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Welcome!
The general objective of the Law and Justice programs is to encourage a broadened critical understanding of the nature, role and function of our legal and judicial institutions and of the relationship between law and justice. That is, we do not aim to produce students who can talk about what the law is and apply it, but rather students who understand why the law is as it is, the implications of the law, the relationship of the law to economic, social and political ideas and conditions and so on. The multidisciplinary course offerings and the interdisciplinary character of the backgrounds of JURI faculty promote this objective. This approach clearly distinguishes us from Law Schools, whose mandate is to prepare students for the practice of law in accordance with guidelines established by the Law Society.
Most of our students aspire to a law related career, and many of our graduates succeed in pursuing such a career as evidenced in our survey of graduates. However, we do not aim to teach them the law per se or to prepare them for any particular legal career, but rather to provide them with the critical thinking, reading and writing skills which will allow them to pursue their career objectives. We also hope to provide a broader perspective and context than they may get from subsequent vocational training or legal education: to open their minds and broaden their horizons (paraphrasing quotations from graduates). To this end we do not limit ourselves to the teaching of black letter law, but rather look at law in an interdisciplinary context as a complex human and social phenomenon.
Law and Justice is both a multidisciplinary program, incorporating a discreet list of relevant courses from other departments and, interdisciplinary, with the core JURI courses being taught by faculty with backgrounds in both law and another discipline, including philosophy, political science and history.
Undergraduate law programs are unusual but growing in number across North America. A directory produced by the American Bar Association in 1995 listed forty eight such programs, including those at Laurentian, Carleton and York Universities.
That undergraduate law programs are unusual does not mean that their existence is not highly desirable for any university. The Smith Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Canadian University Education emphasized the importance to the "educated person" of good reading, thinking, and communication skills and of an understanding of moral codes - all things which a study of law is well suited to developing. Furthermore, law is one of the central normative phenomena of society and a major tool of social ordering. This has been recognized by SSHRC through the creation of a special research category, Law as a Social Phenomenon. It is true that in the recent past the study of law has been primarily restricted to law schools, but this has not always been so, nor should it be. Canadian law schools are professional schools whose curriculum is to a large extent controlled by the provincial law societies who control admission to the legal profession. As a consequence, at the teaching level a critical study of law as a social phenomenon is quite simply of very low priority. Traditionally this has also been true of law school research, a fact recognized in the Arthurs report, Law and Learning, a study commissioned by the Canada Council, although the situation in this respect is improving somewhat. Furthermore, to restrict the teaching of law to law schools is to restrict it to a small elite, to perpetuate the mystique of law and to prevent the general public from acquiring an understanding of the legal system by which they are governed. To argue that the study of law should be restricted to law schools is similar to arguing that the study of biology should be restricted to medical schools, or of people to schools of social work. Most high schools have now recognized the value of studying law and offer courses even at the OAC level.
The first year course is designed to provide our students with the background necessary to benefit from the interdisciplinary and critical perspectives of our programmes. Hence, in addition to introducing the student to the historical and institutional framework of our legal system, it includes a substantial legal theory component. Most of the second and third year courses focus on substantive areas of the law, beginning with JURI 2106 and 2107 which present a major division within substantive law between private and public law. An understanding of this distinction, founded in the theoretical underpinnings of our legal system, is fundamental to an understanding of the accessibility of legal remedies, the roles of various legal personnel, of the effectiveness of law in providing just solutions and so on. Other second and third year courses focus more closely on specific areas of the law, but while they teach black letter law they too are designed to present the social, historical and theoretical contexts for this law. In the fourth year required course we turn to a consideration of the legal institutions through which the substantive law is enforced, since the effectiveness of such institutions is a very significant measure of the social relevance of the legal system as a whole. The remaining fourth year selected topics courses permit faculty to pursue in greater depth topics introduced in earlier course or to introduce new substantive legal topics or ways of looking at the law, generally in the context of their personal research interests.
Courses on the Law and Justice course list from other departments enhance the students ability to assess the law within a broad social context. For example, in three native studies courses students can consider how well the law serves the needs of one segment of society, the native community; in the Philosophy of Law they delve more deeply into the theoretical justifications for law and legal systems; in Canadian Government and Politics they are exposed to the political context within which new laws are made; in Crime and Punishment they critique the effectiveness of the law in protecting society from aberrant behaviour; and in the Psychology courses they learn to understand the criminal mind.