Online research in philosophy

Australia's first university law course began at the University of Melbourne in 1857, as the teaching of contemporary law, long neglected in England, spread among universities in common-law countries. Diploma privilege made the course distinctive, compared with many of its counterparts in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom: from the beginning, its qualifications were recognised for the purpose of admission to legal practice, and the privilege was retained, with some variations, throughout the Melbourne Law School's history. Still more unusual, for a common-law jurisdiction, was the early date (1872) when university study became compulsory for all intending lawyers. The law school's role as gatekeeper to the profession made it the focus of an intense struggle over its curriculum in the 1930s and 1940s. The Melbourne Law School's history also shows the effects of trends in Australian higher education: the growth that followed World War 2; the rise and decline of federal government funding; the democratisation of university governance in the 1970s; and the emergence of the enterprise university, with its rising aspirations, corporate management and entrepreneurial spirit. The book's table of contents and preface are available here. Table of Contents Preface 1 A School of Law: 1857-88 2 Cinderella: 1889-1927 3 Liberal and Cultured: 1928-45 4 Building the New Jerusalem: 1946-66 5 Village Democracy: 1967-88 6 Performance Against Plan: 1989-2007 Conclusion Acknowledgements Abbreviations Notes Select bibliography Index.

The works of Michel Foucault have not, so far, been employed so as to enable an adequate understanding of the functioning of the law. This article begins to remedy this situation. Past uses of Foucault's work have failed to provide a satisfactory account of the relationship between the juridical and the disciplinary aspects of "the law" in general. The application of his ideas to the practice of the common law offers a way forward. In this article, we use Foucault's ideas of discursive formations and discursive practices to understand the operation of the doctrine of stare decisis in the common law. It is uncontroversial to assert that the doctrine is difficult to define - this analysis demonstrates that this signifies its "always/already" nature. The understanding applied here indicates that stare decisis is best seen as a set of discursive practices - the most significant of which relates to the repetition of past legal statements. The doctrine, as a result, is both fundamental to the operation of the common law as a discursive formation and constitutive of those who participate in, and perpetuate, it - the lawyers and judges.

This article seeks to explore two related questions. What could the institutions teaching law in the "New Europe," that is, in Eastern Europe and Russia, do in relation to new opportunities in legal education, and what should American law schools do in relation to the same essential problem (and opportunity).The article is based on a panel presentation made at the Association of American Law Schools Session on "Educating Foreign and U.S. Lawyers for Global Challenges", Co-Sponsored by Sections on Graduate Programs for Foreign Lawyers and Post-Graduate Legal Education - AALS Annual Meeting - January 5, 2004, Atlanta, Georgia (USA).

In the recent spate of philosophers' writing on legal ethics, most contend that lawyers' professional role exposes them to great risk of moral wrongdoing; and some even conclude that the role's demands inevitably corrupt lawyers' characters. In assessing their arguments, I take up three questions: (1) whether philosophers' training and experience give them authority to scold lawyers; (2) whether anything substantive has emerged in the scolding that lawyers are morally bound to take to heart; and (3) whether lawyers ought to defer to philosophers' claims about moral principle. I return a negative answer to each.

Law school clinics play an important role in training future lawyers and in providing legal assistance to traditionally under-represented individuals and groups. In addition to facing the legal issues present in any law practice, law clinic students and faculty are often confronted with ethical issues that lawyers representing poor and unpopular clients sometimes face - outside interference in case and client selection. This article explores the ethical considerations raised by interference in law school clinic case and client selection and limitations on the means of representation lawyers may employ in representing their clients. The article's analysis provides a useful framework for responding to interference with not just law school clinics, but also with legal services lawyers, public defenders, and private practitioners representing poor and unpopular clients and causes.

Examining legal ethics within the framework of modern practice, this book identifies two important ethical issues that all lawyers confront: the difference between the role of lawyers and the role of judges in pursuing justice, and the conflicting responsibilities lawyers have to their clients and to the legal system more broadly. In addressing these issues, Legal Ethics provides an explanation of the duties and dilemmas common to practicing lawyers in modern legal systems throughout the world. The authors focus their analysis on lawyers in independent practice in modern capitalist constitutional regimes, including the United States, Japan, Europe, and Latin America, as well as the emerging legal systems in China and the former Soviet bloc, to develop connections between the legal profession and political systems based on the rule of law. They find that although ethical tension is inherent in the legal practice of all these societies, the legal profession is essential to stable political institutions.

There is a growing trend in Australia to require lawyers to certify reasonable prospects of success for the cases they bring and defend. New South Wales has led the way with the Legal Profession Act 2004 (NSW) Pt 3.2 Division 10 requiring legal practitioners to certify reasonable prospects of success in all claims for damages. The requirement places a significant onus on lawyers to make a judgment about the merits of a case before it is begun, yet the common law has long provided mechanisms to ensure that cases without prospects of success do not go to trial. This article considers Australian legislative provisions requiring lawyers to certify reasonable prospects of success of cases. It examines the application of the NSW legislation by the courts highlighting the difficulties of interpretation of what constitute 'reasonable prospects of success' and the application of the legislation in the context of the dynamic litigation process. It is argued that these legislated obligations on lawyers will have a detrimental effect on access to justice by denying parties, in particular plaintiffs, the opportunity to have their cases properly and fully determined in the courts. This article examines common law mechanisms for dissuading cases without prospects and argues that the general law is an effective system for ensuring that cases without prospects of success are not maintained. The Australian experience is instructive for consideration of optimal reform packages for the administration of justice and to evaluate the role of any litigation lawyer within the judicial and court process.

How are general relations of law and morality typically conceived in an environment of Anglo-saxon common law? This paper considers some classical common law methods and traditions as these have confronted and been overlaid with modern ideas of legal positivism. While classical common law treated a community and its morality as the cultural foundation of law, legal positivism's analytical separation of law and morals, allied with liberal approaches to legal regulation, have made the relationship of legal and moral principles more complex and contested. Using ideas from Durkheim's and Weber's sociology, I argue that the traditional common law emphasis on an inductive, empirical treatment of moral practices has continuing merit, but in contemporary conditions the vague idea of community embedded in classical common law thought must be replaced with a much more precise conceptualisation of coexisting communities, whose moral bonds are diverse and require a corresponding diversity of forms of legal recognition or protection.

This Article uses public choice theory and the new institutionalism to discuss the incentives, proclivities, and shared backgrounds of lawyers and judges. In America every law-making judge has a single unifying characteristic, each is a former lawyer. This shared background has powerful and unexplored effects on the shape and structure of American law. This Article argues that the shared characteristics, thought-processes, training, and incentives of Judges and lawyers lead inexorably to greater complexity in judge-made law. These same factors lead to the following prediction: judge-created law will be most complex in areas where a) elite lawyers regularly practice; b) judges may have a personal preference in the case that can be written-around by way of legal complexity; and c) the subject area interests the judge, or is generally considered prestigious. The Article uses the law of standing as a case study.

This article addresses the confidentiality obligations of government lawyers. It examines the rather complex question of the identity of a government lawyer's client. On the specific issue of confidentiality, the article discusses how several legal doctrines impact the confidentiality duty: open government laws, statutes encouraging whistleblowing by government employees, and common law doctrines regarding the disclosure of government wrongdoing. These doctrines suggest that, as a substantive matter, government lawyers may disclose information that is subject to mandatory disclosure under freedom of information laws and information regarding government wrongdoing. But as a procedural matter, state supreme courts and governments need to establish procedures for government lawyers to follow in disclosing this information.