Dean for the defence on law schools

The dean of a leading law school has defended universities, saying law is ‘not abstract or divorced’ from regular lives and students should be encouraged to view it differently.

Students and academics have criticised Monash University’s PhD law course, which forces students to critique their thesis based on Marxist, feminist, critical race and queer theory. Picture: Richard Serong

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A leading law school dean has defended universities against “over-egged” claims that institutions are drifting away from “black-letter” law, saying students must learn the “context” in which the law is constructed or else be ill-equipped to practice.

University of NSW law and justice dean Andrew Lynch says the law is “not abstract or ­divorced” from human lives and students should be encouraged to view it through “different theoretical lenses and against the light of historical and contemporary experience”.

“Doing this well should be the aim of all law schools – and is vital to fostering the critical analysis that fuels, not smothers, meaningful debate,” he writes in The Australian on Wednesday.

University of NSW law and justice dean Andrew Lynch (left) has defended university students. Picture Renee Nowytarger / The Australian

Professor Lynch’s comments follow reports in The Australian that a Macquarie University law course – which has since been put under review – marked students on delivery of an acknowledgment of country and made them do a “privilege walk” as a class exercise.

This masthead also has revealed Monash University’s law PhD program forced thesis criticism along Marxist, feminist, critical race and queer theory.

Former University of Queensland law school dean Patrick Parkinson wrote in The Australian on Tuesday that lecturers who sought to “impose viewpoints on students and punish them with low marks for not adhering to the political world view of the lecturer” were “engaging in professional misconduct” and called for an external inquiry.

But Professor Lynch argues back against criticism that law schools are “insufficiently focused on preparing students” and have “become hothouses of political dogma”.

“A fear that graduates without requisite legal knowledge and skills are being let loose on the community cannot withstand even cursory familiarity with the accreditation landscape,” Professor Lynch writes.

“Further assurance of the quality of law graduates is offered by the strong performance of the nation’s law schools in international rankings that measure the satisfaction of employers, such as the QS World University Rankings.”

Professor Lynch says Professor Parkinson’s question “underscored, not rebutted” the need for legal education outside the strict confines of “black-letter” law.

“To be clear, an insistence that law schools ensure their graduates possess knowledge of ‘black-letter law’ is uncontroversial – of course we must,” he writes.

But, he says, “a study of law that does not interrogate its effect on those at the edges of the community is obviously lacking”.

“The founding dean of law at the University of NSW, Hal Wootten, later a justice of the Supreme Court of NSW, reached for this idea when he told commencing students in 1971 that ‘a law school should have and communicate to its students a keen concern for those on whom the law bears harshly’. The absolute need for this is underscored, not rebutted, when Parkinson asks blithely of the injustices experienced by Indigenous people: ‘Is there, however, a systemic problem with which the legal profession should be concerned?’

“Law is not abstract and divorced from human lives – and through it may be found greater justice for those too long denied it.

“It is very far from being a recent change in legal education that students are put to the task of not just learning the ‘black letter’ of the law but also viewing it through different theoretical lenses and against the light of historical and contemporary experience.

“Doing this well should be the aim of all law schools – and is vital to fostering the critical analysis that fuels, not smothers, meaningful debate.”

Last week Macquarie University vice-chancellor Bruce Dowton ordered a review of the university’s law school following the revelations about the Age and the Law course. “This will include listening to staff and student views and benchmarking relevant practices against other major law schools in Australia,” he said.