The Commonwealth
Legal Education Association’s conference takes place every two years, and
this year CLEA was in Hong Kong at the City
University. The weather wasn’t
particularly clear, but the conference certainly was! The Dean of the Law School opened with a
quote that ‘to educate a student is to educate an individual; educate a teacher
and you educate a community’. The Chief
Judge of the High Court (Justice Geoffrey Ma) then spoke about how a legal
education should be akin to the ‘pursuit of the unattainable’ in the sense that
when the law is not clear, predictable or easily applied, then a lawyer should
have a guiding instinct. The source of
his presentation arises from a House of Lords judgment by Lord Goff in Spiliada
Maritime Corporation v. Cansulex Ltd:
‘‘[J]urists are pilgrims with us on the endless road to unattainable perfection;
and we have it on the excellent authority of Geoffrey Chaucer that
conversations among pilgrims can be most rewarding”.
Following my own presentation about online
learning in a commonwealth context, I was pleased and surprised to see a Second
Life presentation from Angel Adrian
(Bournemouth) and Clare Chambers
(UWE). They have been using virtual worlds
to support their teaching and label their students as the X-Box generation – a
term subsequently adopted by the conference whole-heartedly as much interest
was sparked in the field of alternative delivery methods. The attributes (which I failed to note all) of
this x-box generation include arrogance, competitiveness, and other qualities
not necessarily seen in abundance for previous generations.
Michael Furmston (Singapore Management Univ) presented ‘some problems with
assessment’ and brought up the topic of cricket (again, a recurrent conference
theme!) players, chess masters, American presidents and judges – the reason
being, how can we rate their skills and can we apply such a method to students?
Categorisation is a rather easy task – most
academics can quite easily spot an essay worth a first, 2.1, 2.2 and a
third. Many will also be able to say
whether an essay is a good or weak example of each category, but when we take a
greater number of categories (i.e. 1 to 100) it is less of an easy task. Whilst Michael was speaking, I was reminded
of a SWAP workshop last year run by the HEA with Richard Kimbell (see a previous
blog post) who discussed a comparative pairs methodology. Indeed, Michael went on to discuss a similar method
being used to grade American presidents – Lincoln came top of the list
consistently in a variety of different polls.
However, Washington and G. Roosevelt varied as to whether they came
second or third. A comparative pairs
methodology would give more than just an ordinal ranking – it would indicate
just how far ahead Lincoln is above the contestants for second and third place,
who are almost on a par. The best, and
the worse US Supreme Court Justices were easily identified by a team of voters
with knowledge of the legal system – the ones in the middle were less easily
and more inconsistently delineated by individuals. For those who need to know, the top cricketer
was consistently named as Donald Bradman.
The take-home message, I suppose, is does
it matter that the standard in one year is different to the next? Or, whether one university differs to another
or even subjects differ in standards? If
it does matter – what can we do, and what are we doing about it?
Swethaa
Ballakrishnen (Harvard) offered some interesting
points from her research into the evolution of South Asian legal
education. The relatively recent National
Law Schools (5 year degrees with highly competitive entry) are embarking on a
reversal of previously defective rote learning and weak legal education. Swethaa noted that pre-independence, many
lawyers educated in India were taught by professors educated in Britain, and
indeed, many post independence statesmen held law degrees, although may not
have practiced. Arguably unfair, this
new five year degree does promote a competitive edge for candidates early in
their educational career. It creates an
elite degree, which is perhaps warranted in a legal system that offers
automatic entry to the bar once qualified: there is no differentiation between
solicitors/lawyers and advocates/barristers.
The presentation also covered issues regarding the syllabus; it appears
that it is not perhaps what law to teach, but rather teaching law differently
that is required.
Michael Sayers, the secretary-general of
the Commonwealth Association of Law Reform Agencies (www.calras.org) spoke about the work of this
association in over sixty different jurisdictions. Current broad topics being addressed or
reviewed across the Commonwealth include issues relating to science and
technology, climate and ecology, and aging.
Many other types of reviews exist of course, but these appear to be a
global trend. Michael suggested that
academics not only fit the bill for potential law commissioners, but they are
equally well equipped in relation to four other ‘C’s:
Consultees –
this is relatively common, especially for green papers. Positive (as opposed to just negative)
comments are equally desirable and of use to commissions, yet often forgotten
about.
Communicators –
academics are, apparently, good at getting the point across. I’m pleased that commissions think so! They naturally do so in both teaching and
research.
Consultants –
often commissions are in need of either paid or unpaid specialist input. Academics may often have the time and
resources to assist, and this form of external engagement is of benefit to the
law schools and universities in general.
Commitment
– teaching a curriculum keeps an academic up-to-date.
This presentation reminded me of someone’s
suggestion (my apologies for forgetting who!) at a UKCLE event. Michael asked at the start of his
presentation, who had responded to various types of consultation documents as
an academic. I recall a suggestion that current
consultations (or even old ones) could be used as a class exercise to draft a
response: it could even (and perhaps should) be sent as a response. The only draw-back is that I doubt, even with
sixty jurisdictions, that there would be a convenient consultation every
semester A to coincide with land law (for example). Indeed, older ones could be used repeatedly
and might even be worth assessing, but a constitutional law module could make
use of any consultation in terms of process and the right to respond etc. Student law societies could even do so
outwith the curriculum.
My final review is a presentation from Selina
Goulbourne (Holborn College) who
spoke about a review of Islamic law teaching in conjunction with the UKCLE (see
link and also here). As with Swethaa’s presentation, Selina
criticised the use of rote learning as it does not encourage the student to see
the law in context, or perhaps fully understand the principles of the law. Selina is looking at undergraduate and
professional education and making comparative analysis of jurisdictions with
and without an Islamic tradition. Also
mentioned was the potential difficulty with the translation of Arabic texts in
non-Arabic speaking states such as Malaysia.
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