Legal Education Commons^™

Competition, Cooperation Or Cartel: A National Law School Accreditation Process For Canada?, Alvin Esau

Dalhousie Law Journal

Law schools in Canada are engaged in increased competition with one another and significant disparities in resources and reputations have developed. The author argues that this competitive context may be a threat to the maintenance in some schools of the broader mission of the law school to teach and produce contextual and critical perspectives on law. It is suggested that Canadian law schools should cooperate with each other and that various initiatives could be taken which would help all schools. Beyond cooperation on specific projects, the authorraises the question of whetherlawschools should set up theirown national accreditation scheme. He suggests …

An Analysis Of Gender In Admission To The Canadian Common Law Schools From 1985-86 To 1994-95, Brian M. Mazer

Dalhousie Law Journal

Using statistical data covering a ten year period, this study examines the issue of gender representation in admissions to first year law study at common law schools in Canada. After addressing three identifiable steps in the admission process-applications, offers and registration-the author concludes that while there has been progress and the gap has narrowed, the problem of gender inequality persists.

A Case For Compulsory Legal Ethics Education In Canadian Law Schools, Jocelyn Downie

Dalhousie Law Journal

The author presents principled arguments, consequentialist arguments, arguments by analogy and arguments by authority in support of her conclusion that Canadian law schools should have compulsory legal ethics education. Among other things, she argues that legal ethics education is an imperfect but essential way to meet the obligations that arise from the public trust placed in the legal profession. She also explores a number of benefits that can accrue to students, law schools, the legal profession and society in general when ethics is a compulsory component of legal education.

Teacher Power In The Law School Classroom, Julie Macfarlane

Dalhousie Law Journal

Law teachers make choices over syllabus material, teaching methods and assessment formats, and thus inevitably exercise some control over what and how students learn. The actualpowerof each individual law professor will depend on the context of her particular classroom and her perceived credibility, generally defined by the university as the demonstration of a particular (rationalist) model of subject expertise. The intrinsic hierarchies and highly competitive culture of law school sustain this traditional model of knowledge along with its congruent image of the professor as autonomous, powerful and the focus of the classroom. Feminist law teachers and others who wish to …

Book Review Of Contracts: Cases And Commentaries, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The fifth edition of Boyle and Percy, Contracts: Cases and Commentaries manifests this tension between the ideas market and the products market. When one contrasts this edition to the first there is a significant, though by no means fundamental, shift in emphasis. The ideas dimension has taken on a larger role, but mostly in the form of a grafting onto the conventional structure rather than through conceptual reorientation. The following brief comments attempt to assess the benefits and costs of this incrementalist strategy in the spirit of what bell hooks and Cornel West have described as "critical affirmation".

Interview With Innis Christie In Dalhousie Law School: An Oral History, Ronald St. John Macdonald

Innis Christie Collection

Innis M. Christie

Born: Amherst, Nova Scotia, 8 November 1937

Legal Education: Dalhousie, Cambridge University, and Yale Law School

Areas of specialization: Labour Law, Professional Responsibility and Legal Ethics, Administrative Law

Service on the full-time faculty: 1971-

Interview: Monday, 5 December 1988, Thursday, 15 December 1988, Thursday, 21 December 1988

Some Thoughts On A More Humanist And Equitable Legal Education, A. Wayne Mackay

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article starts with the premise that all teaching is a communication of values between student and teacher. An important challenge in confronting law is making it more inclusive and equitable. A critical step in this process is first recognizing one's own biases. Only then will genuine dialogue about the inherent biases in the legal profession and in law schools be possible. Making law schools more inclusive entails not only superficial changes, but an examination of what is taught, how it is taught and how students are evaluated.

Normative, And Somewhere To Go? Reflections On Professional Responsibility, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this article the author offers some reflections on professional responsibility. He straddles the optimist and pessimist perspectives espousing ''pessoptimism" as a more adequate position than either extreme. The author begins by deconstructing the title of the conference in which the paper was delivered: "A New Look: A National Conference on the Legal Profession and Ethics," which took place in Calgary, in June 1994. Pursuing a middle path between the optimistic and pessimistic approaches to professional responsibility, the author outlines the parameters of his ethical vision which provides some directions for legal practice. There are three elements to his restructured …

Re University Of Saskatchewan Faculty Association And University Of Saskatchewan, Innis Christie, Nancy Hopkins, Suzie Scott

Innis Christie Collection

This is the determination of an Arbitration Committee established to hear and determine whether or not the grounds for the President's recommendation for the dismissal of Lucinda Vandervort, a tenured Associate Professor, are established and, if established, whether or not they constitute good and sufficient cause for dismissal. The Committee has already issued an interim decision that, even if established, the grounds for the President's recommendation for dismissal do not constitute good and sufficient cause for dismissal and Professor Vandervort has been fully reinstated pending this determination. We advised the parties of our conclusion to that effect after the University …

Playing The Game, Allan C. Hutchinson

Dalhousie Law Journal

Soccer is my game. It has been part of my life and, therefore, a part of me since before I can remember. Much of my early years was spent kicking a ball around in one setting or another. Sleeping or waking, I was never far from a soccer ball. On my own against a wall or with a couple of likeminded friends, I took the part of legendary favourites and played out some of soccer's great games. The stuff of boyhood fantasizing, some of my best memories can still be traced back to my grandfather's back yard or the local …

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.

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 …

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.