Playing with Law: A tribute to Fran Wright
It has been a difficult few days. On Monday morning I woke up to the news I had been trying to prepare myself for but which I was never going to be ready for: My former colleague and dear friend Fran Wright had died. That was news that I had hoped wouldn’t come since we heard that Fran was seriously ill. It was the news that I thought might not come after she was making what seemed to be an amazing recovery (of course she was going to get better – this is Fran we’re talking about). But it came nonetheless and as another amazing woman lost quite recently once said about death: ‘Her loss is as unfathomable as everything else’ (with thanks to Dr Emma Lindley).
Fran was kind and supportive when I first started working at Bradford Uni Law School. She was so full of enthusiasm for teaching law, for research, for life. Her creative approach to law and legal rules is something that left an impression. I remember problem questions about pink unicorns, lectures about quilting and feminist legal reasoning and wine spilled over exam papers. I remember giggles and peeing your pants kind of laughing. We worked together and wrote together (not nearly enough), we had dinner every now and again (she was an excellent cook), we exchanged tomato plants as easily as we exchanged ideas and she is still one of the very few people who has seen me attempt the hula hoop on the Wii Fit. The one thing though that is, in my mind at least, her legacy, is her ability to play with the law and teach others to do so. She re-ignited my passion for legal rules, for knowing the law and for spending time actually engaging with statutes and cases. And that’s because she reminded me that good lawyers (academic or practitioners) are creative. That using law to make an argument is an incredibly creative process and that it is the most innovative use of law which drives research forward. That is exciting! Fran Wright taught me how to play with law through our discussions, debates, our giggles and our chats. She reminded me that law is fun. At the same time I watched her teach our students the same and had the privilege of co-designing and co-teaching a module with her. The module still exisits and I will continue teaching it as long as I can.
I feel lost without her. A bright star in legal scholarship and legal education has burned out – but the idea of playing with law shines on and I hope I can inspire creativity in law and legal study in the future because I can think of no better way to honour an amazing woman who died far too young.
Teaching EU Law?
It looks like I will again be teaching EU law next academic year. I am sort of excited about this but I am also already thinking and worrying about it. Most students don’t really enjoy EU law and many find it boring and difficult and frankly irrelevant to them. So what am I going to teach and how and why?
Well, we have a first year course which is all about the EU instituions, law making etc – what you might call the instituional, administrative and constitutional elements. Our Level 2 course is a substantive law course which has always focused on free movement of goods, services and persons. I can’t change that too much as the modules are validated along those lines.
So my plan for year one is to focus on the legal elements of EU integration and think about how law and legal processes have pushed the integration agenda. I want to think about power relationships between actors, relationships between institutions and between Member States and the EU and each other. I want to think about gender awareness in this context – well because that’s my thing and because it gives me an angle to make this more engaging.
Year 2 – well I guess I will stick to mostly free movement stuff but I think I will start with questions around EU migration and explore contexts of highly skilled, low skilled, economic activity, other activity, meanings of citizenship etc. Maybe there is scope here to also explore the external dimensions and some Human Rights stuff. I’d like to do less of the goods and services stuff because that’s not where my interest and expertise lies – although there are some cracking cases and having an understanding of the internal market is useful and important.
I’m thinking if not recommending a specific textbook but prepare detailed reading lists based on online material, a fairly detailed module manual and journal articles, blogs as well as some textbook chapters. So, what do you think? Any suggestions for how to make these EU modules stand out, make them interesting and engaging. Suggestions for coverage, approach, materials? What do you do? What works?
LETR – Much Ado about…?
Those of you who know me will know that I see UG law degrees as liberal degrees which are loosely linked to the legal professions if indeed they must be linked to them at all. As such my concern about the Legal Education and Training Review were that it would recommend greater regulation of undergraduate degrees or the academic stage generally. I was worried about the introduction of greater links between law degrees, vocational training and professional practice as well as about greater prescription of content for law degrees. Now that the LETR has reported and I am mulling over the 300+ pages and reflecting on the report as well as the other documents produced by the review, I thought it may be worth sharing some initial thoughts.
My initial reaction was that there was very little in the report concerning the education part and I thought that was a good thing. I shared the view of many that there really wasn’t much new here and that we seems to have spent a lot of money and waited a long time to have a report which says almost nothing new. However, I have let things sink in a little (and there is more of that to be done) and like some I have changed my mind a little. Even though the report conceded that UG law degrees are generally outside the remit of the review other than when directly impact on the provision of legal services, there are elements of the report which, if taken up by the regulators have significant potential to change law degrees, even if regulation remains light touch.
The Foundations Subjects (See Recommendation 10)
The report suggests there is little appetite for change here and that the idea of foundation subjects is likely to stay. However it also questions whether the balance is correct, whether the rights things are core and whether there should be more fluidity and flexibly as well as more prescription. This does not seem to make sense, can we have flexibility and fluidity and prescription? Well maybe, you could prescribe topics and skills to be covered without specifying modules for example. What concerns me more here is the ‘who decides?’ question. If the foundations are to be revamped, who does the revamping? This is not a level playing field and if, as could easily happen, the agenda is dictated by magic circle law firms, we might end up with something which has a core which is biased in favour of corporate commercial interests but offers little to high street practice never mind those graduates who do not wish to go into the professions. There are already arguments about what is core and what should be core and it would do all of us no harm to remember that what we think is interesting and important is not necessarily core. The LETR report opens the door for a whole scale reform of the foundation subjects, which I don’t really have a problem with, it is what comes next that worries me!
Inclusion of writing/communication and research skills (See Recommendation 6 and 11)
The comments in the report about writing skills and research skills I found a little tricky. On the one hand I sympathise. I teach legal skills and I mark a lot of work produced by students who are lacking in both these areas. On the other hand I was irritated, I teach both writing and research skills. Law Schools are doing this, but perhaps we need to do it more explicitly. On balance I think I therefore welcome the recommendation that:
There should be a distinct assessment of legal research, writing and critical thinking skills at level 5 or above in the Qualifying Law Degree and in the Graduate Diploma in Law. Educational providers should retain discretion in setting the context and parameters of the task, provided that it is sufficiently substantial to give students a reasonable but challenging opportunity to demonstrate their competence. (Recommendation 11)
However, I am also keenly aware that most of the evidence about writing skills etc is anecdotal and I really do think it would be useful to conduct research on students’ skills base to help us better understand where the weaknesses are.
Ethics (See Recommendation 6)
I have always struggled with the debate around the inclusion of ethics in UG law degrees, not because I don’t think ethics should be taught but rather because I don’t think it is possible to teach law without ethics or values. Law is inherently value laden and to me very closely linked to ethics. However, teaching professional ethics as applied to the legal professions has, in my mind, no place in the UG law curriculum. Teaching ethics and values generally definitely has.
Liberal law degrees generally
The report seems to recognise that law degrees are academic degrees and that they should not be vocational. I was interested to see that the Bar are most in favour of liberal degrees. It is also of course worth noting that the responses to the question of whether law degrees should be liberal degrees or more vocationally focused are from people in the professions. I wonder how the pattern of responses would change if people who have law degrees but work in other areas were asked the same question… I digress. So coming from someone who believes in the liberal law degree, the LETR report contains some relevant stuff, whether it is stuff to be concerned about or stuff to celebrate or stuff to just ignore will become clearer in time. The LETR is just the starting point, it’s what comes next that has the potential to change things and that I am a little bit worried about.
Watch this space for more on the issues as I reflect further on the issues raised in the report.
My Conversations 