Imperfect practice under the Legal Profession Act 2004 (Qld)

Special edition: legal reforms in Queensland - the Legal Profession Act brings greater consistency into many aspects of lawyer regulation - while they are designed to bring greater national uniformity, the reforms depart from the national Model Laws, leading to unnecessary complexity.

"Get new lawyers!"

In James Rubin's account of the Kosovo war, he describes an exchange between Secretary Albright and Robin Cook (the British Foreign Secretary). Cook was explaining that it is difficult for Britain to commit to the war without UN Security Council approval because the legal advice he had received was that such action would be illegal under international law. Albright's response was, simply, "get new lawyers". Rubin "credits" Blair with a "push" that swung the British to "finally agree" that a UN Security Council resolution was "not legally required". Robin Cook later stated in Parliament and that the war was legal. Interestingly, Blair did not. This article does not look at whether or not such an exchange took place; rather look at the ethical issues that such a situation would generate. The article suggests what the ethical obligations of the key legal players in such institutional dramas should be—including governments seeking advice, the lawyers giving it, the ministers reporting it and the opposition in Parliament. The article sets out the particular responsibilities of the lawyers and officials of a Westminster system. It also sets out some of the institutional mechanisms for making it more likely that those obligations are fulfilled—as always through the interaction of obligations by different players that make it more risky for any player to breach his or her ethical obligations. Analogous duties would be faced by the relevant actors in other systems.

More and more lawyers but still no judges

This paper discusses some parallels and contrasts between the legal roads to war and suggest that the case is stronger than ever for adjudication of the matter before an independent tribunal where the competing views can be tested.

Using cost-effective multimedia to create engaging learning experiences in law and other disciplines

This is the final report of an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Teaching Fellowship which addressed the needs of two separate groups of learners: (1) final year law students studying ethics and (2) law academics and other interested educators in higher education wishing to use information and communication technologies (ICT) to create engaging learning environments for their students but lacking the capacity to do so. The Fellowship resulted in final year law students being infused with an improved appreciation of ethical practice than they receive from traditional lecture/tutorial means by the development of an integrated program of blended learning including an online program entitled "Entry into Valhalla". This "ethics capstone‟ utilises multimedia produced using cost effective resources (including the "Second Life" virtual environment) to create engaging, contextualised learning experiences. The Fellowship also constructed the knowledge of producing cost-effective multimedia projects in other law academics and other educators in higher education by staff development activities comprising workshops, conference presentations and an interactive website using the "Entry into Valhalla" program as a case study exemplar.

Second Life machinima enhancing the learning of law : Lessons from successful endeavours

A traditional approach centred on weekly lectures, perhaps supported by a tutorial programme, still predominates in modern legal education in Australia. This approach tends to focus on the transmission of knowledge about legal rules and doctrine to students who adopt a largely passive role. Criticisms of the traditional approach have led to law schools expanding their curricula to include the teaching of skills, including the skill of negotiation and an appreciation of legal ethics and professional responsibility. However, in a climate of limited government funding for law schools in Australia, innovation in legal education remains a challenge. This paper considers the successful use of Second Life machinima in two programs, Air Gondwana and Entry into Valhalla and their part in the creation of engaging, effective learning environments. These programs not only engage students in active learning but also facilitate flexibility in their studies and other benefits. The programs yield important lessons concerning the use of machinima innovations in curricula, not only for academics involved in legal education but also those in other disciplines, especially those that rely on traditional passive lectures in their teaching and learning approaches.

Maintaining the ethic of service [Editorial]

This issue of Precedent is concerned with professional legal ethics. ln my view, professional ethics are rules about how you do your job, based on moral principles. By virtue of the nature of the work they do, the reputation of the institution through which they are admitted to practice (the court), and the consequences that can flow if they act inappropriately or incompetently, lawyers are under constant scrutiny in all aspects of their lives. Errors, omissions or misdeeds in both their professional and their personal lives have the potential to damage them, their clients, the profession itself and the court. We ought never to take for granted the trust the public places in us to preserve the integrity of the legal system itself, especially in times when that system may be under threat, either from without or from within.

Duty to the court and the administration of justice : some examples, implications and clarifications

No liberal democracy can survive without popular trust in its judicial system. The legal profession and the judiciary enjoy a level of independence and autonomy from the executive that makes them both powerful and privileged. A UNIQUE AND ORGANIC DUTY: So long as the courts are seen to fulfil their duty to guard against encroachments by the executive on the freedoms and rights of individual citizens with integrity and credibility, they maintain enough public support to retain their normative authority. But support for those with power and privilege is easily undermined. It is contingent upon trust. Lawyers who breach that trust in ways that go to the heart of the legal system ought to expect to be made examples of and to suffer severe penalties. The good news is that the sorts of breach discussed here should be neither difficult to anticipate nor to avoid – in theory. In practice, smart and honest lawyers sometimes fall foul of these duties for all sorts of understandable (if not condonable) reasons. Law does not get practised in a social or cultural vacuum. Lawyers are people, and people have weaknesses, failings and stresses...

Teoria da despesa pública: uma leitura ético-constitucional em busca do possível da reserva

Brazilian law passes through a crisis of effectiveness commonly attributed to the extravagance of fundamental rights and public shortage. However, public finances are not dogmatically structured to solve the conflicts around the limitations of public spending. There are ethical conditioning factors, like morality, proportionality and impartiality, however, these principles act separately, while the problem of public shortage is holistic. Also, the subjectivity of politics discretionary in the definition of public spending, which is supported in an indeterminate concept of public interest, needs material orientation about the destination of public funds, making it vulnerable to ideological manipulation, resulting in real process of catching rights. Not even the judicial activism (such as influx of constitutionalism) is shown legally appropriate. The Reserve of Possible, also presents basic ethical failure. Understanding the formation of public shortage is therefore essential for understanding the crisis of effectiveness of state responsibilities, given the significant expansion of the state duty of protection, which does not find legal technique of defense of the established interests. The premise of argument, then, part of the possibility of deducting minimal model ethical of desire to spend (public interest) according to objective parameters of the normative system. Public spending has always been treated disdainfully by the Brazilian doctrine, according to the legal character accessory assigned to the monetary cost. Nonetheless, it is the meeting point between economics and law, or is in the marrow of the problem of public shortage. Expensive Subjects to modernity, as the effectiveness of fundamental rights, pass necessarily an ethical legal system of public spending. From the ethical principles deducted from the planning, only the democratic principle guides the public spending through the approval of public spending in the complex budget process. In other words, there is an ethical distancing of economic reality in relation to state responsibilities. From the dogmatic belief of insufficiency, public spending is evaluated ethically, according to the foundations of modern constitutionalism, in search of possible of the financial reserve, certain that the ethics of public economy is a sine qua non condition for legal ethics.

O consentimento informado: Qual o seu real valor na prática médica?

Trata-se de um artigo que comenta sobre a real importância do Termo de Consentimento Informado na prática médica. Este documento tem sido cada vez mais usado como uma prática defensiva, a fim de constituir provas para defesa de um eventual processo judicial de responsabilidade médica, desvirtuando assim a idéia original, que seria a de respeitar a autonomia do paciente e delimitar a responsabilidade médica. O documento tem como objetivo mostrar que o médico cumpriu com seu dever de informar. Seu grande valor reside nos casos onde existam riscos de danos irreversíveis ao paciente. Conclui-se, porém, que um prontuário bem elaborado onde se inclui o registro das informações que foram transmitidas, bem como o grau de participação dos pacientes e seus familiares nas decisões terapêuticas, também deve ter valor ético e jurídico semelhante do TCI.

De la influencia de las costumbres sobre las leyes, y de la que ejercen las leyes sobre las costumbres /

Mode of access: Internet.

Principia Ethica Fundata in Jure Naturae, Explanata Praelectionibus Academicis Philosophiae Practicae seu Moralis : cum Annexis Positionibus Ethico-Historicis : quas Magno Morum Magistro, Historiae Immortalitatis compendio, Divo Ignatio de Lojola Filiali Dicatas Affectu in Alma, Antiquissima, ac celeberrima Caesarea, Regiaque Universitate Carolo-Ferdinandea Pragensis sub Rectoratu Admodum Reverendi ac Eximii Patris P. Leopoldi Grim ... Rectoris Magnifici ... /

Mode of access: Internet.

Entscheidungen des Ehrengerichtshofs der Reichs-Rechtsanwalts-Kammer.

Also numbered continuously.

ARDC information guide /

Cover title.