The law commission and judicial law reform*

This article explores ways in which mooting can provide high school students with insight into life as a law student. In gaining high school students’ insights on their early exposure to a legal research skills environment involving oral argumentation exercises, the authors argue that law schools can incorporate experiential learning pedagogies into student recruitment efforts to ensure that both law school and prospective student are better prepared for each other during the delivery and study of law at university level.     

法社会学视野下的乡村法治困境解读

乡村法治化运动在乡村社会遭遇的窘态与困惑是发起者始料未及的,国家法治被乡村社会有意无意的歪曲,“下乡的法律”不断被乡土社会知识传统解读,法治与乡村社会之间的冲突愈显突出。本文放弃简单地对法治与乡村社会二者中的任何一方进行批判的进路,试图通过借鉴和采用法社会学的一些观点和方法,强调回到中国的特定语境,回到乡村的生活场域和具体经验中,探讨当前造成乡村法治化困境的政治、经济、文化等因素,分析实现乡村社会法治化之可能和必要,进而提出实现乡村法治化的可行路径。     

Comparative law as a remedial subject*

Abstract

Situated learning, focusing on the pragmatic and social aspects of learning, has as its basis the notion that learning is essentially dependent on the immediate situation of action. It is a strength of the theory that it supports learner‐centred instructional design (ID), and supports a constructivist approach to ID. Nevertheless, even a learner‐centred theory such as situated learning requires more if its product is to be successful in facilitating learning. Student learning requires management at every level: within individual learning activities, within a module syllabus and within a curriculum. The contextual issues which go to make up such management, and the relations between situated learning theory and learning management, are the focus of this paper. We shall argue that it is essential for the success of embedded IT that instructional designers pay attention to learning management issues, that they signal the presence of these issues in their courseware documentation, and that lecturers and tutors who use the courseware should take these issues into account when implementing and embedding computer‐based learning in the curriculum.

As an example of this argument we take our computer‐based learning program the Virtual Court Action. This program was designed to be used in the learning and teaching of procedural law in a Scottish university law curriculum. Using document assembly techniques and email, this program emulates part of a civil court action in a Scottish court, with identical personnel, legal documents and procedure. The place of situated learning theory in its design is described, and the learning management issues germane to its implementation are analysed. Finally, we show how the attention paid to learning management issues contributed to the success of the program.

‘Acting on the world to learn about concepts is not a straightforward issue.‘¹

‘Old‐fashioned pocket knives … have a device for removing stones from horses’ hooves. People with this device may know its use and be able to talk wisely about horses, hooves and stones. But they may never betray ‐ or even recognise ‐ that they would not begin to know how to use this implement on a horse.‘²     

The scope and teaching of welfare law: Report of a symposium*

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Mercantile Law. By Kenneth Smith and Denis Keenan. Fifth Edition. [Pitman 1982. xiii and 753 pp. (inc. index). £8.95 (paperback)].

The Politics of the Judiciary. Second Edition. By J. A. G. Griffith. [Fontana. 255 pp.(inc. index). £2.50].

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Family Law in the Republic of Ireland. By Alan Joseph Shatter. Second Edition. [Wolfhound Press. 1981. Distributed outside Ireland by Sweet and Maxwell. xl and 408 pp. (inc. index). £18 (paperback)].