"Mad, bad and dangerous to know"

"Mad, bad and dangerous to know":  it is said that this was Lady Caroline Lamb's description of  Lord Byron (1788 - 1824), and it's been described as his "lasting epitaph".

I attended a lunch reflecting on Lord Bryon's life and times.   In the course of a fascinating and insightful discussion, the proposition was advanced that had Byron not died when he was 35, there would have been nothing else for him to achieve in life!

The times in which he lived were, of course, tumultuous, and perhaps contributed to a "live for the moment" attitude.


Byron opposed Lord Elgin's removal of the Parthenon marbles from Greece, and "reacted with fury" when Elgin's agent gave him a tour of the Parthenon, during which he saw the missing friezes and metopes. His poem, The Curse of Minerva,  was written to denounce  Elgin's actions.

Queen's Inn

I attended the annual Queen's Inn dinner at Queen's College, where the speaker was Justice Marcia Neave.

I have to say that the College under the leadership of the present master, Prof David Runia, seems to be travelling impressively (at least, from what I can see, from afar).   In particular, it appears to have successfully handled the transition of Melbourne University to the so-called "Melbourne Model".  This involves professional entry degrees all being post-graduate.   In the case of law, this is the JD.

For Melbourne's colleges, with their traditional focus on under-graduates, this has required a bit of a step-change in order to appeal to a greater range of post-graduates.   We were told that, this year, Queen's has 10 students in residence undertaking the JD, which seems quite good.




Justice Neave's speech was directed at the mostly under and recent-graduate audience, and appeared to hit the mark.  Her main themes were women in the law (basically, they started from a long way behind, there's been progress, but there's still more to be done) and some reflections on her life in the law.  She also reflected on the fact that more people are graduating in law than will ever work as lawyers (see my post here on this aspect). 

EDIT:  For completeness, here's my post on this dinner in 2012.

Legal Education

I was indebted to an article in the Australian for drawing my attention to a speech by (Victorian) Chief Justice Marilyn Warren  (the Fiat Justitia lecture, a link to the text is here) regarding a number of aspects of legal education in Australia.   Her speech covered quite a lot of ground, and it was good to see these issues getting some exposure.

One of the issues she mentioned is that the universities are producing far more law graduates than can ever be employed as a lawyer.    On a per capita basis, the number is far higher in Australia than it is in the US.  In one sense, this is not all bad news, because a law degree can be a good form of generalist education.  After all, how many arts graduates are employed as historians or whatever their major may have been?   Moreover, if the places in law courses aren't available, they will become even more elitist than they are now (I'm not sure that the brightest VCE students will necessarily become the best lawyers).

However, this seems to have the result that the universities are responding to the demand for places in law courses by turning law into a generalised degree that fails to include some matters the judiciary considers important.  She didn't say this, of course, but my informal observation is that these days there is quite an emphasis on "sociological" subjects, dealing with human rights and similar issues.  But she did say that the way in which subjects are taught has changed, and that the teaching in some core areas is, "at least disappointing and in many respects unsatisfactory."  She also says that it, "it is unfortunate that law students typically spend years studying the law before they find out what it is like to practice law".  And she sends a shot over the universities' bows, saying, "if the university sector persists with the generalist direction a solution for legal practice effectiveness is needed".  She moots various possibilities, including an "admission to practice" exam (akin to the bar exam sin the US) or even a cap on the number of lawyers (the aspect that the Australian chose as the subject of its headline).

Justice Warren's speech is worth reading in its entirety. I hope the law schools take it on board.