Melbourne Law School Research Articles

Developing a course on the law of peace operations: method and practice—making ends meet

This paper reflects on my personal experience conceptualising and teaching the law of peace operations course at The Melbourne Law School. More specifically, the paper examines some of the key challenges I have faced in developing the most appropriate conceptual framework and teaching methodologies to assist graduate students to better understand how the normative frameworks can better support diplomatic, political and military efforts to achieve and maintain international peace and security. Recognising that the law of peace operations is a relatively unrecognised area of peace education, I hope some of the issues raised in this paper will assist academics and instructors to develop more effective courses for teaching the myriad of legal issues that impact on ensuring peace operations assist to achieve sustainable peace and security.

Embed with the Faculty: Legal Information Skills Online

This article evaluates the Legal Information Skills Tutorial (LIST), a successful multi-media online learning project at the University of Melbourne Law School based on the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) Information Literacy Standards. (Council of Australian University Librarians, Information Literacy Standards (2001) http://www.caul.edu.au/ (Accessed September 10, 2002)) Key success factors include interactivity, integration with core law content and collaboration between librarians, faculty, students and other stakeholders.

Educating the MTV Generation: Legal Information Skills Online

This article is a summary of the paper presented at the 34th Annual Study Conference of BIALL held in Cardiff, June 2003 by Nicki McLaurin Smith and Prue Presser. The paper consisted of a demonstration of LIST (Legal Information Skills Tutorial), which has been developed at the University of Melbourne Law School for the purpose of teaching legal research skills. The paper covered background information, evaluation, successes and shortcomings as well as extending an invitation for involvement in future collaborative projects of this nature with the Legal Resource Centre.

The Production of Legal Norms: A Case Study of Administrative Detention in China

THE PRODUCTION OF LEGAL NORMS: A CASE STUDY OF ADMINISTRATIVE DETENTION IN CHINA Sarah Biddulph* 1. INTRODUCTION The Chinese public security organs exercise a wide range of administrative detention powers, either alone or in conjunction with other state agencies. These include the power to order ad- ministrative detention (xingzheng juliu) under the Security Ad- ministrative Punishments Regulations (Zhi'an Guanli Chufa Tiaoli SAPR ), re-education through labour (laodong jiaoyang), detention for repatriation (shourong qiansong) and stop and detain for questioning (liuzhi panwen). The specific subject of this paper is the legal formation and development of two administrative detention powers. The first is detention for education (shourong jiaoyu), which is a specialist detention power targeting prostitutes and clients of prostitutes. The second is coercive drug rehabilitation (qiangzhi jiedu), which is directed at addicted drug users. Because the use of these pow- ers was revived throughout the late 1970s and 1980s after the de- cision was made to rebuild China's legal system, the legal contour of these powers provide us with an example of how the Chinese state' has managed legal reform in the context of social order. * Associate Director, China, Asian Law Centre, University of Melbourne Law School. 1. I have adopted the definition of the state used by Heng in a discussion of the Vietnamese state, in which the state is defined broadly as the political authority that runs the country in an institutionalised structure of party and government or- gans. Russell Hiang Khng Heng, Media Negotiating the State: In the Name of the Law in Anticipation, 16 J. Soc. IssuEs S.E. AsIA 213, 214 (2001). This definition includes the exercise of power of the Chinese Communist Party as well as the organs of state exercising legislative, executive, and adjudicative power. This definition is further refined with reference to the division drawn by Pittman Potter between the regime and its subjects. The regime constitutes the elite at the central and provincial level and is defined in contrast to those who either have no participation in the exercise of political rule, or whose participation is wholly passive without

Improving Criteria and Feedback in Student Assessment in Law

Spurred on by both the 1987 Pearce Report and the general changes to higher education spawned by the “Dawkins revolution” from 1988, there has been much critical self-evaluation leading to profound improvements to the quality of teaching in Australian law schools. Despite the changes there are still areas of general law teaching practice which have lagged behind recent developments in our understanding of what constitutes high quality teaching. One such area is assessment criteria and feedback. The project Improving Feedback in Student Assessment in Law is an attempt to remedy this. It aims to produce a manual containing key principles for the design of assessment and the provision of feedback, with practical yet flexible ideas and illustrations which law teachers may adopt or modify. Most of the examples have been developed by teachers at the University of Melbourne Law School. The project was supported in 1996 by a Committee for the Advancement of University Teaching grant and the manual will be published late in 1997. This note summarises the core principles which are elaborated further in the manual.

The Makings of a Good Law School?

Over the course of an academic career spanning about 27 years, I have seen inside many different law schools. I undertook my initial legal training at the University of Canterbury Law School in Christchurch, New Zealand, between 1959 and 1962. I entered law school out of a country high school. In my first year, there was only one full-time academic member of staff, the balance of the instruction being undertaken mostly by young or struggling practitioners who required extra income. By the end of my degree, the school had inched up to three full-time academic staff. Moreover, many of the students were part-time, with students after their first or second year simultaneously clerking with local law firms. On moving to the University of Adelaide Law School in 1963, as a tutor while simultaneously undertaking an LL M by thesis, I encountered a law school which initially had six or seven full-time members of staff, with a great deal of practitioner instruction and much part-time study by students. By the end of my time at Adelaide in 1969, the Faculty had increased to perhaps 12 or 14 full-time staff members. On moving to the McGill Law School in Montreal in 1969, I encountered my first full-blown law school, with perhaps 25 full-time members of faculty and a full-time student body and national programmes offering degrees in both common and civil law, as well as a significant full-time graduate programme. On moving to the University of Toronto Law School in 1972, I joined what was perhaps regarded as the pre-eminent academic law school in Canada, with strong and proud traditions of innovation in legal education, although at that time afflicted with a degree of parochialism and complacency that was at variance with these traditions. During the ensuing 18 years at the University of Toronto, I took a leave at the University of Chicago law school in 1976 and was exposed for the first time to a law school with a strong commitment to interdisciplinary studies, especially, in my case, law and economics. A further leave at the Yale Law School in 1985 exposed me to an even broader range of theoretical and interdisciplinary perspectives on law. Both Chicago and Yale also have strong traditions of organised collegial forums for review of research work in progress. In the course of the last year, I have been associated with two law school reviews on a pending change of command: first, our own Law School and secondly the University of British Columbia Law School. And most recently, I have spent four weeks at the University of Melbourne Law School, revisited my first academic home, the University of Adelaide Law School and made brief visits to Monash and the University of Sydney law schools.