Research Paper
Topic: A person who is caught cheating on an LSAT exam (required for law school applications) should be allowed to attend law school and practice law.
REQUIRED SOURCE: Mcguire, Linda. “Lawyering or Lying? When Law School Applicants Hide Their Criminal Histories and Other Misconduct” (2004) 45 South Texas Law Review 709-743.
You are required to conduct academic research for your paper (see the list of suggested databases to search). This is not a google paper or a blog paper; however, you may supplement your academic research with other searches and newspaper sources.
For example:
- Academic Search Premier
- Business Source Complete
- CBCA Fulltext Reference
- CPI.Q (includes Globe and Mail)
- Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text
- Criminal Spectrum (includes Criminal Law Quarterly)
- Canadian Newsstand (for newspaper searches)
- Canadian Public Policy Collection
- Health Source: Consumer Edition
- HeinOnline
- IngentaConnect
- JSTOR
- LexisNexis (cases and journal articles from USA)
- Medline
- Proquest
- PsycINFOPsycINFO
- Quicklaw (a large number of cases and Canadian legal journals)
- Sociological Abstracts
- SSRN.com (Social Science Research Network)
- WestLawNext Canada database (now incorporates BestCase, CriminalSource and LawSource)
Each student will write a paper on their assigned topic. Your papers are research papers. They must include a more balanced analysis of the issues identified in your paper topic and also include a broader analysis of related material. The paper should be approximately 4800-5000 words – 13.5 PAGES (excluding bibliography), spaced 1.5, Arial 12 pt font. Please provide a word count on your title page that excludes your bibliography. Whatever topic you write your paper on, it must incorporate assigned readings from throughout the semester.
Your Research Paper must include a complete bibliography, proper references and sufficient information so that the reader can readily find your source. If you are relying on material that is not readily available through the library or the internet, please provide me with a copy of it.
Instructions
- Please use any form of embedded citation, for example: (Brown, 2014: 35). Whatever style you use, page or paragraph numbers are required for both quotations and paraphrases. You do not need to write an Abstract for your Research Paper.
- If you are using source off the web which does not have page numbers or paragraph numbers and is longer than one page, PDF the article and use the PDF page numbers. Then cite the PDF page numbers and indicate in your list of References that it is a PDF citation by adding at the end: (PDF source). In such cases the citation in your paper should look like this (Black, 2008: 3, PDF). If the reader cannot easily find your source, you have not cited it properly. However, most academic journals now have PDF versions of the original article (with the original page numbers). When there are multiple sources for an article, use the source that provides you with the original page numbers. For example, HeinOnline has the original page numbers.
- Footnotes, endnotes, references and bibliographies must be complete. Any social science or legal format is acceptable; however, if you use psychology citation requirements, NOTE points 1 above and 6 below which must be followed. 3.Long quotations (4 lines or more) must be single spaced and indented from both the left and right margins.
- All other direct quotations in your paper must be in quotation marks. If you omit a few words or pages in a quotation, put the quote in quotation marks and connect the two by ellipses (i.e., three dots). If you change one or two words in a quotation put your word(s) in square brackets. Phrases which are direct quotes should be put in quotation marks.
- A quotation must be followed by its source and the page or paragraph number at which it is located. When quoting or paraphrasing cases with paragraph numbers, use the para. number (e.g. para. 142). Do not use the headnote (the summary at the beginning of the case). Find the information in the judgment and use the paragraph number.
- A paraphrase (a restatement of someone’s idea in your words) must be followed by a reference to the source and page (or para. number, if a case) of the idea. Suggestion: if your paraphrase is almost identical to the original source, use a direct quotation. Note: The APA format which states that a page number is optional is not acceptable in this class. Page numbers are required for both quotations and paraphrases.
- Patchwriting is not acceptable. Patchwriting is “a form of plagiarism in which a writer relies too heavily on the words and sentence structure of the author’s original text”
- Provide a complete citation (name of author and article) and a website address for all material obtained from the web. Note: indicate the date you accessed the web. Your citation should contain sufficient information so that anyone could find the source from the information you provide.
- Acknowledge the use of secondary sources (e.g. Smith, 1986 as quoted in Black, 2012 at 24).
- Finally, please use the Canadian spelling of words such as behaviour, colour, favour, etc. If the word is in a quotation, do not change the spelling to Canadian.