Professional legal education reviews : too many 'what's, too few 'how's

Former colonies of the British Empire, Hong Kong and Australia inherited the common law system and the basic structure of legal education and training from England and Wales and remain the closest siblings in terms of proximity in distance and the high degree of similarity between their respective frameworks for legal education and training. This article first summarizes the major reviews of legal education and training in these three jurisdictions: England and Wales, Australia and Hong Kong over the last four decades and argues that while these reviews are keen on investigating ‘what’ is lacking in the curriculum and ‘what’ needs to be changed to equip graduates for the challenges of the day, they do not seem to have shown the same level of enthusiasm in identifying ‘how’ the intended outcomes prescribed can be achieved. Nevertheless, law schools in these jurisdictions recently began to tap on, and combine with the improved classroom pedagogy, clinical legal education and internship, innovative teaching tools and solutions in an attempt to deliver more enhanced learning experience to students. The article examines the role ascribed to technology in legal education and training with a particular reference to SimPLE, a e-learning platform developed in England and Wales which has been put to use in Australia as well, and the reform initiatives taken, and planned to be taken, by the Department of Professional Legal Education at the University of Hong Kong in its Postgraduate Certificate in Laws programme. This article concludes by pointing out the importance of collaboration among stakeholders including teachers, university administration and the legal profession in effecting a more active role of technology in legal education and training of today.

DNA transfer by examination tools--a risk for forensic casework?

The introduction of profiling systems with increased sensitivity has led to a concurrent increase in the risk of detecting contaminating DNA in forensic casework. To evaluate the contamination risk of tools used during exhibit examination we have assessed the occurrence and level of DNA transferred between mock casework exhibits, comprised of cotton or glass substrates, and high-risk vectors (scissors, forceps, and gloves). The subsequent impact of such transfer in the profiling of a target sample was also investigated. Dried blood or touch DNA, deposited on the primary substrate, was transferred via the vector to the secondary substrate, which was either DNA-free or contained a target sample (dried blood or touch DNA). Pairwise combinations of both heavy and light contact were applied by each vector in order to simulate various levels of contamination. The transfer of dried blood to DNA-free cotton was observed for all vectors and transfer scenarios, with transfer substantially lower when glass was the substrate. Overall touch DNA transferred less efficiently, with significantly lower transfer rates than blood when transferred to DNA-free cotton; the greatest transfer of touch DNA occurred between cotton and glass substrates. In the presence of a target sample, the detectability of transferred DNA decreased due to the presence of background DNA. Transfer had no impact on the detectability of the target profile, however, in casework scenarios where the suspect profiles are not known, profile interpretation becomes complicated by the addition of contaminating alleles and the probative value of the evidence may be affected. The results of this study reiterate the need for examiners to adhere to stringent laboratory cleaning protocols, particularly in the interest of contamination minimisation, and to reduce the handling of items to prevent intra-item transfer.

Amazônia Legal e o estado de Mato Grosso: dois ensaios sobre o processo de convergência espacial para o desmatamento

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Povos e comunidades tradicionais da Amazônia Legal: análise das normas jurídicas de acesso aos territórios e aos bens ambientais

Este estudo examina o direito de acesso aos territórios por parte de povos e comunidades tradicionais e o direito de acesso aos bens ambientais localizados nos territórios tradicionais, à luz da Constituição Federal de 1988 e das normas infraconstitucionais. A abordagem da pesquisa privilegia a Amazônia Legal e utiliza como exemplo o Estado do Pará. A análise concentra-se em três categorias de povos e comunidades tradicionais: povos indígenas, comunidades remanescentes de quilombos e comunidades extrativistas tradicionais, localizadas em unidades de conservação (RESEX, RDS e FLONA) e em PAE. Faz-se um exame crítico dos institutos jurídicos que garantem aos povos e comunidades tradicionais o acesso aos territórios e dos instrumentos que permitem o uso de bens ambientais localizados em seus territórios. Os resultados da pesquisa enfatizam a importância da normatização e da regulamentação, com base no direito coletivo, do acesso aos territórios por parte de povos e comunidades tradicionais, bem como do acesso aos bens localizados nesses territórios, considerando-se que povos e comunidades tradicionais compõem o patrimônio ambiental nacional – meio ambiente ecologicamente equilibrado. Constata-se, por trás da resistência a essa normatização ou regulamentação, a manutenção da espoliação, tanto externamente, por parte dos países do Norte em relação aos países do Sul, quanto internamente, por parte de grupos dominantes em relação a grupos dominados.

Effective acoustical monitoring tools for Mannophryne lamarcai

We performed the field-work during the dry (March 2014) and reainy season (May and June 2014) at the species type locality: Cerro Socopó, located at central-west region between Falcón, Lara and Zulia states, Venezuela. Socopó is a small and isolated mountain (1.571 m) belonging to the Ziruma mountains, and represents a relict of tropical mountain forest surrounded by semi-arid vegetation and grassland. This area is home to 312 species of vertebrates, including endangered and endemic amphibians species like Mannophryne lamarcai, Leptodactylus magistris and Dendropsophus amicorum. These forest and species are severely threatened by cattle ranch and illegal timber extraction, with forest formations only above 1000 meters. Despite this, no legal protected figure has been established in the area. We identified a 2.5 km secondary road transect within the study area based on the following criteria: 1) it cover different habitat types (streams and lagoons); and 2) it within the altitudinal gradient described for the specie (1,040 to 1,363 m). We identified three sampling points throughout the transect located in the vicinity of wetland habits: socopo1, socopo2 and socopo4. We did two types of recordings: 1) high quality recordings to characterize the advertisement call for M. lamarcai, non described to date (socopo4), and 2) recordings in different sampling points to evaluate call detectors performance in different acoustic scenarios (in all three localities).

A Comparative Analysis of Hedging in a Corpus of Two Written Legal Discourse Genres

Esta tesis doctoral, que es la culminación de mis estudios de doctorado impartidos por el Departamento de Lingüística Aplicada a la Ciencia y a la Tecnología de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, aborda el análisis del uso de la matización (hedging) en el lenguaje legal inglés siguiendo los postulados y principios de la análisis crítica de género (Bhatia, 2004) y empleando las herramientas de análisis de córpora WordSmith Tools versión 6 (Scott, 2014). Como refleja el título, el estudio se centra en la descripción y en el análisis contrastivo de las variedades léxico-sintácticas de los matizadores del discurso (hedges) y las estrategias discursivas que con ellos se llevan a cabo, además de las funciones que éstas desempeñan en un corpus de sentencias del Tribunal Supremo de EE. UU., y de artículos jurídicos de investigación americanos, relacionando, en la medida posible, éstas con los rasgos determinantes de los dos géneros, desde una perspectiva socio-cognitiva. El elemento innovador que ofrece es que, a pesar de los numerosos estudios que se han podido realizar sobre los matizadores del discurso en el inglés general (Lakoff, 1973; Hübler, 1983; Clemen, 1997; Markkanen and Schröder, 1997; Mauranen, 1997; Fetzer 2010; y Finnegan, 2010 entre otros) académico (Crompton, 1997; Meyer, 1997; Skelton, 1997; Martín Butragueňo, 2003) científico (Hyland, 1996a, 1996c, 1998c, 2007; Grabe and Kaplan, 1997; Salager-Meyer, 1997 Varttala, 2001) médico (Prince, 1982; Salager-Meyer, 1994; Skelton, 1997), y, en menor medida el inglés legal (Toska, 2012), no existe ningún tipo de investigación que vincule los distintos usos de la matización a las características genéricas de las comunicaciones profesionales. Dentro del lenguaje legal, la matización confirma su dependencia tanto de las expectativas a macro-nivel de la comunidad de discurso, como de las intenciones a micro-nivel del escritor de la comunicación, variando en función de los propósitos comunicativos del género ya sean éstos educativos, pedagógicos, interpersonales u operativos. El estudio pone de relieve el uso predominante de los verbos modales epistémicos y de los verbos léxicos como matizadores del discurso, estos últimos divididos en cuatro tipos (Hyland 1998c; Palmer 1986, 1990, 2001) especulativos, citativos, deductivos y sensoriales. La realización léxico-sintáctica del matizador puede señalar una de cuatro estrategias discursivas particulares (Namsaraev, 1997; Salager-Meyer, 1994), la indeterminación, la despersonalización, la subjectivisación, o la matización camuflada (camouflage hedging), cuya incidencia y función varia según género. La identificación y cuantificación de los distintos matizadores y estrategias empleados en los diferentes géneros del discurso legal puede tener implicaciones pedagógicos para los estudiantes de derecho no nativos que tienen que demostrar una competencia adecuada en su uso y procesamiento. ABSTRACT This doctoral thesis, which represents the culmination of my doctoral studies undertaken in the Department of Linguistics Applied to Science and Technology of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, focusses on the analysis of hedging in legal English following the principles of Critical Genre Analysis (Bhatia, 2004), and using WordSmith Tools version 6 (Scott, 2014) corpus analysis tools. As the title suggests, this study centers on the description and contrastive analysis of lexico-grammatical realizations of hedges and the discourse strategies which they can indicate, as well as the functions they can carry out, in a corpus of U.S. Supreme Court opinions and American law review articles. The study relates realization, incidence and function of hedging to the predominant generic characteristics of the two genres from a socio-cognitive perspective. While there have been numerous studies on hedging in general English (Lakoff, 1973; Hübler, 1983; Clemen, 1997; Markkanen and Schröder, 1997; Mauranen, 1997; Fetzer 2010; and Finnegan, 2010 among others) academic English (Crompton, 1997; Meyer, 1997; Skelton, 1997; Martín Butragueňo, 2003) scientific English (Hyland, 1996a, 1996c, 1998c, 2007; Grabe and Kaplan, 1997; Salager-Meyer, 1997 Varttala, 2001) medical English (Prince, 1982; Salager-Meyer, 1994; Skelton, 1997), and, to a lesser degree, legal English (Toska, 2012), this study is innovative in that it links the different realizations and functions of hedging to the generic characteristics of a particular professional communication. Within legal English, hedging has been found to depend on not only the macro-level expectations of the discourse community for a specific genre, but also on the micro-level intentions of the author of a communication, varying according to the educational, pedagogical, interpersonal or operative purposes the genre may have. The study highlights the predominance of epistemic modal verbs and lexical verbs as hedges, dividing the latter into four types (Hyland, 1998c; Palmer, 1986, 1990, 2001): speculative, quotative, deductive and sensorial. Lexical-grammatical realizations of hedges can signal one of four discourse strategies (Namsaraev, 1997; Salager-Meyer, 1994), indetermination, depersonalization, subjectivization and camouflage hedging, as well as fulfill a variety of functions. The identification and quantification of the different hedges and hedging strategies and functions in the two genres may have pedagogical implications for non-native law students who must demonstrate adequate competence in the production and interpretation of hedged discourse.

Semantic Web for the legal domain: the next step

Ontology-driven systems with reasoning capabilities in the legal field are now better understood. Legal concepts are not discrete, but make up a dynamic continuum between common sense terms, specific technical use, and professional knowledge, in an evolving institutional reality. Thus, the tension between a plural understanding of regulations and a more general understanding of law is bringing into view a new landscape in which general legal frameworks – grounded in well-known legal theories stemming from 20th-century c. legal positivism or sociological jurisprudence – are made compatible with specific forms of rights management on the Web. In this sense, Semantic Web tools are not only being designed for information retrieval, classification, clustering, and knowledge management. They can also be understood as regulatory tools, i.e. as components of the contemporary legal architecture, to be used by multiple stakeholders – front-line practitioners, policymakers, legal drafters, companies, market agents, and citizens. That is the issue broadly addressed in this Special Issue on the Semantic Web for the Legal Domain, overviewing the work carried out over the last fifteen years, and seeking to foster new research in this field, beyond the state of the art.

Perpetuating Racism: Legal Education, Race and Social Justice

By presenting the results of a content analysis of Australian undergraduate legal education, this paper examines the extent to which issues of race, ethnicity, discrimination, and multiculturalism feature within this component of the moral, ethical, and professional development of legal professionals. It will demonstrate that instead of encouraging a deep, critical and contextual understanding of such issues, legal education provides a relatively superficial one, which has important implications for the role that legal professionals play in overcoming injustices such as institutional racism, and the kinds of social reform that they are likely to undertake.