Visual Approaches to Property Law Pedagogy

Purpose - To consider a more visual approach to property law teaching practices. This will be achieved by exploring the existence of ‘visual learners’ as a student body, evaluating the use of more visual teaching techniques in academic practice, recognising the historic dominance of text in legal education, and examining the potential for heightening visual teaching practices in the teaching of property law. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews and analyses some of the available literature on visual pedagogy, and visual approaches to legal education, but also introduces an amount of academic practitioner analysis. Findings – This paper evidences that, rather than focusing on the categorisation of ‘visual learner’, the modern academic practitioner should employ the customary use of more visual stimuli; consequently becoming a more ‘visual teacher’. This paper demonstrates that these practices, if performed effectively, can impact upon the information literacy of the whole student body: It also proffers a number of suggestions as to how this could be achieved within property law teaching practices. Practical implications – The paper will provide support for early-career academic practitioners, who are entering a teaching profession in a period of accelerated and continual change, by presenting an overview of pedagogic practices in the area. It will also provide a stimulus for those currently teaching on property law modules and support their transition to a more visual form of teaching practice. Originality/value – This paper provides a comprehensive overview of visual pedagogy in legal education, and specifically within that of property law, which has not been conducted elsewhere.

Is there any room for the doctrine of fundamental rights of states in today's international law?

This article serves as a general substantive introduction to the special issue on the fundamental rights of states in international law. It introduces the concept in theoretical and doctrinal terms, and lays out the questions that will be addressed by the contributions to the special issue. These questions include: 1) What do attributes like ‘inherent’, ‘inalienable’ and ‘permanent’ mean with regard to state rights?; 2) Do they lead to identifying a unitary distinct category of fundamental rights of states?; 3) If so, what is their source and legal character?; 4) What are their legal implications, eg, when they come into conflict with other obligations of the right holder or with the actions of other states and international organisations?; and ultimately, 5) Is there still room in today’s international law for a doctrine of ‘fundamental’ rights of states? The article reviews the fundamental rights of states in positive law sources and in international legal scholarship, and identifies the reasons for a renaissance of attention for this doctrine.