BBC = FoE, where BBC = British Broadcasting Corporation, FoE = Freedom of Expression, and x 2 = times two; because the BBC have two major freedom of expression events going on at the moment. First, Roy Greenslade (website | blog) is currently present an excellent four part radio series, Press for Freedom (article | news report | podcast) on the struggle for media freedom worldwide. It’s superb!

Second, as part of its celebrations for 75 years of the World Service, the free to speak initiative is an exciting blend of archives, radio, and interactivity (they encourage participation, especially via their blog: world have your say). In particular, today’s big link up, though a bit gimmicky, was a spectacular affirmation of the importance of radio (my favourite electronic medium) to and in the global conversation about and protection of freedom of expression. Wonderful stuff!

Do the sums. Follow the links.

It never rains but it pours: no sooner have I learned about the international Conference on the Future of Legal Education on 20-23 February 2008 in Georgia State University College of Law (blogged about here), but I discover a European equivalent later that month.

The European Law Faculties Association (ELFA) – which was founded in 1995, publishes the European Journal of Legal Education, and currently focuses upon the reform of legal education in Europe – will host a conference on The role of law schools in continuing legal education (CLE) on 28 February-1 March 2008 in Bucerius Law School, Hamburg, Germany (the first private law school in Germany). The programme is here (pdf); in the absence of any Irish speakers that I can see, I am particularly interested in

Law schools facing the challenge of CLE – the British perspective

by Prof John Bell (Cambridge)

This post is simply some extracts from a story in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education (sub req’d) about the Law School where I have spent this semester:

Law Students Take on the Coal Industry

By PETER MONAGHAN

Lexington, Va.

Noah Lauricella has seen a middle-aged man take several minutes to walk the 20 yards between his house and his mailbox, then spend several minutes more recovering from the exertion. … “It is heart wrenching,” says Mr. Lauricella, a second-year law student taking part in Washington and Lee University’s Black Lung Clinic….

According to United Mine Workers of America, about 1,400 miners die each year from black lung, or pneumoconiosis, which is caused by breathing coal dust, and whose onset is often delayed by 20 or more years. … Black-lung sufferers find themselves in what Andrew Wolfe McThenia, the law professor who was the driving force behind the formation of the clinic, in 1996, calls “Dickens’ worst idea of the law … Case files can be measured not by inches, but by feet” …

Since the clinic opened, more than 100 students have represented about 200 clients, and have achieved a success rate of 50 percent, in part by pressing only the claims most likely to succeed. But clients often die before cases are finished. Two cases that the clinic took on in 1996 are still under appeal. Even when former miners win benefits, their ordeals continue: Mining companies can, and generally do, demand that benefits be repaid if company appeals overturn awards. …

The Black Lung Clinic is only one of many important clinics at WLU’s Law School; how and when will Irish legal education be able to undertake similar socially worthy and pedagogically valuable initiatives?

Further to my post last June about various countries banning the controversial computer game Manhunt II, matters have not stood still. Soon after the various bans, Rockstar made some changes to the gameplay. In the US, these tweaks were sufficient to reduce its classification from an Adults Only (AO) rating to a Mature (M) rating, allowing it to be bought by anyone aged 17 or more. Then Rockstar reapplied to the BBFC in the UK, but, in October, they upheld their June decision not to certify (in effect, to ban) the game (see The Register).

But that has not proved to be the end of the story; this week, the BBFC’s Video Appeals Committee has allowed Rockstar’s appeal against the ban in the UK – by the slimmest of margins, on a vote of 4 to 3 (BBC | The Register | Daily Telegraph). The effect of the appeal is that the BBFC must consider the game again, and if it does nothing, then it will be released with an 18 certificate.

So far as Ireland goes, I’m not aware whether Rockstar has brought an appeal against IFCO’s original ban on Manhunt II or whether they submitted the revised version of the game for classification, but if they succeed in releasing a version of the game in the UK, can Ireland be far behind?

Hot on the heels of the Legal Education Symposium blogged about yesterday comes news of an international Conference on the Future of Legal Education on 20-23 February 2008 in Georgia State University College of Law. Against the background of the Carneige Foundation’s report on Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (which I have already discussed on this blog), this conference will ask two related questions:

First, if one were charged with starting a new law school, how would one implement the Carnegie recommendations? …

Second, how would an existing law school transform itself into the kind of law school envisioned by the Carnegie Report?

I have already blogged about the first question, and both will be discussed by a wide selection of exciting speakers, including Martin Böhmer (Founding Dean, Universidad de San Andres School of Law; CV (.doc)), Gary Davis (Flinders), Jeff Giddings (Griffith), Richard Johnstone (Griffith), Patrick Longan (Mercer), Sally Kift (QUT), Paul Maharg (Strathclyde) (author of the superb Transforming Legal Education), Lawrence C. Marshall (Stanford), David McQuoid-Mason (KwaZulu-Natal), N.R. Madhava Menon (National Law School of India), James E. Moliterno (William & Mary), M.R.K. Prasad (Salgaocar, India), Suellyn Scarnecchia (New Mexico), William Sullivan (Carnegie Foundation; lead author of Educating Lawyers) and David Weisbrot (ALRC, formerly Sydney).

More information is available from Clark D Cunningham (Georgia).

Sure to feature in the discussions is the just-available book Law School Leadership Strategies: Top Deans on Benchmarking Success, Incorporating Feedback from Faculty and Students, and Building the Endowment (Aspatore Books, 2007) (hat tips: Law Librarian Blog | TaxProf Blog). The title, nearly as long as the book, provides a good idea of its coverage; nevertheless, expanding on this, the publishers’ blurb explains:

Law School Leadership Strategies is a smart and intriguing volume that outlines the role of today’s educational leaders and discusses the current state and future shape of law school management. Featuring deans representing some of the most highly recognized legal education programs, this book provides a broad, yet comprehensive overview of the ins and outs of the industry and the strategic thinking behind operating a law school. Discussing the ever-changing role and responsibilities of the dean and the importance of building a successful administration team, authors provide valuable insights into the business and offer indispensable advice for success. Identifying the need to strike a balance between a center for intellectual growth and a profitable institution, as well as the process of distinguishing their institution in the marketplace and measuring success, these leaders offer strategies for leading a center of legal education into the twenty-first century. From developing fundraising campaigns and generating revenue to utilizing technology and meeting students’ needs, these authorities articulate the finer points around the business now, and what will hold true into the future. The different niches represented and the breadth of perspectives presented enable readers to get inside some of the great minds of today, as experts explore in detail what it takes to build and sustain the organizations that educate the future’s great legal authorities.

Contributors include Claudio Grossman (American University), Donald J. Polden (Santa Clara), Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker (McGeorge), Glen Weissenberger (De Paul), James L. Huffman (Lewis & Clark), W. H. Knight Jr. (University of Washington), John Costonis (LSU), Maureen A. O’Rourke (Boston University), Rebecca Hanner White (Georgia), Robert H. Jerry II (UF Levin), Samuel Marion Davis (Mississippi), Rex R. Perschbacher (UC Davis), Nancy B. Rapoport (Houston), Edward Rubin (Vanderbilt), and Kellye Y. Testy (Seattle).

On 10 December 1947, the UN General Assembly (resolution 217 A (III) (pdf)) adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after a long drafting process. Since 1950, by way of commemoration of that event, that date has been International Human Rights Day. That makes today the sixtieth anniversary of the UDHR, and the day upon which the UN begins a year-long commemoration of the Declaration, with events planned throughout the year. The UDHR is now available in over 360 languages including Irish, making it the most translated document in the world. According to the UN’s Human Rights Day website:

Th[e] theme for 2008, “Dignity and justice for all of us,� reinforces the vision of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as a commitment to universal dignity and justice. It is not a luxury or a wish-list.

And so to my Alma Mater, University College Cork (UCC), where the Faculty of Law hosted the second annual Legal Education Symposium last Friday. This year’s event, organised by Dr Fidelma White and Mr Gerard Murphy and again generously sponsored by Dillon Eustace Solicitors, had a decidedly transatlantic flavo(u)r, with of course a good deal of Cork relish as well.

The venue was UCC’s handsome 19th century Aula Maxima (pictured above left), and the delegates were welcomed in a characteristically witty and incisive speech by Dermot Gleeson, SC (former Attorney General, current Chairman of the Governing Body of UCC, and quondam lecturer in the UCC Law Faculty). He shared with us some thoughts on the various-interlinkages between the academy, practice, and the bench. He said that the best superior court judge since independence was Seamus Henchy (something I have long also believed), in part because Gleeson likes the way Henchy wrote, which Gleeson speculated may be in part because Henchy was a law professor in UCD before he went to the bench. He concluded by expressing his skepiticism about the instant transferability the science model of PhDs to Irish law, a matter to which I will return below. Read the rest of this entry »

The School of Law, Trinity College Dublin, will host a conference on the above theme on Thursday, 17 January 2008 next. Full details here. This conference offers an excellent opportunity for legal practitioners, journalists, editors and anyone with an interest in the Irish media to keep up to date with the many significant developments that have occurred in the last 12 months. Many of the questions to be discussed on the day have already featured on this blog, and the speakers will include my colleagues Dr Eoin Carolan and Dr Neville Cox, Prof John Horgan (the recently-appointed Press Ombudsman), solicitors Karyn Harty and Paula Mullooly, and barrister Luá¡n Ó Braonáin SC.