Australian legal educators have been singing the praises of clinical legal education loud and clear in recent years. Moreover, a significant percentage of Australian law schools have introduced diverse clinical education programs. While it is widely accepted that clinical subjects are a welcome addition to the modern law student experience, it is contended that there are varied perspectives on the appropriate function and design of clinical subjects and programs. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise these diverse perspectives by examining clinical legal education through the lens of legal education discourse. Legal education is characterised by distinct and competing discourses with respect to the nature of law teaching, including doctrinalism, vocationalism, corporatism, liberalism, radicalism and educationalism. The first part of the paper provides an overview of Foucauldian discourse theory and a description of each legal education discourse. The second part of the paper provides an analysis of clinical legal education in the context of each discourse, illustrating the distinctive features of CLE that are aligned and misaligned with the fundamental tenets of each discourse. An introduction to legal education discourse serves to provide law teachers with a sense of objective clarity regarding the competing perspectives that characterise typical law school debates on matters of pedagogy, such as clinical legal education.
This article provides a First Nations standpoint on climate change, informed by human rights law and legal education. It is co-authored by a Yuin woman who is a law academic, a Wirdi man who is a Queens Counsel, and a human rights law academic. The article argues that for any responses to climate change to be effective, they must be grounded in the perspectives, knowledge, and rights of First Nations peoples. The utility of human rights instruments to protect First Nation interests in a climate change milieu is explored at the international and domestic levels. Concomitantly, structural change must begin with the Indigenisation of legal education and the embedding of legal responses to climate change into the law curriculum. A holistic approach is necessary.
This article considers whether different types of Clinical Legal Education (CLE) programs have the same potential to provide a transformative learning experience for students. The author uses Mezirow’s theory to postulate that, although addressing a societal need, ‘missing middle’ Clinical Legal Education programs – those that assist middle-income Australians – may not provide the necessary environment, including an environment ripe for ‘disorienting dilemmas’, for transformative learning. After a comparison of missing middle clinics in Australia and poverty law clinics in the United States of America (US), the author suggests that disorienting dilemmas may only be offered by Clinical Legal Education programs aimed at assisting society’s most vulnerable people.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.