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Revisiting the Arthurs Report Twenty Years Later

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Constance Backhouse
Constance Backhouse
Affiliation:
Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, ottawa (Ontario) K1N 6N5, backhous@uattawa.ca
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Extract

Harry Arthurs' Law & Learning report, conceived by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and carried to fruition in 1983 by a ten-person Consultative Group and a twenty-three person Advisory Panel, was a formative document in the history of Canadian legal education. My recollection of the release of the report is probably intensified because of the circumstances in which I experienced it the following year - a seminar room filled with cranky faculty members at the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario, as stony terrain as any venue one might have imagined for the reception of such a report. I was then a relatively junior untenured professor, hoping to build a scholarly record in the field of feminist legal history, who had unwittingly found myself in a law school in which most faculty were devoted to building its reputation as a professionally conservative, black letter law institution. Into such a milieu strode my former professor and mentor, Harry Arthurs, whose habit of describing Osgoode Hall Law School as the “best law school in the Commonwealth” had not particularly endeared him to the Western professoriate previously. I felt like a deer in the headlights, and my sense was that Harry Arthurs himself was very ill at ease in a room that exuded defensiveness and hostility, as well as both latent and overt anger.

Type
Dossier
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , April 2003 , pp. 33 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 2003

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References

1 Consultative Group on Research and Education in Law, Law and Learning: Report to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Ottawa: Minister of Supply & Services, 1983).Google Scholar

2 I am indebted to Suzanne Larivière, Program Officer at SSHRC, for providing this information to me in correspondence dated 23 December 2002.

3 Supra note 1 at 88.

4 Ibid., at 136, 144.

5 Ibid., at 136.

6 Arthurs found that civil law professors had a higher publishing record, with 62 % publishing a book in the past ten years, compared with 29 % of common law professors, but he also reported that civil law professors were “less involved in interdisciplinary, historical, theoretical or transnational research than their common law colleagues, and rather more inclined toward doctrinal research (which embraces theoretical research) as well as comparative common/civil research.” Ibid., at 89.

7 Arthurs noted that civil law professors were better educated as a group, with 47 % holding doctorates compared with 13 % of common law professors Ibid.

8 Ibid. at 136.

9 Ibid. at 98.

10 Ibid. at 141–2.

11 Correspondence from Yves Mougeot, Director Research and Dissemination Grants Programs Division SSHRC, to Deans of Law Faculties in Canadian Universities, 25 June 2002; Correspondence from Suzanne Larivière, Program Officer at SSHRC to the author, 23 December 2002. In addition, five research grants were awarded to legal scholars under the Initiative of the New Economy totalling $858,650. These data were based upon applications submitted to selection committee 11 (political science, law, and public administration) only. There were other applications submitted by legal scholars to other selection committees, including the multidisciplinary committee, the sociology committee and the history committee.

12 Supra note 1 at 118.

13 Shanahan, Theresa, A Report on Legal Scholarship: Law professors' research activities in Ontario's English-speaking common law schools (Vancouver: Centre for Policy Studies in Higher Education and Training, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, 2002)Google Scholar [“Shanahan Report”]. For copies, contact

14 Ibid. at 18–19.

15 Ibid. at 25.

16 Ibid. at 20–27, 38.

17 Supra note 1 at 49.

18 Rochette, Annie & Wesley Pue, W., “'Back to Basics'? University Legal Education and 21st Century Professionalism” (2001) 20 Windsor Y.B. Access Just 167 at 167–68.Google Scholar

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid. at 168–69.

21 Thornton, Margaret, “Technocentrism in the Law School: Why the Gender and Colour of Law Remain the Same” (1998) 36 Osgoode Hall L.J. 369 at 373Google Scholar, as quoted in Rochette and Pue, supra note 18 at 187.

22 Members of the audience to whom I first delivered this lecture suggested that there were some examples of law schools that had developed “streams” or “structured programs” around specific substantive fields, and mentioned, by way of illustration, a legal history stream at the University of British Columbia, and specialized streams in international law, tax, and dispute resolution at Osgoode. The Arthurs Report did not recommend specialized streams rooted in doctrinal fields of law or procedure, but more thematic initiatives organized around intellectual or social phenomena, and consequently I have not included these examples as falling within the spectrum of options Arthurs envisaged.

23 Rochette & Pue, supra note 18 at 183–4.

24 I have calculated the faculty gender ratio for both schools based on website listings of full time professors. Although I have not conducted a full-scale investigation of all Canadian law schools, I believe that Ottawa represents one of the most equal gender ratios (if not the most) in the country, and that Western may represent the worst.

25 By reference to race, I do not mean to suggest that there is such a thing as a biological racial identity. Racial construction is socially, politically, economically and historically determined on a host of factors that often bear little connection to any supposedly genetic or biological criteria. However, the fact of racism has historically and continues to make racialization an important variable in the pursuit of equality. For a more detailed discussion of the history of Canadian racism in law, see Backhouse, Constance, Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900–1950 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).Google Scholar

26 Law Times 11 November 2002, p.20.

27 Chartrand, Larryet al., “Law Students, Law Schools, and Their Graduates” (2001) 20 Windsor Y.B. Access Just. 211 at 232.Google Scholar

28 Ibid. at 235–6, 241.

29 I have drawn in this section upon discussions regarding the transformation of legal education at the turn of the century, generated by a series of workshops sponsored by the Canadian Law & Society Association in Vancouver and Winnipeg in 1999, and in Ottawa in 2000. For further discussion of these, and other factors, see Backhouse, Constance, “The Changing Landscape of Canadian Legal Education” (2001) 20 Windsor Y.B. Access Just. 25.Google Scholar

30 Supra note 1 at 12.

31 Young, Margot E., “Making and Breaking Rank: Some Thoughts on Recent Canadian Law School Surveys” (2001) 20 Windsor Y.B. Access Just 311 at 316.Google Scholar

32 Tuition fees in Ontario currently range from $8,202 to $14,000, and the University of Toronto proposes to increase its tuition to $22,000 by 2005; see Complaint of the African Canadian Legal Clinic to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, 9 September 2002 and “Strengthening Our Community: The Report of the Task Force on the Future of the Faculty” University of Toronto Faculty of Law, 9 February 2002 [“Strengthening Our Community”].

33 “Strengthening Our Community”, ibid. at 13 and Table 4. The 1998 data show tuition at $4,570, with the Faculty's total annual expenditure per student at more than $11,000.

34 The University of California Los Angeles School of Law operates a Program in Public Interest Law and Policy, which has been operational since 1997. Students are recruited and admitted on a separate track, based on criteria that balances their likelihood of “academic success” with a demonstrated commitment to public interest, special abilities enabling them to serve or represent groups or interests lacking adequate access to law and lawyers, and intellectual strengths and acquired expertise relevant to problem solving and policy analysis. Once admitted to the Program, students are required to satisfy the usual law school requirements for a J.D. degree, but also receive a special curriculum tailored to the public interest orientation. The Program incorporates special courses and special extracurricular opportunities, organized by a core group of faculty committed to the public interest field, with the assistance of staff whose time is dedicated to the Program. When funding permits, students are provided with stipends that allow them to work for public interest organizations in the summers during their legal education. (In recent years, all students were offered such opportunities.) All students are given extensive career counseling and support to aid them to find permanent, full-time jobs in the public interest sector.