form of contempt in England and Wales?
14. In Miller (No 2), how many justices sat, and how many dissented?

International Law

15. What was the first contentious case decided by the International Court of Justice?
16. Which tribunal decided the maritime boundary between Bangladesh and Myanmar in 2012?
17. Which article of the Rome Statute defines crimes against humanity?
18. Which State brought the case against Myanmar at the ICJ concerning the Rohingya?

The Hard Ones

19. Which United States court dismissed a claim against Satan and his staff in 1971, and on what ground?
20. Nix v Hedden (1893) decided, for the purposes of the US tariff law, whether the tomato was a fruit or a vegetable. What did the Supreme Court hold, and why?

Answers

1. 16 December 1972. 2. Article 7(2). 3. Dr Kamal Hossain. 4. 2007, with effect from 1 November. 5. The Turag, in 2019; the judgment extended the status to all rivers. 6. Section 54. 7. The Thirteenth Amendment, in 1996. 8. The Supreme Judicial Council.
2. A snail, allegedly; the point was never proved at trial. 10. £100, and it had deposited £1,000 with the Alliance Bank to show its sincerity. 11. The Case of Proclamations (1610). 12. That necessity is no defence to murder; the two shipwrecked sailors who killed and ate the cabin boy were convicted, though their death sentences were commuted to six months’ imprisonment. 13. The Crime and Courts Act 2013, section 33. 14. Eleven sat, and none dissented; the judgment was unanimous.
3. The Corfu Channel case (United Kingdom v Albania), decided on the merits in 1949. 16. The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, in Hamburg. 17. Article 7. 18. The Gambia, in 2019.
4. The United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, in Mayo v Satan and His Staff. The court noted, among other difficulties, that the plaintiff had given no instructions for serving the defendant with the papers. 20. A vegetable. Botanically the tomato is a fruit, but the court held that in the common language of the people, and in the kitchen, it is a vegetable served with the main course rather than as dessert, and tariff law follows ordinary usage.

How Did You Do?

Seventeen or more: you should be writing for this magazine. Twelve to sixteen: a solid upper second. Eight to eleven: revise the Landmark Cases series on this site. Fewer than eight: welcome to the first year, and do not be discouraged. Every lawyer started here.

Sources

1. The Honourable, Landmark Cases series (Bangladesh and International): https://thehonourable.org/landmark-cases/
2. Wikipedia, United States ex rel. Gerald Mayo v Satan and His Staff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_ex_rel._Gerald_Mayo_v._Satan_and_His_Staff
3. Wikipedia, Nix v Hedden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_v._Hedden