Legal Education Commons^™

Volume 17, No. 5

The Weldon Times

A student-run newspaper published at the School of Law at Dalhousie University.

Editors: Jolaine Antonio, Mike Christie, Chris Spiteri

Brent Cotter Resigns From Dal Law Faculty, Innis Christie

Innis Christie Collection

Brent and Sandra Cotter have decided to make permanent, or at least long-term, their move back to their native Saskatchewan. After two years on leave from Dal Law School, the former Associate Dean, Dal Legal Aid Director and long-time Chair of the Admissions Committee has resigned, to continue to serve as Deputy Attorney General of Saskatchewan, a post he has held for the last two years.

Volume 17, No. 4

The Weldon Times

A student-run newspaper published at the School of Law at Dalhousie University.

Editors: Jolaine Antonio, Mike Christie, Chris Spiteri

Photography: Jamie Stuart

Editorial Assistants: Cindy Gorman, Scott Rollwagen

Volume 16, No. 6

The Weldon Times

A student-run newspaper published at the School of Law at Dalhousie University.

Editors: Susan Anderson, Jolaine Antonio, Veronica Ukrainetz

Volume 16, No. 5

The Weldon Times

A student-run newspaper published at the School of Law at Dalhousie University.

Editors: Susan Anderson, Jolaine Antonio, Veronica Ukrainetz

Photography: Stephen Jedynak, Jamie Stuart

Madame Justice Wilson: Trailblazer For Justice, Brian Dickson

Dalhousie Law Journal

Mr. Dean, Mme Justice Wilson, Mrs. Read, other distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen: May I say first of all that I am deeply honoured to have been invited to give the Horace E. Read Memorial Lecture for 1991, inaugurated in memory of the distinguished Dean of Dalhousie Law School who served in that capacity from 1950 to 1964. Dean Read's contribution to legal education and to legal scholarship in general was a massive one, encompassing as it did law reform, legislation and the legislative process, conflict of laws, labour law and legal education. Horace Read acquired an enviable international reputation …

Legal Research In A Social Science Setting: The Problem Of Method, T Brettel Dawson

Dalhousie Law Journal

As part of its ongoing process of curriculum development, the Department of Law at Carleton University decided in 1988 that a compulsory course in legal research methods was long overdue in the B.A. Honours degree in Law. Fortified with interest nurtured by methodological debates in feminist scholarship,' experience devilling' for a barrister pending my call to the bar, and practice from instructing a course in legal research and writing while a graduate student, I set about developing the proposed course. No guidelines existed for such a course, beyond the logic that it should complement the socio-legal or legal studies focus …

Miles To Go: Some Personal Reflections On Social Construction Of Disability, Dianne Pothier

Dianne Pothier Collection

The "social construction" of disability refers to the way an able bodied conception of disability magnifies its consequences. The social construction of disability assesses and deals with disability from an able bodied perspective. It includes erroneous assumptions about capacity to perform that come from an able bodied frame of reference. It encompasses the failure to make possible or accept different ways of doing things. It reflects a preoccupation with "normalcy" that excludes the disabled person.

Book Review Of Dangerous Supplements: Resistance And Renewal In Jurisprudence, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Dangerous Supplements: Resistance and Renewal in Jurisprudence (1991 ), edited by Peter Fitzpatrick, is the first instalment in a new series, Law and Social Theory, being published by the progressive British publisher Pluto Press. As someone who had been subjected to an intensely positivistic- perhaps even authoritarian- jurisprudential, undergraduate education in Belfast, both the title and the dustcover intrigued me. The latter portrays a towering, seemingly unassailable, citadel with "jurisprudence" inscribed upon it, being bombarded by paper planes with the insignia of critical theory, semiotics, feminism, postmodernism and "new ideas." This image led me to wonder whether the book would …

Volume 15, No. 3

The Weldon Times

A student-run newspaper published at the School of Law at Dalhousie University.

Editors: John Atchison, Naz Mitha, Gordon Allen

Photography: Alison Fowles, Jerome Marburg

An Essay On Institutional Responsibility: The Indigenous Blacks And Micmac Programme At Dalhousie Law School, Richard F. Devlin, A Wayne Mackay

Dalhousie Law Journal

Dalhousie Law School, like most other law schools, as a tribute to its graduates and as a manifestation of its traditions, adorns its walls with class photographs of years gone by. However, if one were to stop and scrutinize more carefully these pictures one might want to reconsider the tradition in a more circumspect light. Perhaps one might notice that until the nineteen sixties women were few and far between and that even now they still make up less than half of most graduating classes. More conspicuous still, is the general absence of First Nations peoples from the celebratory pageant. …

Dean Christie Looks Back, Innis Christie

Innis Christie Collection

My last six year, as dean of Dalhousie Law School, have been wonderful ones for me. They have at times been draining and occasionally exhilarating, always demanding, sometimes disappointing but often quite satisfying. Certainly, through those six years I have never doubted that the faculty, staff, students and alumni of Dalhousie Law School have a great law school.

Improving Access To Legal Education For Native People In Canada: Dalhousie Law School's I.B.M. Program In Context, Hugh Macaulay

Dalhousie Law Journal

This paper is about access to legal education for Native peoples in Canada. It is important at the very outset of this undertaking to explain my interest in this issue and to describe the perspective from which I write. At the beginning of the 1989-90 academic year I returned to Halifax to discover that Dalhousie had implemented a program to increase access for Blacks and Micmacs to legal education. Motivated by my support for this initiative, I applied to be a tutor in the program and was fortunate enough to be selected.

The Faculty Of Law, University Of British Columbia 1981-90, Joost Blom

Dalhousie Law Journal

It may be uninspiring to begin a sketch of the UBC Law Faculty since 1981 by talking about money, but the Faculty's financial circumstances during this period are the key to much of what follows. For about five years from 1982, the provincial government's fiscal watchword was "restraint", which so far as the universities were concerned meant, in the early years, actually cutting operating grants and, later on, keeping a fairly tight lid on them. UBC's budget fell in absolute terms for three successive years, and continued to slip in real terms for another year or two. The Law Faculty …

An Essay On Institutional Responsibility: The Indigenous Blacks And Micmac Programme At Dalhousie Law School, Richard F. Devlin Frsc, A. Wayne Mackay

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Dalhousie Law School, like most other law schools, as a tribute to its graduates and as a manifestation of its traditions, adorns its walls with class photographs of years gone by. However, if one were to stop and scrutinize more carefully these pictures one might want to reconsider the tradition in a more circumspect light. Perhaps one might notice that until the nineteen sixties women were few and far between and that even now they still make up less than half of most graduating classes. More conspicuous still, is the general absence of First Nations peoples from the celebratory pageant. …

Problem-Based Learning: An Alternative Approach To Legal Education, Suzanne Kurtz, Michael Wylie, Neil Gold

Dalhousie Law Journal

This paper is intended to provide legal educators with an introduction to problem-based learning. Problem-based learning has several variations and each of them will be briefly reviewed with a view to providing insights as to how the method might be used. We will underscore the pedagogical rationale for the method and place it in the context of developments in legal education generally. In addition we will describe what a teacher actually does when using a particular variation of the method.

Dean Christie's Letter, Innis Christie

Innis Christie Collection

What a year! For one thing, it was the first year in the new Sir James Dunn Law Library and the refurbished Weldon Law Building. It seemed to me that the academic year had hardly gotten under way when we were into official opening ceremonies. The opening in the atrium, following the fall convocation on Saturday, October 21, was a fine ceremony, culminating in the unveiling of a plaque by the premier of Nova Scotia, Dal law alumnus The Honourable John M. Buchannan '58, and Mr. Donald Sobey, chairman of the capital campaign which paid for the building.

Doorkeepers: Legal Education In The Territories And Alberta, 1885-1928, Peter M. Sibenik

Dalhousie Law Journal

Legal education has been subjected to greater scrutiny in common law jurisdictions since the publication of Lawyers and the Courts in 1967.2 Most of the recent literature has addressed the issue of who received a legal education and became entitled to practise law. It has also examined how a conservative-minded profession regenerated itself, and whether it equipped new recruits with the proper tools to meet the challenges of a changing society.

The Fiercest Debate: Cecil A. Wright, The Benchers And Legal Education In Ontario 1923-1957, W R. Lederman

Dalhousie Law Journal

In the dozen years after the end of the Second World War, long-standing conflicts about the nature of education for the legal profession in Ontario became especially acute. Fortunately, climax and successful compromise came in 1957. In that year the Law Society of Upper Canada, which had controlled legal education and admission to practice from the early days of the Colony of Upper Canada, gave up its monopoly of legal education and conceded an equal position in this respect to Ontario universities willing and able to enter the field. Several were, and promptly did so. Indeed the University of Toronto …

Research In A Changing World Of Law And Technology, Morris L. Cohen

Dalhousie Law Journal

As a long-time friend and admirer of legal education at Dalhousie, it is an honor and a pleasure for me to offer the Read lecture this year. It is particularly warming to have Mrs. Read and the next two generations of Reads here today, since Dean Read was the strongest proponent of the law library's development during his deanship here. One of the designated topics for these lectures has been legal education. With the dedication of the addition to the Weldon Building housing the restored Sir James Dunn Law Library, and the designation of a librarian, for the first time, …

Commissions Of Inquiry And Public Policy In Canada, Frank Iacobucci

Dalhousie Law Journal

Most Canadians attach a great deal of importance to commissions of inquiry. When commissions of inquiry are appointed and when they report, great public attention is usually focussed on the substantive and serious issues discussed.

The Teaching Of Law In France, Claudine Bloch

Dalhousie Law Journal

For a little over thirty years the teaching of law in France has conjured up the image of a vast expanse of land, the boundaries of which are continually being extended: the observer will see a succession of cultivated fields, plots of land which are constantly being tilled so that one wonders if they will ever bear a crop; but he will also see ground lying fallow which is coveted by the wealthy and the pioneers: they plough their furrows, which they then either abandon or untiringly plough even deeper or longer. These remarks, preceding the presentation of so serious …

Clinical Legal Education Through The Looking-Glass, M Kathryn Munn

Dalhousie Law Journal

This paper describes the implementation of a clinical legal education program at the University of Western Ontario. By coincidence, the paper was completed just as a major change in direction was unfolding in the program. The origin and purposes of clinical education I will leave to another occasion. Suffice it to say that my answer to the question, "does a law school need clinical education?", is a resounding "yes".

Western In The 1980'S, W B. Rayner

Dalhousie Law Journal

When one is asked to write on the development of one's faculty over a decade, the most difficult part of the task is simply to determine where to begin. After some thought, I came to the conclusion that the most appropriate starting point is the statement of the objective that appears in the "Dean's Message" contained in our Calendar. We state that our objective is "to offer students a liberal education through the critical study of legal and related materials in preparation for the private practice of law, for government service and for kindred vocations." In short, we wish to …

Legal Education In Saskatchewan 1982-1988, Daniel I. Ish

Dalhousie Law Journal

My predecessor in the office of dean, Don Clark, in an article in this Journal approximately six years ago, described in his usual eloquent fashion the development of the little law school on the prairie from its genesis in 1910. In these pages I will attempt to outline some of the developments in the College of Law during my six years as dean. I intend to adopt an intuitive, first-person narrative which, I hope, will not be too self-serving in its description of the College of Law between 1982 and 1988.

Dean Christie's Letter, Innis Christie

Innis Christie Collection

The new Sir James Dunn Law Library is open! The Official Opening, capping an exciting week of Law School "happenings", will be on October 21, 1989, but the real "Opening" occurred in mid-May. Summer student maintenance employees had worked night and day from the end of exams moving books from their temporary storage in the Killam Library to the new Law Library, to the accomplishment of ubiquitous rock music blaring from their radio. On the morning of Monday, May 15, Chief Law Librarian, Professor Christian Wiktor, solemnly intruded on them and firmly turned the radio off, with the announcement: "This …

The Public Dimension In Legal Education, Mark R. Macguigan

Dalhousie Law Journal

Legal education, while always a subject of fascination to law students and professors, only periodically becomes a matter of more general interest. But that is what I believe has happened in Canada in the mid-1980s as the result of three publishing events.

Canadian Criminal Jury Instructions, James P. Taylor

Dalhousie Law Journal

Canadian Criminal Jury Instructions ("CRIMJI") is an ambitious project. The authors, the Honourable Mr. Justice John Bouck (of the Supreme Court of British Columbia) and Professor Gerry Ferguson (of the Faculty of Law, University of Victoria) set out to provide a book that will "assist Canadian judges and Canadian lawyers in drafting and delivering a charge to a jury in a criminal case". The authors' twovolume work handily accomplishes this objective.

Towards An/Other Legal Education: Some Critical And Tentative Proposals To Confront The Racism Of Modern Legal Education, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

It seems to me that by drawing on the myth of Prometheus, Harry Arthurs has struck an important chord that we may find will resonate throughout the papers that are to be presented today. Particularly, by emphasizing the idea of being "unbound," President Arthurs has opened up a conversation that is premised upon the connection between law and freedom. I propose to take up and expand that conversation and, hopefully, to give it a significantly different orientation. Specifically, I want to identify and attempt to come to terms with an issue which, I fear, does not engender sufficient concern within …

Legal Education As Political Consciousness-Raising Or Paving The Road To Hell, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The Journal of Legal Education did all legal educators a great service when it published "Women in Legal Education-Pedagogy, Law, Theory, and Practice," a symposium that highlights feminist criticisms of, innovations in, and desiderata for legal education. The contributors challenge some of our deepest convictions about what it means to be a law teacher. Appropriately, all the contributors are women. It is they who have experienced most keenly-and have been harmed by the gendered nature of the legal educational process. The gendered nature of legal education is not, however, a "women's only" issue; it is not solely "their problem," "their …