Through a
glass darkly: legal education at century’s turn
by Sandra Berns
Legal education faces many challenges at century's turn. Diminishing resources and the pervasive envisioning of the relationship between students and teachers as one of service provider and client challenge our understandings. As new technologies take hold, those of us who seek to incorporate the ethical and relational skills fundamental to contemporary legal practice in our programs confront the limits of teachnology and struggle to find an optimum balance between click and brick. We need to find ways to exploit the full potential of these technologies while escaping the hazards they pose: the numbing of ethical perceptions and inhibitions and the too ready availability of resources, including entire essays, which can be appropriated by those who wish to 'play the system'.
Law as business
in the corporatised university
Margaret Thornton
Legal education is changing dramatically in a market-driven climate. Unlike some humanities disciplines, law schools are not in danger of being closed down, as lawyers are in demand as new knowledge workers. Instead, legal education is changing its focus by sloughing off socio-legal scholarship in favour of business law, intellectual property and information technology. The changed orientation has been facilitated by a tendency to amalgamate law schools with business schools.
Law out of
context (or who’s afraid of sex and violence in legal education?)
by Adrian Howe
This article provides a witty invective against the dumbing down of the law curriculum at the expense of socio-legal research and teaching. The author traces the dismantling of a distinctive, world-renowned socio-legal tradition at a 'yellow-brick' university and its replacement with a bland, doctrinal uncritical approach to the teaching of law. She mourns the excising of critical scholarship from the law curriculum and the promotion of an unreflexive doctrinalist approach which fails to problematise the unequal distribution of power in our legal and social institutions.
The cult
of individualism in law school: moving from survival of the fittest to collaborative
learning
by Helen Brown
A critique of the ethos of competition and aggressive individualism that permeates mainstream legal education. The author proposes some alternative methods of student selection, teaching and assessment in the hope of fostering a different ethos of collaboration and co-operative learning. She seeks to minimise the hierarchy and competition, currently endemic in law teaching, with a view to producing lawyers who will work to dismantle rather than sustain global capitalism.
Life and
death and law and art (why teaching is more than imparting knowledge)
by Andrea Rhodes-Little
This article takes a thoughtful and provocative approach to the moral and ethical responsibilities of the law teacher. The author seeks to contest what constitutes legitimate knowledge in a university context, asking, can we unwittingly do great harm to our students in seeking to impart a quest for learning. She seeks to expose the multiple sites of representation in the construction of knowledge and the complex power relations that underpin these representations and knowledges. It is no longer possible for the conservative law teacher to feign ignorance about the impact of the 'knowledges' they seek to impart.
Equal access
to assisted reproductive services: the effect of McBain v Victoria
by Kristen Walker
A discussion of the controversy that followed McBain v Victoria [2000] FCA 1009 about assisted reproductive services for unmarried women. Kristen Walker examines the federal and State responses to the McBain case, suggesting that the proposed amending legislation to the Infertility Treatment Act (Vic) is a draconian step designed to further disadvantage unmarried and lesbian women who seek medical assistance to become pregnant.
Deconstructing
the concept of human rights in Africa
by Kenneth Mwenda
For some time now, the concept of human right in Africa has been wrongly understood, even by some publicists and activists who claim to know more about human rights. This article argues that in the traditional African setting, like in Asia and other developing societies where communal ties and a sense of duty and responsibility takes precedence over selfish individualistic and laissez-faire attitudes, both the state and the individual have primary responsibilities towards maintaining social order. The concept of human rights in these parts of the world must be seen therefore as a reflection of the economic base of society rather than as a construct of bourgeois superstructural anecdotes.
Behind the
Bench: Associates in the High Court of Australia
by Andrew Leigh
The role, extent of influence and background of clerks on the United States Supreme Court has been extensively debated in recent years. This article considers the same issues in relation to the High Court of Australia. It concludes that whilst several systemic factors check the influence of Australian associates, the lack of diversity among associates who have worked at the High Court over the past decade is nonetheless undesirable.
Police and
protest: Alice's adventures at s11
by Mary Heath
Mary Heath reports on the policing of the World Economic Forum protest 'through the looking glass'. She discusses media reporting in the lead up to s11 and compares police rhetoric and media coverage of 'protester violence' at s11 with her own analysis of events.
Vietnam:
Human rights on the agenda
by Gill Boehringer
A report on a conference in Washington DC on 'The Rule of Law and Democracy in Vietnam'.
Youth Affairs:
Physical punishment—legitimising child abuse
by Louis Schetzer
This column discusses the Crimes Amendment (Child Protection—Excessive Punishment) Bill (NSW) (the Corbett Bill), relevant articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in relation to physical punishment, and international experience in this regard.
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