The importance of ethics in the law curriculum: essential or incidental?

Recently, the debate as to whether ethics should be a compulsory requirement of a law degree was refuelled when the English and Welsh Legal Education Training Review (LETR) recommended that professional ethics should be primarily addressed in vocational Legal Services and Education Training programmes and that learning outcomes in the academic curriculum should include reference to morality and the law, the values supporting the legal system and their connection to the role of lawyers. This debate is also occurring in other jurisdictions. In Australia the debate is focused on the proposal that ethics be removed as a compulsory subject in the law degree. This proposal has raised a concern that law students will be denied the opportunity to develop as ethically competent lawyers. This paper argues for the continuation of ethics as a core component of a law degree and evidences the model used for the teaching of ethics in the law degree at the University of Technology Sydney in support of our argument. The background to the model is examined to highlight the significance of student feedback and ongoing curriculum review, including the alignment of parallel pedagogical factors. This model serves as an example of not only why ethics should be core to a law degree but, in order to provide graduates who are ethical and reflective practitioners, why ethics should be pervasively taught throughout the degree and supported by an introductory and capstone presence.     

Misconceived bioethics?: The misconception of the "therapeutic misconception"

Bioethics needs to include study of the social and historical context in which ethical meanings in medical encounters make sense. It needs to do this in order to remain relevant, vibrant, and aware of how it might unwittingly facilitate the agendas of others. As an illustration, this paper critiques some of the accepted meanings and purposes of the idea of the Therapeutic Misconception (TM) which has been an increasingly attractive concept with which to organize thinking about experimentation ethics. By considering the history of alternative viewpoints against which TM was offered as a replacement, this paper suggests that TM, and bioethics more generally, may contribute to increasingly technocratic and standardized practices in medicine.     

Codes of professional responsibility for lawyers: ethics or law?

The American Bar Association has three times in this century produced a code of ethics for lawyers. The movement has clearly been from a general, hortatory format to one of a statement of principles of law. In the ABA's latest effort, the problems of client confidentiality loom as the most serious and most difficult to solve. The question of ethics versus law weighs heavily in this context, and the ABA's latest resolutions of the confidentiality problems are found to be unsatisfactory.     

On defense of “ethification” of law: How ethics may improve compliance with the EU digital laws

In recent years, academics and professionals witness the rise of the “ethification” of law, specifically in the area of ICT law. Ethification shall be understood as a proliferation of moral principles and moral values in the legal discourse within the areas of research, innovation governance, or directly enforceable rules in the industry. Although the ethical considerations may seem distant from mere regulatory compliance, the opposite is true. The article focuses on the positive side of the “ethification” of digital laws through the lens of legal requirements for impact assessments pursuant to General Data Protection Regulation and conformity assessments in the proposal for the Artificial Intelligence Act. Authors argue that ethical considerations are often absent in the context of using new technologies including artificial intelligence, yet they may provide additional value for organizations and society as a whole. Additionally, carrying out ethics-based assessments is already in line with existing regulatory requirements in the fields of data protection law and proposed EU AI regulation. These arguments are reflected in the context of facial recognition technology, where both data protection impact assessment under the EU General Data Protection Regulation and conformity assessment under the proposal of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act will be mandatory. Facial recognition technology is analyzed through the ethics-based assessment involving stakeholder analysis, data flows map, and identification of risks and respective countermeasures to show additional insights that ethics provides beyond regulatory requirements.     

Progressing with the reform and opening up: Retrospective of China’s civil law (1978–2008)

Over the past 30 years, Chinese civil and commercial law has made great achievements in providing theoretical support for Chinese legislation, establishing a theoretical system of civil and commercial law with Chinese characteristics, conducting in-depth and comparative research in this field, and making many summaries of trial practices, judicial interpretations and case studies of civil and commercial affairs. The academic circle has expressed professional comments regarding public events. The major theoretical breakthroughs include the clarification of the relationship between civil law and economic law, further research on the civil code system, basic consensus on the integration of civil law and commercial law, formation of the theoretical system of property right law with Chinese characteristics, innovation and development of contract law theories, basic information of personality law theories, and formation of the theoretical system of tort law. The orientation of Chinese civil and commercial law is to enhance comparative research on civil and commercial law nationally and internationally, focusing on the diversity of research methodologies.     

Fighting impunity in hate crime — history,ethics, and the law: An interview with Harsh Mander

Jindal Global Law Review - This interview with writer and activist Harsh Mander was conducted on 21 and 23 April 2020 while numerous instances of hate crime, during the severe COVID-19 lockdown,...     

Can international law improve mental health? Some thoughts on the proposed convention on the rights of people with disabilities

This paper examines the promise of the proposed Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities to improve the position of people with mental illness. Proponents of the new Disability Convention argue that the state of human rights abuses experienced by people with disabilities is intolerable, that the existing international law is inadequate, that additional international law will increase the visibility of people with disabilities and will clarify the fundamental entitlement to equality, and that, as a result, the position of people with disabilities will be greatly enhanced. This paper questions the value of international law to achieve real change and warns against placing too much faith in the law. The potential of a new international law to rectify the wrongs experienced by people with psychiatric disabilities will depend on whether the new law specifically displaces the existing international law which undermines the rights of people with mental illness and on the final terms of the Convention with respect to recognition and enforcement. Ironically, it is the process of developing the Convention which has been empowering, and the utility of the new law will ultimately turn on the continuation of the momentum built through this process.     

Reflections on the sociology of law: A rejection of law as ‘socially marginal’

Rejecting the concept of law as subservient to social pathology, the principle aim of this article is to locate law as a critical matter of social structure – and power – which requires to be considered as a central element in the construction of society and social institutions. As such, this article contends that wider jurisprudential notions such as legal procedure and procedural justice, and juridical power and discretion are cogent, robust normative social concerns (as much as they are legal concerns) that positively require consideration and representation in the empirical study of sociological phenomena. Reflecting upon scholarship and research evidence on legal procedure and decision-making, the article attempts to elucidate the inter-relationship between power, ‘the social’, and the operation of law. It concludes that law is not ‘socially marginal’ but socially, totally central.     

Fat and the law: who should take the blame?

The incidence of obesity in both adults and children is rising at a rapid rate in most developed countries, including in Australia. Some obese people are seeking to place the blame for their condition on the fast-food industry, as demonstrated by the recent litigation in the United States brought by two obese plaintiffs against McDonald's. This litigation was unsuccessful, and on existing Australian negligence principles any similar litigation commenced here is likely to suffer the same fate. Principles of personal responsibility, autonomy and free will should prevail to deny a negligence claim. The risk of obesity and concomitant health problems from eating fast food to excess is an obvious risk which the plaintiff should not have ignored and which he or she has voluntarily assumed. It is for the Australian Government, not the courts, to regulate the behaviour of the fast-food industry. The government should take action by requiring all major fast-food chains to label their products with nutritional information, and by imposing restrictions on the advertising of food to children.     

The conflict between the ethics of th individual and the ethics governing public health: practical sustainability of health care in jeopardy?

The "health rights movement" has reconstructed the clinical relationship between health care workers and patients by simultaneously demanding more from traditional medical care and challenging the perceived power differential between doctors and patients by rejecting the paternalistic medical model in favour of an individual patients' rights model. However, the growth in individual expectations of a right to health care creates a potential conflict with the ethics that prioritise public health and guide the rationing of its limited financial and human capital resources. This, in turn, creates a practical dilemma which requires public health institutions to become service orientated while sacrificing their integral role in training and educating the medical workforce and potentially compromising the practical sustainable delivery of public health in Australia. However, the law can play a role in resolving this conflict through legislation, regulations, codes, administrative law and common law in an effort to ensure the quality and future sustainability of public health in Australia.     

Correction to: Fighting impunity in hate crime — history,ethics, and the law: An interview with Harsh Mander

Jindal Global Law Review - The original article was corrected.