Why Hungary and Poland differed in 1989: The role of medium-term frames in explaining the outcomes of democratic transition

This article has two goals. First, it seeks to enhance our understanding of the factors underlying the divergent outcomes of the round-table negotiations that accompanied transition from communism in Hungary and Poland. It argues that existing explanations emphasizing aspects of the immediate negotiating context should be supplemented by a medium-term perspective focusing on the frames through which actors conceived the options available. The second goal is to argue for an understanding of democratization as the outcome of complex, contingent and prolonged processes of interaction among actors and between actors and context. This does not imply that parsimonious modelling is not useful in democratization studies. But to understand democratization processes fully, modelling approaches need to be combined with more configurative study of historical processes.     

Properly drafted arbitration agreement as a safeguard to its adequate interpretation: Rwanda case study

Since the seminal Sex Discrimination Act 1975, modern British equality law developed in a piecemeal fashion over four decades. The landmark Equality Act 2010 was designed to unify, simplify and, to a limited extent, strengthen the legislation in this area. Despite its long gestation period, the Bill suffered from a lack of parliamentary scrutiny. This article sets the Equality Act in context and, by analysing certain aspects, discusses how far it has met those aims.     

Decline of the English jury*

Abstract

This biographical study of the lived experiences of six law teachers offers a new dimension to understanding the dynamics of law teaching. The overall purpose of the study is to reveal how these law teachers make sense of the world of legal education in terms of individual identities, values and whether they necessarily regard themselves as academics. The significance of the study is the contribution it seeks to make in understanding individual law teachers and how they experience the dynamics of a rapidly changing teaching environment. The study reveals how different experiences emerge through a complex interplay between spheres of influence and theoretical frames of reference. A theoretical perspective considers three possible explanations, work orientation, performativity and supercomplexity, with regard to how experiences fit within apparent epistemological shifts in the academy.

The biographical method has not hitherto been applied to understanding this dimension of legal education. The purpose in adopting this method is to make a deliberate departure from more traditional research methods in legal education and to determine the extent to which it might be possible to see the world of legal education as a lived experience. This approach provides tools of analysis for understanding the dynamics of law teaching and dynamic identities.     

Lawyers’ wellbeing and professional legal education

Abstract

THIS PAPER examines the wellbeing and satisfaction levels of lawyers in the workplace. It argues that research suggesting a crisis in the legal profession in the United States is comparable with research on wellbeing and levels of satisfaction for lawyers in Australasia. Some reports in both jurisdictions are critical of conventional legal education and practical legal training programs, which do not encourage students to develop personal and interpersonal skills that can improve self‐awareness, communication skills and the capacity to manage stress and anxiety. Consequently, law students are allowed to assume that these “soft skills” are less important for lawyers compared with cognitive skills such as “knowing the law” and “thinking like a lawyer”.

The paper describes the preliminary results of research conducted with graduates of the School of Law at the University of Newcastle Australia. The results confirm existing research to show that clinical legal education programs that expose law students under supervision to clients with real cases may promote the development of interpersonal skills, which in turn may help them cope with stressors in legal practice, especially in the first few years post‐admission.     

Climate change: It's happening in the legal profession too

What conscientious law professor of first year, large format classes in torts, contracts, or criminal law has not pondered how to better engage students while easing their reluctance to speak out in class? While students entering law schools are quite adept with student engagement technologies (SETs) from undergraduate classes, some law faculties seem tied to the passive environment of lectures and PowerPoint presentations and hence reject SET methodologies as so much techno-wizardry. With the entry of web-based programmes into the expanding field of SETs, and increasing empirical evidence that active learning improves grades and closes gender and socio-economic gaps, the ethical question arises, are we not obliged as law teachers to employ them? This paper examines in three steps that gap between pronouncing from the podium and actively engaging learners by clicker response or web-based devices. Part I reviews the growing literature on active learning including SET-based methods. Part II examines two models of SETs, remote-based and web-based, for their comparative attributes and drawbacks, with a particular focus on law teaching. Part III details the author’s experiences with the clicker system teaching introductory law and criminology and offers practical suggestions for facilitating its use. The paper concludes that, in light of recent evidence of heightened learning success using active learning methodologies, and the impending complexity to education posed by wearable technologies, the ethical question of pedagogical competence grows in importance.     

Navigating the System: A How-To Guide for Implementing a Kinship Navigator Program

This article describes key programmatic and evaluation elements that guided the implementation of the San Diego County YMCA Kinship Navigator Program. A 3-year demonstration project funded by the Administration on Children Youth and Families designed to build a regional navigator system in collaboration with the local child welfare agency to support kinship caregivers. Kinship caregivers (relatives and non-relatives) play a significant role in the well-being of the children in their care. The findings suggest that successfully implemented kinship navigator models are a viable preventive intervention for addressing the needs of kinship families.