A 'deleterious' effect? : Australian legal education and the production of the legal identity

A body of critical legal scholarship argues that, by the time they have completed their studies, students who enter legal education holding social ideals and intending to use their legal education to achieve social change, have become cynical about the ability of the law to do so and no longer possess such ideals. This is explained by critical scholars to be the result of a process of ideological indoctrination, aimed at ensuring that graduates uphold the narrow and conservative interests of the legal profession and capitalist society, being exercised by law schools acting as adjuncts of the legal profession, and exercised upon the passive body of the law student. By using Foucault’s work on knowledge, power, and the subject to interrogate the assumptions upon which this narrative is based, this thesis intends to suggest a way of thinking differently to the approach taken by many critical legal scholars. It then uses an analytics of government (based on Foucault’s notion of ‘governmentality’) to consider the construction of the legal identity differently. It examines the ways in which the governance of the legal identity is rationalised, programmed, and implemented, in three Queensland law schools. It also looks at the way that five prescriptive texts to ‘surviving’ law school suggest students establish and practise a relation to themselves in order to construct their own legal identities. Overall, this analysis shows that governance is not simply conducted in the profession’s interests, but occurs due to a complex arrangement of different practices, which can lead to the construction of skilled legal professional identities as well as ethical lawyer-citizens that hold an interest in justice. The implications of such an analytics provide the basis for original ways of understanding legal education, and legal education scholarship.

Supporting transition to law school and student well-being : the role of professional legal identity

The empirically established decline in law student well being during the first year of law school is a red-flagged imprimatur for first year curriculum change. This article suggests that by engaging law students with the concept of a positive professional identity, student engagement and intrinsic motivation will increase because they are working towards a career goal that has meaning and purpose. Law school is a time of professional transformation and the legal academy can take steps to ensure that this transformation is inculcated with positive messages. Literature from the fields of law and psychology is analysed in this article, to explain how a positive conception of the legal profession (and a student’s future role within it) can increase a student’s psychological well-being – at law school and beyond.

Transition to law school and law student well-being : The importance of professional legal identity

The empirically established decline in law student well-being during the first year of law school is a red-flagged imprimatur for first year curriculum change. This article suggests that by engaging law students with the concept of a positive professional identity, student engagement and intrinsic motivation will increase because they are working towards a career goal that has meaning and purpose. Law school is a time of professional transformation and the legal academy can take steps to ensure that this transformation is inculcated with positive messages. Literature from the fields of law and psychology is analysed in this article, to explain how a positive conception of the legal profession (and a student’s future role within it) can increase a student’s psychological well-being – at law school and beyond.

Foucault Goes to Law School : Using Foucault to Examine Australian Legal Education

This paper will consider the way that Foucault’s work has been utilised to examine Australian legal education, particularly in the context of understanding the construction of the legal identity. While remaining sensitive to the many potential ‘uses’ of Foucault’s tools, as well as his problematisation of the author as an organising feature of discourse, this paper will argue that legal education scholarship overwhelmingly utilises concepts such as ‘discourse’ and ‘power-knowledge’, which, while useful, cannot provide a nuanced understanding of the construction of the legal identity. Consequently, this paper suggests that future legal education research utilise Foucault’s concepts of ‘ethics’ and ‘governmentality’ to address these issues.

Legal education and the 'idealistic student': using Foucault to unpack the critical legal narrative

It appears that few of the students holding ‘socially idealistic’ goals upon entering law school actually maintain these upon graduation. The critical legal narrative, which explains and seeks to act upon this shift in the graduate’s ‘legal identity’, posits that these ideals are repressed through power relations that create passive receptacles into which professional ideologies can be deposited, in the interests of those advantaged by the social and legal status quo. Using the work of Michel Foucault, this paper unpacks the assumptions underpinning this narrative, particularly its arguments about ideology, power, and the subject. In doing so, it will argue this narrative provides an untenable basis for political action within legal education. By interrogating this narrative, this paper provides a new way of understanding the construction of the legal identity through legal education, and a new basis for political action within law school.

The right to an identity: birth registration in Latin America and the Caribbean

A disturbing token of child and adolescent vulnerability in Latin America and the Caribbean is that so many are deprived of any legal identity by failure to report their birth. This bars them from exercising basic citizen rights and can hinder their access to productive employment, social benefits and the justice system and deny them recognition as full citizens and the right to well-being, capacity development and political participation.

Community projects : extending the community lawyering model

Law schools in Australia and the United Kingdom are increasingly adopting clinical legal education (CLE) as an important part of their curriculum. Models of CLE are emerging in those jurisdictions which draw on local experience and the strong tradition of CLE and community lawyering in the United States. The purpose of this article is to examine the pedagogy that underlies CLE and to consider how it can be applied to newly emerging models of CLE. In particular, it will evaluate a community project legal clinic in which students work on social justice projects in partnership with a range of community organisations, not limited to legal centres, with a view to determining whether pedagogical goals are being met in the way that the course is being delivered. This article argues that community project legal clinics can result in positive student learning outcomes in relation to the development of a pro bono ethos and commitment to social justice, lawyering skills including client communication, and the development of a positive professional legal identity. Part II of the article provides a brief overview of the history of CLE in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, noting the trend towards the development of community lawyering clinics. Part III examines the benefits of community lawyering clinics focusing on the benefits for student learning and the service-learning pedagogy applied in community lawyering clinics in the United States. Finally, part IV looks at a case study of a new community project clinic in Australia that draws upon the service-learning pedagogy of community lawyering CLE. In the community project clinic, students engage in service-learning through undertaking projects with not-for-profit community organisations. Community partners identify relevant issues and needs, and the students work in interdisciplinary teams to address these. Law students working in these teams are often exposed to a broader social problem or issue than they would experience in a traditional ‘in-person’ legal clinic. Initial evaluation suggests that this model for community clinics in law schools assists students to develop lawyering skills and a positive legal identity including awareness of and support for pro bono legal work and a sense of belonging in the legal profession.

Influence et usage de la mémoire dans la vision officielle française de l’Allemagne réunifiée (1989-1995)

Ce mémoire part du constat que l’histoire et, a fortiori, la mémoire ont été largement sollicitées par le discours officiel français au moment et au lendemain de la réunification allemande. La fin définitive de l’après-guerre et le retour à la souveraineté diplomatique de l’Allemagne suscitent en France des questions qui inquiètent – en raison notamment du souvenir de l’histoire – et raniment la volonté d’encadrer la puissance allemande dans la communauté européenne. Pour comprendre le rôle que la mémoire a pu tenir dans la diplomatie française, l’étude tente d’analyser l’usage que les responsables français ont fait du passé en tant qu’instrument de la politique étrangère et le poids qu’il a représenté dans la vision française de l’unification allemande. Ce mémoire démontre que l’entendement du passé se conforme, sous toutes ses expressions, à la politique européenne de la France. Il atteste également que la France se saisit de ce moment charnière pour structurer un espace européen qui fait écho aux principes universalistes issus de la Révolution française, lesquels doivent être désormais portés par le binôme franco-allemand. L’invention de la tradition et l’usage métaphorique du passé répondent d’une préoccupation politique de réconciliation franco-allemande et accompagnent la mise en place d’un patriotisme historique sur lequel pourront s’établir les identités civique et juridique européennes. La mémoire officielle, qui est entièrement orientée vers la promotion et la justification de l’avenir communautaire, dénature certaines données historiques de manière à exorciser le présent d’un passé encombrant. Les limites de la mémoire officielle se trouvent donc dans cette représentation d’un passé aseptisé; un passé n’étant pas une finalité, mais un moyen déférant à l’intérêt national.

L‟application de la Grande Loi de la Paix (Kaianerekowa) de la Haudenosaunee dans la pratique de la médiation à Kahnawake

La tradition juridique iroquoise, ou de la Confédération iroquoise - autrement connue sous l‟appellation Haudenosaunee ou Gens du Longhouse - est non seulement ancienne, mais aussi organique et viable. Les rappels de son existence et de son contenu nous entourent et nous pénètrent. Son application, toutefois, exige notre volonté et notre participation, ainsi que celles des communautés autochtones dont les ancêtres l‟ont développée il y a plusieurs siècles. Ceci représente un défi constant pour la communauté mohawk de Kahnawake où la marche du temps a mené, malgré la présence notable et indépendante des Mohawks avant et pendant les premiers siècles d‟interaction avec les Européens, à une intégration juridique de la mentalité coloniale. L‟on pourrait même douter de l‟existence de leur ordre juridique, la Kaianerekowa. La réalité néanmoins est toute autre et cet ordre est complet, sophistiqué et applicable; il s‟ouvre ainsi, nécessairement, à la possibilité de critique et d‟amélioration progressive. La médiation illustre bien ces dynamiques, parce qu‟elle en fait partie depuis un temps immémorial. Aujourd‟hui, Kahnawake cherche à développer son identité juridique ainsi que ses relations avec le monde extérieur. La Kaianerekowa représente une alternative concrète viable pour les communautés locales ou globales. La médiation demeure une application pratique et efficace de cet ordre juridique pour cette communauté, comme pour d‟autres, chacune avec des adaptations particulières. Nous argumenterons pour la reconnaissance pleine et entière de la Kaianerekowa comme ordre juridique et de la médiation comme forme juridique potentiellement dominante à Kahnawake.

El patrimonio cultural como derecho: el caso ecuatoriano (Tema Central)

When it comes to human rights, the first thoughts that come to mind are the rights to life, liberty or equality, among others, which possess the concept of being fundamental. Commonly, culture and heritage are not usually considered as rights; however, as well as there is the right to own legal identity, there is also the right to enjoy a cultural identity. This paper deals precisely with the study of culture and cultural heritage as a human right. Cultural heritage’s meaning concept is analyzed, its enclosure between fundamental rights and the way that it should be protected, essentially by the State. The Ecuadorian case is also analyzed around their legislation and cultural management, in order to assess the treatment that this right has been received in the country.

Negotiating identities, striving for state recognition: Blacks in Córdoba, Argentina 1776–1853

Race in Argentina played a significant role as a highly durable construct by identifying and advancing subjects (1776–1810) and citizens (1811–1853). My dissertation explores the intricacies of power relations by focusing on the ways in which race informed the legal process during the transition from a colonial to national State. It argues that the State’s development in both the colonial and national periods depended upon defining and classifying African descendants. In response, people of African descendent used the State’s assigned definitions and classifications to advance their legal identities. It employs race and culture as operative concepts, and law as a representation of the sometimes, tense relationship between social practices and the State’s concern for social peace. This dissertation examines the dynamic nature of the court. It utilizes the theoretical concepts multicentric legal orders that are analyzed through weak and strong legal pluralisms, and jurisdictional politics, from the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. This dissertation juxtaposes various levels of jurisdiction (canon/state law and colonial/national law) to illuminate how people of color used the legal system to ameliorate their social condition. In each chapter the primary source materials are state generated documents which include criminal, ecclesiastical, civil, and marriage dissent court cases along with notarial and census records. Though it would appear that these documents would provide a superficial understanding of people of color, my analysis provides both a top-down and bottom-up approach that reflects a continuous negotiation for African descendants’ goal for State recognition. These approaches allow for implicit or explicit negotiation of a legal identity that transformed slaves and free African descendants into active agents of their own destinies.

Book review: Jiří Přibáň, legal symbolism: on law, time and European identity

This is a book review of Jiří Přibáň, Legal Symbolism: On Law, Time and European Identity, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2007, 226 pp, ISBN: 978-0-7546-7073-5

The medico-legal importance of establishing human identity by palatal rugoscopy: evaluation of the immutability and individuality of palatal rugae under the influence of ante mortem orthodontic treatment

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.