These are ATARMAxxing’s course-guide summaries. Review all required areas, including school assessments, practical work, performances or folios where applicable. Follow your course’s option rules.
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Part 1 — Westminster Parliamentary System of Government
This area studies the principles of a liberal democracy — legitimate authority, separation of powers, rule of law, human rights, procedural fairness and pluralism — as the lens for judging Australia's system of government. It then examines the five main features of the Westminster system Australia adopted: a constitutional monarchy in which the Prime Minister leads a Cabinet responsible to the lower House; the separation of powers between legislature, executive and judiciary, including their deliberate overlap under responsible government and the judiciary's independence; the rule of law; representative and responsible government; and a bicameral parliament, with the House of Representatives as the 'People's House' and the Senate as the 'States House' and a house of review.
Part 2 — Australian Federal Constitutional Government
This area covers the main features of the federal system: shared sovereignty, the Constitution's division of exclusive, concurrent and residual powers between the Commonwealth and the states, and the High Court's role interpreting that division. It then traces how the division of power has shifted toward the Commonwealth over time — through High Court interpretation of sections such as 51(xxix) and 109 (illustrated by the Tasmanian Dams Case and Croome v Tasmania), judgments favouring the Commonwealth (the First Uniform Tax Case, the Roads Case), referrals of power under section 51(xxxvii), and referendums (the successful 1967 referendum and the unsuccessful 1999 republic referendum). It finishes on the status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Constitution, from exclusion at Federation through the 1967 referendum, the Native Title Act 1993, the Uluru Statement from the Heart, the 2023 Voice referendum and ongoing state-level reforms.
Part 3 — Australian and International Law
This area studies how law is made, applied and changed outside parliament's ordinary legislative process. It covers Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander customary law and the impact of terra nullius on its legal status; statute law, including how a bill is drafted and passed; common law, including the Tasmanian and Commonwealth court hierarchies, the doctrine of precedent and judges' law-making role; two studied law reform mechanisms (from law reform bodies such as the ALRC and TLRI, Royal Commissions, parliamentary committees, statutory authorities, individuals through the courts, or interest and lobby groups); and international law through one theme (climate change, human rights, migration and refugees, or international conflict), covering how international and Australian law differ, why states obey international law, and how it is enforced.
Work Requirement — Topical Legal Issue (examined in Section B, Criterion 5)
TASC publishes a list of Topical Legal Issues by the end of February each year; the 2026 list is: Greenland, Venezuela and the impacts of the Trump Administration on the international legal order; Gellung Warl, the Victorian treaty legislation; the implied freedom of political communication and changes to hate speech and protest laws in Australia; the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024; and environmental law reform in Tasmania in response to salmon farming. Internally, the Work Requirement is a roughly 900-word formal report assessed under Criterion 6; externally, the same Topical Legal Issue is examined only through the Section B essay, which explains and evaluates the relevant legal and political processes and institutions involved in reforming or implementing the law on the student's chosen issue.
Part 4 — Dispute Resolution: Civil and Criminal
This area compares the adversary trial system — its purpose, features (contest, an impartial adjudicator, party control, strict rules of evidence and procedure, a single event, the jury's role) and its advantages and limitations — with alternative dispute resolution processes such as negotiation, mediation, tribunals, conciliation, arbitration, restorative justice and the ombudsman. It then covers crime and criminal procedure (including mens rea, actus reus, and summary versus indictable offences), the safeguards protecting an accused person and the rights of the accused, victim and community, and sentencing in Tasmania — the laws, aims, principles and options courts use, evaluated against how far they fulfil the aims of sentencing.
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These links come from this subject’s existing official-paper archive. A listed year is the document’s year, not a claim that it matches the 2026 course. Written papers may cover only part of your assessment; use the official requirements for practical, performance and folio components.
LST315117 Legal Studies Level 3 course document, Version 4 (accreditation renewed with amendments from 1 January 2026; current for 2026), read with the LST315117 External Assessment Specifications Version 1.4 (March 2026) and TASC's 2026 Topical Legal Issues list (February 2026)
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Check current requirements and course options: https://www.tasc.tas.gov.au/students/courses/humanities-and-social-sciences/lst315117-9/