Reasons why law students should have access to learning law through a skills-based approach

The Legal Education and Training Review identified gaps in law students’ key skills development and this paper considers how skills training in three key areas of mooting, negotiation and client interviewing can be maximised so that law students have a sense of themselves as lawyer as well as law student from the beginning of their legal education. The research identifies numerous benefits to learning law through skills-based activities, but also discovers some possible apprehensions about participating from a student perspective. This paper draws on data taken from students who engaged in short-term optional courses in client interviewing, negotiation and/or mooting and considers the responses to a survey conducted prior to participation, a reflective survey post-completion and a focus group exercise. In total 64 students responded to the questionnaire. The research explores the expected and actual benefits of participating in the courses, discusses how these impact on students’ perceptions of their employability and the types of activities considered most valuable. The article considers how, in light of the research, experiential learning can be put to best use within the law curriculum.     

Online collaboration as a pedagogical approach to learning and teaching undergraduate legal education

Legal education is in a period of rapid development driven by changing industry demands and developing technologies. This paper will describe an innovative pilot study which utilises new technologies to provide an alternative mode of teaching and learning to meet growing industry demands for graduates who are technologically savvy and have strong communication and collaboration skills. The pilot study redesigns a law unit combining a more traditional approach with an approach in which online collaboration is critical to student learning as a teaching and assessment tool. After completing an online collaborative activity as part of their assessment for the unit, students completed an online survey to identify their perspectives of the online collaborative experience. The online survey data was analysed to identify common themes and the experiences of students are shared in this paper. The paper provides an example of how instructors might take advantage of a learning design process, online tools and infrastructure to develop educational experiences which promote communication and collaboration within the law discipline. It will also include five recommendations to consider when including online collaboration in unit design for law students.     

Advancing Justice Through Our Students

One avenue by which criminal justice scholars can advance the discipline is through preparing students to enter the field. Popular commentary and some international analyses suggest that recent college graduates lack in employability skills, and they secure adequate employment at a disappointing rate. When the field of focus is narrowed to criminal justice, however, the picture is less worrisome. Although the data show that our students lag in securing employment in positions that require a bachelor’s degree, our students feel prepared for work, find employment after graduating, and tend to improve their situation when pre-graduation and post-graduation employment are compared. Even so, I encourage justicians to take deliberate actions that will help launch the next generation of professionals into successful careers and lead to positive contributions to the future of criminal justice.     

Towards a European educational area

When negotiating the new educational programmes the Council and the Commission of the EC had to deal with a profound controversy as to whether or not the programmes should aim for the creation of a European educational area. This reflects the question of whether the Community can work towards some sort of unification of the different educational systems of the Member States. As the Treaty of the European Community prohibits any harmonisation in this field the European institutions can only work towards a growing closer of the different systems by encouraging the Member States and the educational and training institutions to go this way. Such an outcome can be fostered by the legal framework protecting the individual rights of non discrimination and of free movement of workers and of services as well as of establishment on the one side and by indirectly effective and not binding measures on the other side. This influence can be achieved by the European education programmes, the common efforts to face the challenges of the knowledge society and the global competition, the incentives to ameliorate the quality of education and training and to improve the individual employability. However, harmonisation will mean losing the richness of European diversity. Instead of unifying the systems transparency and mutual recognition of individual qualifications could lead to the desired European dimension without endangering the cultural backgrounds and the responsibility of the Member States for education and training. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

论新形势下刑事技术课程教学质量的保障途径

随着社会的发展和科学技术的进步,犯罪嫌疑人的作案手段日趋智能化和科技化。刑事犯罪的新特点对刑事技术工作提出了比以往更高的要求。改革教学模式、加强实验室建设、完善教学考核机制、加大师资培训力度等,是新时期下刑事技术课程教学活动应对刑事犯罪新特点和服务于刑事侦查实践的有效举措,也是提高刑事技术课程教学质量的必要途径。     

One image is worth more than a thousand words: producing an atlas of medical signs for teaching clinical and forensic toxicology

Clinical and forensic toxicology are critically involved in the acquisition of basic skills to correctly suspect intoxication, collect biological and non-biological materials for toxicological analysis, comprehend the complexities inherent to laboratory activity, and understand the fundamentals of toxicokinetics and toxicodynamics that underlie the interpretation of results. This works presents a pedagogical innovation proposal for the teaching of clinical and forensic toxicology based on a compilation of more than 3 000 cases where the image was fulcra for suspicion. The experience in this article follows the model practiced in bachelors, masters, and PhD degrees, as well as in other continuing training courses, where we are teaching toxicology for more than 15 years. All these levels of education are considered fundamental to the sound development of this science. This approach aims also to offer strength to the intervention of the true toxicologist in all the toxicological phases, besides the classic analytical chemistry. Indeed, it is impossible to provide effective clinical and forensic toxicological interpretations without a proper and broad education, and not thinking exclusively in terms of laboratory techniques. In the future, it will be interesting to evaluate knowledge retention and to propose a database of videos of signs related to intoxications.     

Female arsonists: a clinical study

This paper is a detailed study of a sample of 15 female arsonists. A review of the literature suggests that arson is seen more frequently in males with female firesetters usually comprising 10 to 18% of the samples of firesetters studied. As a result, female arsonists have been studied less often, and only a few authors have reported on their clinical features. This retrospective study demonstrates that female arsonists do not fall in any particular age group and are mostly either single or separated. Some psychosexual aspects of their behavior also appear to be clinically relevant. In contrast to previous studies, they were more often diagnosed as personality disordered and an association with suicidal behavior was found. Their motivations for the firesetting behavior were also considered. Finally, this paper compares some demographic, clinical, and other differences between male and female arsonists. The study also suggests that poor impulse control may be a prerequisite to this type of criminal behavior. The identification of psychopathic traits in the arsonist has important medico-legal implications.     

Police use of force: a transactional approach

Drawing on Tedeschi and Felson’s () theory of coercive actions for conceptual guidance as well as principles underlying the notion of a force continuum structure (i.e., proportionality and incrementalism), this research examines 3,544 police–suspect encounters from an observational study of the police in an attempt to better understand the transactional process of the police–suspect encounter. Results indicate, within the context of a force continuum structure, that officers escalated the level of force in about one of five encounters involving nonresistant suspects, and de‐escalated the level of force in three of four encounters involving resistant suspects. A series of logistic and multinomial regression models show that a number of factors differentially affect the manner in which officers apply force. The results suggest that before one can begin to judge the appropriateness of police force, one should measure and consider the extent to which force is applied proportionately and incrementally.     

Drugs and driving: a systematic analytical approach

To collect useful epidemiological data about drug involvement in highway safety, it is essential that sensitive and specific analytical procedures be used to establish the presence of and to determine the concentrations of drugs and metabolites in samples collected from drivers. This paper describes a comprehensive and systematic screening procedure requiring 6 mL of blood, which has been used for the analysis of samples collected from injured and fatally injured drivers. The procedure uses radioimmunoassay, gas chromatography with selective detectors, and high performance liquid chromatography. Drugs and metabolites presumptively identified are then confirmed primarily using gas chromatography--chemical ionization mass spectrometry.     

Minors and informed consent: a comparative approach

The European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine of the Council of Europe provides in article 6 for special protection of persons who are not able to give free and informed consent to an intervention in the health field, e.g. minors. According to the second paragraph of this article it is up to domestic law to decide whether and under which conditions a minor is capable of taking autonomous decisions in the health field. In the present article an overview is given of the legal regulations in place regarding the position of minors in a health care setting in the EU Member States that have ratified the European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine namely Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain. As the overview will show, the legal position of minor patients in a health care setting varies from country to country. This in view of the system they have opted for as well as the age and circumstances under which minors are allowed to take health care decisions autonomously.     

医学留学生临床麻醉学教学实践与体会

医学留学生教育是我国高等教育的重要组成部分.通过对留学生临床麻醉学教学实践的总结,认为采取师资培养、课前备课与试讲、采用科学的教学方法和加强见习教学等手段,可以达到预期的教学目标.同时总结了教学中出现的问题,并提出一些可行的建议,以期进一步提高留学生教学的质量.     

The identification of a dismembered human body: a multidisciplinary approach

A criminal case was directed to a multidisciplinary forensic team for identification, concerning a victim whose head, having two gunshot wounds, had been separated by a sharp instrument and was recovered 6 months later. The purpose of this research was to determine the sex and age of the victim for human identification. Primarily, macroscopic examination of the skull, tooth, and DNA analysis was conducted for sex determination. A rough assessment of age was made from the skull based on anthropological findings, however a more definitive result of age estimation was determined utilizing dental morphology. The dental data showed an age range of 32-37 from the mineral examination and the formulation of microscopic measurements. The results obtained from the skull and dental analysis matched with the physical characteristics of the victim's body, the known personal data of this person, and with the superposition of the photos gathered by a formal request. Besides, the result of DNA profiling of the victim showed male gender and direct relationship with the victim's presumed wife and daughter. Generally, research on human identification consists of sex and age determination. The sex characteristics can be precisely proved from DNA tests. However, age can be estimated by skeletal, and dental analysis. In this case the performed sex and age analysis lead the research to the selective matching of the missing person's identity.